The History of Population and Settlement in Eurasia

Abstract

T HE study of economic geography, which has made such rapid advances in recent years, presents many questions closely related to the history of population and settlement. Vidal de la Blache was keenly aware of these contacts with history, and his last work, Principles of Human Geography, contained much historical material. The full appreciation of certain problems of economic geography requires, however, a systematic study of the process of settlement, because the nature of social adaptations to resources must ultimately be treated as a concrete problem in the history of settlement. Many writers have believed that there were no data sufficiently trustworthy to admit of even the most general sketch of the history of settlement in Eurasia, but important work has been brought out latterly, and the larger aspects of the process of settlement can now be established. Many details are wanting; the conclusions must be interpreted with care; but suggestive and important results are now attainable. Of the categories that may be applied to the process of settlement only one is a common use, frontier, a well known term though of ill defined content. We commonly associate the term with low densities of population, irrespective of the relation of the condition of the region to a process of settlement. Semiarid steppe is incapable of supporting more than a thin nomadic or seminomadic population. Such regions are fully settled even when the absolute density is low. Should the term refer to absolutely low densities or should it apply exclusively to early stages in the process of settlement? The latter use of the term seems likely to be the more significant. The other aspect of the problem is adequately met by setting up a separate classification-maturely settled regions with low densities. In a region in process of settlement, there is a stage intermediate between anything that can be legitimately termed settlement and the complete occupation of the country that we may describe as mature settlement. Many of the economic problems of the intermediate stage of settlement are dominated by the presence of free, or unoccupied, land; but it would seem desirable to distinguish between frontier conditions and such intermediate problems at the stage in settlement when agriculture begins to achieve sufficient