Basques
2 of the 6 encyclopedias on this shelf carry an entry for Basques. Both are reproduced below, so you can see where they agree and where they differ.
Aiton's Encyclopedia (1910)
basks, a peculiar people inhabiting the border provinces of France and Spain on the Bay of Biscay. The Basques are supposed to be a remnant of a primitive people once occupying France and Spain. Like the Welsh of Britain, they have persisted in the mountain fastnesses of the Pyrenees. The Basque language, which is spoken by about 60,000 people, is unlike any other known. "'Tis said the Basques understand one another; for my part I will never believe it," said Scaliger. The Basques have preserved their own dress and customs. They are a simple, brave, independent people, cultivating small farms at home, but fond of seafaring. They are said to have been the first Europeans to catch the whale. Biscay is another spelling for basque. The bay of that name is therefore the Bay of the Basques. The short-skirted jacket or basque is an article of national dress worn by the Basque women.
Collier's New Encyclopedia (1921)
or BISCAYANS (in their own language, Euscaldunac), a remarkable race of people dwelling partly in the S. W. corner of France, but mostly in the N. of Spain adjacent to the Pyrenees. They are probably descendants of the ancient Iberi, who occupied Spain before the Celts. They preserve their ancient language, former manners, and national dances, and make admirable soldiers, especially in guerrilla warfare. Their language is highly polysynthetic, and no connection between it and any other language has as yet been made out. There are four principal dialects, which are not only distinguished by their pronunciation and grammatical structure, but but differ even in their vocabularies. The Basques (about 700,000) occupy in Spain the provinces of Biscay, Guipuzcoa, and Alava; in France parts of the departments of the Upper and Lower Pyrenees, Ariége, and Upper Garonne. Some 200,000 are said to have emigrated tury to South America. BASRA. See BASSORA.
What Has Changed in the Last Century
Aiton's put the number of Basque speakers at 60,000 in 1910 and Collier's counted about 700,000 Basques in 1921; today roughly 750,000 people speak Euskara, and the language has an official standard, Euskara Batua, agreed by the Academy of the Basque Language in 1968 after Franco's regime had spent decades suppressing it in schools and public life. The claim that "no connection between it and any other language has as yet been made out" still holds: Euskara remains the textbook language isolate of Western Europe, and every proposed link (to Iberian, to Caucasian tongues) has failed to convince. What neither account could foresee was the politics: the bombing of Gernika by German and Italian aircraft in 1937, immortalised by Picasso, the campaign of the separatist group ETA from 1959 until its disarmament in 2017 and dissolution in 2018, and the creation of an autonomous Basque Country within Spain in 1979.
Written for this edition, 2026.