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The Beginnings of New England - Or the Puritan Theocracy in its Relations to Civil and Religious Liberty by John Fiske
page 31 of 257 (12%)
of the worst vices of Oriental civilizations. Yet because of the
fundamental defect that between the Christian Spaniard and his
Mussulman conqueror there could be no political fusion, this brilliant
civilization was doomed. During eight centuries of more or less
extensive rule in the Spanish peninsula, the Moor was from first to last
an alien, just as after four centuries the Turk is still an alien in
the Balkan peninsula. The natural result was a struggle that lasted
age after age till it ended in the utter extermination of one of the
parties, and left behind it a legacy of hatred and persecution that has
made the history of modern Spain a dismal record of shame and disaster.
[Sidenote: The Oriental method of nation-making]

In this first method of nation-making, then, which we may call the
Oriental method, one now sees but little to commend. It was better than
savagery, and for a long time no more efficient method was possible,
but the leading peoples of the world have long since outgrown it; and
although the resulting form of political government is the oldest we
know and is not yet extinct, it nevertheless has not the elements
of permanence. Sooner or later it will disappear, as savagery is
disappearing, as the rudest types of inchoate human society have
disappeared.

The second method by which nations have been made may be called
the Roman method; and we may briefly describe it as _conquest with
incorporation, but without representation_. The secret of Rome's
wonderful strength lay in the fact that she incorporated the vanquished
peoples into her own body politic. In the early time there was a fusion
of tribes going on in Latium, which, if it had gone no further, would
have been similar to the early fusion of Ionic tribes in Attika or of
Iranian tribes in Media. But whereas everywhere else this political
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