Part 136

=History.=--Spain was originally occupied by Iberian tribes (akin to the present Basque inhabitants of the north), who were partially overlaid by invading Celts. The Carthaginians established themselves in the south of Spain in the third century B. C. The Romans appeared in force in the next century, but it was not till after a fierce and prolonged resistance from Iberians and Celtiberians that, under Augustus, the Roman conquest was complete. Soon Spain, thoroughly Romanized, was contributing largely to Latin literature and Roman culture.

The Germanic invaders from the north, Suevi, Vandals, and Visigoths, crushed the Roman power in the fifth century A. D., and Spain became a province of the Visigothic kingdom (573 A. D.). Then followed the Moorish conquest, which was very rapid (714-732) and complete, except in the north and northwest. The several Christian kingdoms of Spain: Castile, Leon, Navarre, Aragon, etc., as well as Portugal--were formed by the gradual depression of the Moors; but Moorish Granada was not conquered till 1492, and Spain was not united under one rule till 1512.

Spain became a European state with the union of Ferdinand of Aragon and Isabella of Castile in 1469, and the New World was discovered for them. Under the Emperor Charles V., in the sixteenth century, Spain was the most important country in Europe; but the population was unequal to the drain upon it caused by constant warfare, emigration, and adverse economical and industrial conditions.

With Philip II., Charles’s son, the decline of Spain set in, though now for sixty years Portugal was under the Spanish crown. The Bourbon dynasty brought complication in the wars of Louis XIV., and little advantage from the recovery of Naples and Sicily. The nadir of Spanish history is in the time of Napoleon, when Spain, in spite of some national efforts, was nominally a kingdom, but really a mere province of the French empire.

In spite of the valiant patriotism shown in resisting the French, and the ultimate recovery of national independence through the overthrow of Napoleon, the history of Spain in the nineteenth century was in the main inglorious. In Cuba there had been trouble since 1895, the final outcome of which was the disastrous Spanish-American war, leading to the loss of the greater colonies. The twentieth century has seen gradual recovery, growing toleration, a breach with the Vatican, revolutionary and repressive movements, and ambitions in northwest Africa.

In June, 1911, the situation in Morocco led to the dispatch of a Spanish force to Alcazar. But the indignation aroused in France at this action was quite overshadowed by the sensation caused when it became known that Germany had sent a warship to Agadir. Labor troubles in Spain broke out in September, 1911. Martial law was proclaimed throughout the country, and a royal decree suspended the constitutional guarantees, which were not re-established until October 22. In March, 1912, the ministry was reconstituted, but, in 1916, during the European war, again gave way over grave questions over neutrality and internal conditions.

=SWEDEN= (Swedish _Sverige_), a kingdom of northern Europe, occupies the eastern side of the Scandinavian peninsula. From 1814 till the amicable but definitive separation in 1905, it was associated with Norway under one crown. Its greatest length, north to south, is close to 1000 miles, its greatest breadth 300; its area 170,970 square miles; and its coast line 1550 miles. Besides many skerry islands, Sweden owns Gothland and Œland.

=Surface.=--The country may be generally described as a broad plain sloping southeastward from the Kjölen Mountains to the Baltic. The only mountainous districts adjoin Norway; the peaks sink in altitude from seven thousand feet in the north to three thousand eight hundred feet at the southern end of the chain. Immediately south of this point a subsidiary chain strikes off to the southeast, and, threading the lake region of central Sweden, swells out beyond into a tableland with a mean elevation of eight hundred and fifty feet and maximum of twelve hundred and forty feet. Fully two-thirds of the entire surface lies lower than eight hundred feet, and one-third lower than three hundred feet, above sea level.

Sweden is separated popularly and geographically into three great divisions--Norrland, Svealand, and Gothland. Norrland, in the north, is a region of vast and lonely forests and rapid mountain streams, often forming fine cascades and ribbon-like lakes before they reach the Gulf of Bothnia.

The central division of Svealand, or Sweden proper, is a region of big lakes, and contains most of the mines. Lakes occupy nearly fourteen thousand square miles, or eight and two-tenths per cent of the total area; several of the largest, as Vener, Vetter, Hjelmar, Mälar, are connected with one another and the sea by rivers and canals. Lake Mälar contains some thirteen hundred islands, many beautifully wooded, with royal palaces or noblemen’s castles; and its shores are studded with prosperous towns, castles, palaces, and factories.

Gothland, the southern division, contains a much higher proportion of cultivated land, and its wide plains are all under agriculture.

=Climate.=--The climate of Sweden is continental in the north, along the Norwegian frontier, and on the southern plateau. The lakes in the colder districts of the north are ice bound for some two hundred and twenty days in the year; in the south only for about ninety days. The rainfall is greatest on the coast of the Cattegat.

=Production and Industry.=--The principal articles of cultivation are the various cereals--oats, rye, barley, wheat--and potatoes. The forests are very extensive, covering one-half of the surface of the country, and consisting of pine, birch, fir; these are of great importance, supplying timber, pitch, and tar, and also the chief fuel.

The mineral products are extremely rich: iron of excellent quality, that known as the Dannemora iron, being converted into the finest steel; gold and silver in small proportions; copper, lead, nickel, zinc, cobalt, alum, sulphur, porphyry, and marble. There is a railroad opening up the rich iron ore districts of Lapland, and mineral trains run from Gellivare and Kiruna to Lulea on the Gulf of Bothnia and to Narvik on the Atlantic. Considerable mines of coal are worked in Scania.

The chief articles of export are timber, butter, iron, steel, wood pulp, paper, matches, stone, iron and zinc ores, etc.

=People.=--The Swedes are a Germanic people, tall and strong, but with more variety of characteristics than the Norwegians. The Swedish language, allied closely to Norse and Danish, appears in very many dialects. It has had, especially since the sixteenth century, an extensive literature.

Almost the whole population is Protestant, adhering to the Lutheran Church, members of which alone are permitted to hold public offices. Education is well advanced in both countries, public instruction being gratuitous and compulsory. Sweden has the Universities of Upsala, which dates from 1477, and of Lund, founded in 1668, besides the many scientific and educational institutions of Stockholm.

=Government.=--The constitution of Sweden dates from 1809, but in 1866, when the separate meetings of the four estates--nobles, clergy, burghers, and peasants--were done away, the legislative system was much modified. The executive power is vested in the king, acting under the advice of a Council of State; the legislative in the two Chambers of the Diet, both of which are elected by the people--the first for nine years from proprietors, the second for three years from a lower class. The administration of justice is entirely independent of the government.

=Cities.=--The capital, Stockholm, has a population (1913) of 382,085. In addition to the capital, there are fourteen towns with above 20,000 population, viz.: Göteborg, 178,030; Malmö, 95,821; Norrköping, 46,180; Gefle, 35,736; Helsingborg, 37,385; Örebro, 33,182.

Malmö, on the sound opposite Copenhagen, is the outlet of the corn granary of the southern plain; Norrköping, on an inlet of the Baltic, after Stockholm, is the busiest manufacturing town of Sweden, its mills being driven by the rapids of the Motala; Gefle lies north of Stockholm, and is second only to it as a seaport on the Baltic side of the country; and Karlskrona, on the south coast, is the naval arsenal and headquarters of the fleet of Sweden.

Within recent years a network of railways has been formed over southern Sweden and Norway, connecting the capital towns with the ports of Göteborg, Malmö, and many other points.

=Stockholm= (_l_ pronounced), stands on several islands and the adjacent mainland, between a bay of the Baltic and Lake Mälar, in a situation that is accounted one of the most picturesque in Europe.

Its nucleus is an island in mid-channel called “the Town”; on it stand the imposing royal palace; the chief church (St. Nicholas), in which the kings are crowned; the House of the Nobles; the town house; the ministries of the kingdom; and the principal wharf, a magnificent granite quay, fronting east.

Immediately west of the central island lies the Knights’ Island (_Riddarholm_); it is almost entirely occupied with public buildings as the old Houses of Parliament; the old Franciscan church, in which all the later sovereigns of Sweden have been buried; the royal archives, and the chief law-courts.

North of these two islands lie the handsomely built districts of Norrmalm, separated from them by a narrow channel, in which is an islet with the new Houses of Parliament. In Norrmalm are the National Museum with valuable prehistoric collections, coins, paintings, sculptures; the principal theaters; the Academy of Fine Arts; the barracks; the Hop Garden, with the Royal Library, two hundred and fifty thousand volumes and eight thousand manuscripts, and with the statue of Linnæus; the Academy of Sciences; the Museum of Northern Antiquities; the Observatory, etc.

Ship Island (_Skeppsholm_), immediately east of “the Town” island, is the headquarters of the Swedish navy, and is connected with a smaller island on the southeast, that is crowned with a citadel. Beyond these again, and farther to the east, lies the beautiful island of the Zoological Gardens. Immediately south of “the Town” island is the extensive district of Södermalm, the houses of which climb up the steep slopes that rise from the water’s edge. Handsome bridges connect the central islands with the northern and southern districts; quick little steamboats go to the beautiful islands in Lake Mälar on the west, and eastward toward the Baltic Sea, forty miles distant.

Sugar, tobacco, silks and ribbons, candles, linen, cotton, and leather are produced, and there are large iron foundries and machine shops. Though the water approaches are frozen up during winter, Stockholm exports iron and steel, oats and tar.

Stockholm was founded by Birger Jarl in 1255, and grew to be the capital only in modern times.

=History.=--Sweden was originally occupied by Lapps and Finns, but probably (1500 B. C.) Teutonic tribes drove them into the forests of the north, and at the dawn of history we find Svealand occupied by Swedes (Svea) and Gothland by the Goths.

Gothland was christianized and also conquered by the Danes in the ninth century, while Svealand remained fanatically heathen till the time of St. Eric (twelfth century), who conquered Finland, henceforth a Swedish possession. For a century Goths and Swedes had different kings, but gradually melted into one people toward the end of the thirteenth century.

Now arose bitter feuds between king, nobility, peasants, and universal turbulence prevailed; agriculture, industry, literature and culture progressed not at all or hardly existed. Even after the union of Sweden, Norway, and Denmark under one monarch (1397), Sweden was torn by conflicts which lasted down to the expulsion of Danish oppressors, and the restoration of Swedish autonomy by the national rising under Gustavus Vasa (1524), the ablest prince who had yet ruled the Swedes. Under him the reformation was heartily accepted. Gustavus Adolphus and the Swedes were its bulwark, not merely at home but in Germany in the Thirty Years’ war; and by the acquirement of Bremen, Verden, and Pomerania, Sweden became (1648) a member of the empire.

Under Charles XII. and his successor, the enmity of Denmark, Poland, and Russia wrested her new conquests from Sweden, and gave Livonia, Esthonia, Ingermanland, and Karelia (which had long been Swedish) to Russia; thus reducing Sweden from the rank of a first-rate European power. After a bloody struggle Sweden had to cede Finland (1809) to Russia. Norway was united by a personal union (i. e., by the monarch) with Sweden in 1810; and in 1818 the French general Bernadotte was elected king (as Charles XIV.).

Norway’s demand for a larger measure of home rule led in 1905 to a complete separation.

=SWITZERLAND= (Ger. _Schweiz_; Fr. _Suisse_), is a confederation of twenty-two cantons, lying practically in the very center of Europe, between France, Germany, Austria, and Italy. No part of it is within one hundred miles of the sea. It is also a very small country (sixteen thousand square miles), not much larger than the half of Scotland. The greatest length from east to west is two hundred and sixteen miles, the width from north to south being one hundred and thirty-seven miles. The population in 1910 was 3,741,971.

=Surface.=--The southern boundary lies for the most part along the highest crests of the Alps, which descend by the Italian valleys to the plain of Lombardy; the summits of the Matterhorn and Monte Rosa rise on the boundary line, which is crossed by the Great St. Bernard, Simplon, and Splügen passes. North of this mass of heights the deep valleys of the Upper Rhone flowing west to the Lake of Geneva, and of the Upper Rhine flowing northeast to that of Constance, mark a deep trench all across the country. In the heart of the country rises the mass of the Bernese Alps or Oberland, the Alps of Uri and Glarus, with the summits of the Finsteraarhorn and Jungfrau. Still farther north the country descends gradually by less elevated mountains and hills to the undulating lowland of Switzerland (still one thousand five hundred feet above the sea), which extends in a curve from the Lake of Constance on the northeast along the Valley of the Aar, by the Lakes of Biel (Bienne) and Neuchâtel to that of Geneva. Beyond this the long parallel ranges of the Jura close in the country on the northwestern frontier.

More than half of the whole country is covered by rocks, glaciers, forest, and mountain pasture, and cannot be permanently inhabited.

=Rivers and Lakes.=--All the northern part of the country belongs to the basin of the Rhine flowing to the North Sea. That river, having purified its waters in its passage through the Boden-See or Lake of Constance (partly in Switzerland), is joined by the Aar, which rises near the Grimsel, and flows through the lakes of Brienz and Thun. To this basin also belong the lakes of Zürich and Zug, Luzerne, Neuchâtel, and Biel or Bienne. The southwestern district drains by the Rhône to the Mediterranean, through the Lake of Geneva or Leman, which is partly in Switzerland, partly in France.

The smaller part of the southern boundary that laps over the Italian valleys of the Alps includes the head of Lake Maggiore, in Switzerland, and the upper Ticino, which flows through it to the plain of Lombardy and the Adriatic. In the east the boundary embraces only one valley, which drains to the Danube, the Engadine, through which the Upper Inn flows northeastward.

From the elevation at which they rise, and their rapids, the rivers of Switzerland are of no value in navigation. The Rhine only begins to be freely navigable at Basel, where it leaves the country. The larger lakes, however, have little steamers plying from shore to shore; that of Geneva, forty-seven miles long, has a considerable traffic.

=Climate and Scenery.=--The climate naturally varies with the elevation above the sea level, from that of the perennial snows at an elevation of about nine thousand feet, downward through the pastoral alpine region and the tall pine forests, to the lower lands in which the chestnut flourishes, and where orchard fruits, the vine, mulberry, and wheat can be grown. There is a variation of about thirty-four and one-half degrees in the mean temperature--between fifty-four and one-half degrees Fahrenheit at Bellinzona, and twenty degrees on the Theodule Pass.

Switzerland has been called the playground of Europe, and is visited by large numbers of tourists from all parts of the world, attracted by its magnificent mountain and lake scenery.

The amount of money brought annually by tourists is estimated at twenty million dollars.

Geneva and Lausanne, on the beautiful lake of Geneva, Interlaken (between the lakes of Thun and Brienz), Luzerne and the Rigi, Schaffhausen at the Rhine fall, Zermatt beneath Monte Rosa, Lugano in the heart of the Italian lake district, are notable tourist stations; St. Moritz in the Engadine, and Leuk (Louèche) in the Rhone Valley, Pfäffers in that of the Upper Rhine, are famous for their baths. Switzerland as a whole--with its mountains, lakes, glaciers, waterfalls, valleys and cities--has been described by an American poet as a “cluster of delights and grandeurs.”

=Production and Industry.=--The forests, which cover about a sixth of the surface, are of immense value to the country, where most of the houses are built of wood. The mountain pastures give the characteristic employments of the people of the Alps and Jura, as herdsmen and shepherds, tending their cattle and making cheese in the mountain châlets during summer.

Agriculture is followed chiefly in the valleys, where wheat, oats, maize, barley, flax, hemp, and tobacco are produced.

The textile industries are the most important, the chief centers being Zürich, Basel, Glarus, and St. Gall. The chief are silk, cotton, and linen fabrics, besides raw silk. Next comes the clock and watchmaking industry, established at Geneva in 1587, which spread to the cantons of Neuchâtel, Berne and Vaud.

Wood carving was introduced in the Oberland about 1820. Other manufactures are chemicals, chocolate, and condensed milk.

Salt, obtained on the banks of the Rhine, is the only valuable mineral of the country.

=People.=--Three-fourths of the population of Switzerland, occupying all the center and north of the country, are Germanic; the remaining fourth belongs to three branches of the Romanic family--the French in the west, the Italian in the south, and the Rhæto-Romanic in the southeast. A little more than half of the population is Protestant, the remainder, chiefly in the mountain region, Roman Catholic.

Education is widely diffused, especially in the Protestant districts of the northeast, where the law of compulsory education is rigidly enforced. There are universities at Basel, Berne, Zurich, Geneva, and Lausanne.

=Government.=--At the close of the political storms which raged in Europe from 1789 till 1815, the affairs of Switzerland were re-arranged by the Congress of Vienna, which provided for the perpetual neutrality and independence of Switzerland in its twenty-two cantons. Since 1848 the independent states or cantons of Switzerland have become a united confederacy (Bundes Staat), the supreme legislative and executive authority of which is vested in a parliament of two chambers, sitting at Berne--the Stände Rath or States Council, and the National Rath, the first composed of two members for each canton, the second of representatives of the people according to numbers. The cantons are still, however, in a great measure, independent democracies, each making its own laws and managing its local affairs.

_Referendum and Initiative._--These are two political institutions peculiar to Switzerland, the furthest developments of democracy yet attained.

The referendum, which has now spread throughout the whole Confederation, and by means of which all legislative acts passed in the Federal or Cantonal Assemblies may be referred to the people _en masse_, was fully developed in 1874, and it has been put in operation on an average once a year. The decisions have generally shown a conservative rather than a radical tendency on the part of the people.

_Initiative_ is the exercise of the right granted to voters to initiate proposals for the enactment of new laws or for the alteration or abolition of the old ones.

=Cities.=--The capital of the Swiss Confederation is Berne, population (1910) 85,650. In 1910 there were twelve communes with populations exceeding 20,000: Zürich, 190,733; Bâle, 132,280; Geneva, 123,160; Berne, 85,650; Lausanne, 63,296; St. Gall, 37,657; Chaux-de-Fonds, 37,626; and Luzerne, 39,152.

=Berne=, since 1849 the capital of Switzerland, sixty-eight miles by rail southwest of Basel, is situated on a lofty sandstone promontory formed by the winding Aar, which surrounds it on three sides. It is one of the best and most regularly built towns in Europe, as it is the finest in Switzerland. The houses are massive structures of freestone, resting upon shop-lined arcades. Rills of water flow through the streets. The view of the Alpine peaks from the city is magnificent.

The principal public buildings are a Gothic cathedral, the magnificent Federal Council Hall, the mint, the hospital, and the university. Berne has an interesting museum, and a valuable public library of fifty thousand volumes.

It was founded in 1191, was made a free imperial city in 1218, under Frederick II.; and between 1288 and 1339 successfully resisted the attacks of Rudolf of Hapsburg, Albert, his son, and Louis of Bavaria. The “Disputation of Berne” between Catholics and Reformers in 1528 prepared the way for the acceptance of the reformed doctrine.

On account of the traditionary derivation of its name (Swabian _bern_, “a bear”), bears are maintained in a public bear-pit.

=History.=--The original inhabitants of Switzerland were the Celtic Helvetii, and the Rhætii of doubtful affinity. Both were conquered by Julius Cæsar and the generals of Augustus, and Romanized. Overrun by the Burgundians in the west, and their Germanic kinsmen the Alemannians in the east, Helvetia became subject to the Frankish kings and were christianized in the seventh century.