Page:American Journal of Sociology Volume 3.djvu/325

 STUDIES IN POLITICAL AREAS 3 1 1

lies the Europe of medium and small states, east of it the Europe of single massive Russia. 1

In Asia as in Europe there reappears this contrast between the smaller territories of the articulated south and west sides,, and the larger ones of the massive north and east. We find it even between France, confined within its natural boundaries of sea and mountain, and Germany which is endowed with a greater possibility of expansion towards the east, and whose leading powers spread out from the broad east towards the dismembered west. Even the Balkan peninsula shows an increase in the size of its states in the direction of the torso-like mass of the north, just as does India towards the northwest.

Since in every continent, even if it is not copiously articu- lated, the great unbroken spaces lie in the interior and the naturally divided districts on the margin, the broad interior always forms the source on which the development of the larger domains must draw, thus giving rise to the contrast between the states of the continental body and of the continental limbs. The kingdom of Persia is the first truly great state in the list of the so-called world-empires of antiquity, -because it extended farther back into the massive interior of Asia than all earlier states, while these were merely lodged on the edge of the land. The old China reached its continental dimensions only when the inner regions of Thibet and Mongolia joined themselves to it. Brit- ish North America grew out of Upper and Lower Canada, now Quebec and Ontario, which lie between chains of lakes and seas, and are amply divided up by the St. Lawrence, Ottawa, and Riche- lieu, and which together are scarcely twice the size of Germany. The strip of country in New England, hardly 15,000 square miles in area, embracing Massachusetts, Rhode Island and Con- necticut, can be regarded as the cradle of the United States. Virginia, which we might look upon as the nucleus of the south- ern states, has 42,450 square miles. The area of both these

1 It is not a matter of chance that the similarity between Greece and the group of European states west of Russia made an impression upon the most eminent recent writer upon Russia. See ANATOLE LEROY-BEAULIEU, LEmpire Jfs Tsars, chap. i.