negro strain in the blood of Colombia, Venezuela, and
Brazil. This particular historical movement, which during the two
centuries of its greatest activity involved larger numbers than the
Tartar invasion of Russia or the Turkish invasion of Europe, for a long
period gave to black Africa the only historical importance which it
possessed for the rest of the world.[159]

[Sidenote: Fusion by deported and military colonies.]

In higher stages of political development, war aiming at the subjugation
of large territories finds another means to fuse the subject peoples and
assimilate them to a common standard of civilization. The purpose is
unification and the obliteration of local differences. These are also
the unconscious ends of evolution by historical movement. With this
object, conquerors the world over have used a system of tribal and
racial exchanges. It was the policy of the Incas of ancient Peru to
remove conquered tribes to distant parts of the realm, and supply their
places with colonists from other districts who had long been subjected
and were more or less assimilated.[160] In 722 B.C. the Assyrian king,
Sargon, overran Samaria, carried away the Ten Tribes of Israel beyond
the Tigris and scattered them among the cities of Media, where they
probably merged with the local population. To the country left vacant by
their wholesale deportation he transplanted people from Babylon and
other Mesopotamian cities.[161] The descendants of these, mingled with
the poorer class of Jews still left there, formed the despised
Samaritans of the time of Christ. The Kingdom of Judah later was
despoiled by Nebuchadnezzar of much of its population, which was carried
off to Babylon.

This plan of partial deportation and colonization characterized the
Roman method of Romanization. Removal of the conquered from their native
environment facilitated the process, while it weakened the spirit and
power of revolt. The Romans met bitter opposition from the mountain
tribes when trying to open up the northern passes of the Apennines.
Consequently they removed the Ligurian tribe of the Apuanians,
forty-seven thousand in number, far south to Samnium. When in 15 B.C.
the region of the Rhaetian Alps was joined to the Empire, forty
thousand of the inhabitants were transplanted from the mountains to the
plain. The same method was used with the Scordisci and Dacians of the
Danube. More often the mortality of war so thinned the population, that
the se