But there are others, more imaginative and energetic, whose ideas soar
beyond mere brigandage. They manage to conquer a great territory, and
assume rights of ownership not only over the inhabitants, but also over
their land. From this moment a real nation has been formed. The two
races often continue for a time to live side by side without mingling;
and yet, as they become indispensable to each other, as a community of
work and interest is gradually built up, as the pride and rancour of
conquest begin to ebb away, as those below naturally tend to rise to the
level of their masters, while the masters have a thousand reasons for
allowing, or even for promoting, such a tendency, the mixture of blood
finally takes place, the two races cease to be associated with distinct
tribes, and become more and more fused into a single whole.
The spirit of isolation is, however, so innate in the human race, that
even those who have reached this advanced stage of crossing refuse in
many cases to take a step further. There are some peoples who are, as we
know positively, of mixed origin, but who keep their feeling for the
clan to an extraordinary degree. The Arabs, for example, do more than
merely spring from different branches of the Semitic stock; they belong
at one and the same time to the so-called families of Shem and Ham, not
to speak of a vast number of local strains that are intermingled with
these. Nevertheless, their attachment to the tribe, as a separate unit,
is one of the most striking features of their national character and
their political history. In fact, it has been thought possible to
attribute their expulsion from Spain not only to the actual breaking up
of their power there, but also, to a large extent, to their being
continually divided into smaller and mutually antagonistic groups, in
the struggles for promotion among the Arab families at the petty courts
of Valentia, Toledo, Cordova, and Grenada.[14]
We may say the same about the majority of such peoples. Further, where
the tribal separation has broken down, a national feeling takes its
place, and acts with a similar vigour, which a community of religion is
not enough to destroy. This is the case among the Arabs and the Turks,
the Persians and the Jews, the Parsees and the Hindus, the Nestorians of
Syria and the Kurds. We find it also in European Turkey, and can trace
its course in Hungary, among the Magyars, the Saxons, the Wallachians,
and the Croats. I know, from what I have seen with my own eyes, that in
certain parts of France, the country where races are mingled more than
perhaps anywhere else, there are little communities to be found to this
day, who feel a repugnance to marrying outside their own village.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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