Utopia—Utrecht
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stout and fair race, but in their dress and general customs have assimilated themselves to the neighbouring peoples of Bajour. They have none of the vices of the Yusafzais. Their country is very hilly and difficult, but well cultivated in terraces. They number some 40,000, and their fighting strength is about 8000 men. British expeditions were necessary against them in 1852, 1878 and 1898.
Utopia, an ideal commonwealth, or an imaginary country whose inhabitants are supposed to exist under the most perfect conditions possible. Hence the terms Utopia and Utopian are also used to denote any visionary scheme of reform or social theory, especially those which fail to recognize defects inherent in human nature. The word first occurs in Sir Thomas More’s Utopia, which was originally published in Latin under the title De Optima Reipublicae Statu, deque Nova Insula Utopia (Louvain, 1516). It was compounded by More (q.v.) from the Greek οὐ, not, and τόπος, a place, meaning therefore a place which has no real existence, an imaginary country.
The idea of a Utopia is, even in literature, far older than More’s romance; it appears in the Timaeus of Plato and is fully developed in his Republic. The idealized description of Sparta in Plutarch’s life of Lycurgus belongs to the same class of literary Utopias, though it professes to be historical. A similar idea also occurs in legends of world-wide currency, the best known of these being the Greek, and the medieval Norse, Celtic and Arab legends which describe an earthly Paradise in the Western or Atlantic Ocean (see Atlantis). Few of these survived after the exploration of the Atlantic by Columbus, Vasco da Gama and others in the 15th century; but in literature More’s Utopia set a new fashion. An ideal state of society is described in the writings of Hobbes, Sir Robert Filmer and J. J. Rousseau. In Bacon’s New Atlantis (1624–29) science is the key to universal happiness; Tommaso Campanella’s Civitas Solis (1623) portrays a communistic society, and is largely inspired by the Republic of Plato; James Harrington’s Oceana (1656), which had a profound influence upon political thought in America, is a practical treatise rather than a romance, and is founded on the ideas that property, especially in land, is the basis of political power, and that the executive should only be controlled for a short period by the same man or men. Bernard de Mandevil1e’s Fable of the Bees is unique in that it describes the downfall of an ideal commonwealth. Other Utopias are the “Voyage en Salente” in Fénelon’s Télémaque (1699); Etienne Cabet’s Voyage en Icarie (1840); Bulwer Lytton’s The Coming Race (1871); Samuel Butler’s Erewhon (1872) and Erewhon Revisited (1901); Edward Bellamy’s Looking Backward (1888); William Morris’s News from Nowhere (1890); H. G. Wells’s Anticipations (1901), A Modern Utopia (1905) and New Worlds for Old (1908). Many Utopias, such as the Fable of the Bees and Erewhon, are designed to satirize existing social conditions as well as to depict a more perfect civilization. There are separate articles on all the authors mentioned above. A large number of the more recent Utopias have been inspired by socialistic or communistic ideals; among these may be mentioned Freiland, ein soziales Zukunftsbild (1890) and Reise nach Freiland (1893), by the Austrian political economist Theodor Hertzka (b. Budapest, 1845), which portray an imaginary communistic colony in Central Africa.
Utrecht, a town of northern Natal, 30 m. by rail E. by N. of Newcastle. Pop. (1904) 1315. It is the chief place in a district of the same name, originally settled in 1848 by emigrant Boers from Natal. They formed an independent community and in 1854 obtained, in exchange for a hundred head of cattle, formal cession of the territory from Panda, the Zulu king. In 1858 the district was united with the republic of Lydenburg, and in 1860, with Lydenburg, became part of the South African Republic. In 1903 it was, with the neighbouring district of Vryheid, annexed to Natal. The town of Utrecht is built in a hollow among the foothills of the Drakensberg. In the neighbourhood are extensive coal-fields.
Utrecht, the smallest province of Holland, bounded S. by Gelderland and South Holland, W. by South Holland, N. by North Holland and the Zuider Zee and E. by Gelderland. It has an area of 534 sq. m, and a pop. (1905) of 276,543. It belongs chiefly to the basin of the Rhine; the Lower Rhine, which skirts its southern border, after sending off the Crooked Rhine at Wijk, becomes the Lek, and the Crooked Rhine in its turn, after sending off the Vecht at Utrecht to the Zuider Zee, becomes the Old Rhine. The north-eastern portion of the province is drained by the Eem, which falls into the Zuider Zee. The watershed between the Rhine and the Eem is formed by a plateau of sand and gravel hills which extend from the south-east corner on the Rhine to Zeist near Utrecht, and also northwards to Huizen on the Zuider Zee. On its western side the plateau declines into the clay lands (and in the north-west low fen) which characterize the western half of the province. The region of sand and gravel is covered with bare heaths and patches of woods, and the occupations of the scanty population are chiefly those of buckwheat cultivation and peat-digging, as in Drente. Amersfoort is here the only town of any size, but along the western edge of this tract there is a row of thriving villages, namely, Amerongen, Leersum, Doorn, Driebergen and Zeist. Bunschoten on the Zuider Zee is a fishing village; Venendaal, on the south-eastern border, originally a fen-colony, is now a market for the bee-keeping industry in the east. On account of the picturesqueness of this part of the province, many country houses and villa residences are found scattered about it. The western half of the province is flat and often below sea-level. Cattle-rearing and the making of cheese (of the Gouda description) and butter are here the chief occupations. Agriculture is practised along the Crooked Rhine, wheat, barley, beans and peas being the chief products, and there is considerable fruit-farming in the south-west. The development of towns, however, has here been restricted by the rise of Utrecht, the chief town of the province, as a commercial centre. A number of small old towns are found along the Rhine, the Lek and the Holland Ysel, such as Rhenen (or Reenen), Wyk-by-Duurstede, Yselstein, Montfoort. Rhenen was once the seat of an independent lordship, though afterwards joined to the bishopric of Utrecht. The ancient church has a fine tower (1492–1531). Wyk-by-Duurstede, originally a Roman settlement, was of some commercial importance as early as the 7th and 8th centuries, but decayed owing to Norman raids in the 10th century. The ruined castle of the bishops of Utrecht still remains. The lordship of Yselstein can be traced back to the younger brother of Gysbrecht IV. of Amstel, who bought lands and built a castle here before 1279. In the beginning of the next century it had grown to the size of a small town and was granted civic rights and surrounded with walls, and in the course of the following centuries was frequently attacked and even devastated. About 1377 Ystelstein descended to the house of Egmont, and in 1551 to the house of Orange, and by paying an annual contribution to the United Provinces remained an independent barony till 1795. The remains of the castle are picturesque. Montfoort owes its origin to a castle built by the bishop of Rhenen in 1170, which was frequently besieged in the 14th and 15th centuries. In 1833 it was bought by the government, and now serves as a reformatory for women. Vreeland on the Vecht has a similar origin in the castle built by Bishop Hendrik of Vianen in 1253–59 as a protection to the province against the lords of Amstel. The castle was demolished in 1529 when the province came under Burgundian rule. The province is traversed by the main railway lines, which all converge at Utrecht, and is also amply provided with navigable waterways.
The province represents the bulk of the territories once comprised in the ancient prince-bishopric of the same name, het Sticht (the see) of Dutch historians. The see was founded in 722 by St Willibrord, and the diocese thus formed, saving for a short time when it was an archbishopric, was subordinate to the see of Cologne. It covered all the northern Netherlands between the Scheldt and the Ems. The bishops, in fact, as the result of grants of immunities by a succession of German kings, and notably by the Saxon and Franconian emperors, gradually became the temporal rulers of a dominion as great as the neighbouring counties and duchies. Bishop Balderic (918–76) successfully defended the see against the Northmen, and received from the emperor Otto I. the right to coin money and all the land between the Leck and the Zuider Zee. The bishopric was weak, however, as compared with the neighbouring states, Holland, Gelderland and Brabant, from the mere fact of its ecclesiastical character. The bishop had no hereditary or dynastic interest in his land, and, as a temporal ruler, his
