Page:American Journal of Sociology Volume 4.djvu/386

 368 THE AMERICAN JOURNAL OF SOCIOLOGY

concentrate and intensify everything. This was the case in Egypt and Mesopotamia, just as in Greece and Rome ; but the latter stood in connection with a broad sphere of action in the numerous seas to which they had access through their thousand bays, and on which they first secured proper play for their con- centrated energies. We find the same two conditions and the same result in Carthage as in Liibeck, Genoa, and Venice. Denmark also, the Netherlands, and Portugal show this same combination of complete isolation in their older, internal devel- opment, with all the advantages of transoceanic expansion. In the continuous union of the two, in consequence of which the widest spreading of the people could not break the wholesome bonds of an intense political personality, lies the unrivaled great- ness of the British empire. Small inland states, also, press toward these fields of greater activity, which, however, are open to them only through some connection with maritime powers, as in the Hanse towns and in Augsburg's relation with Spain in Venezuela, or by a non-political participation in the competition of foreign trade, such as Switzerland has assumed with great success. The fact that Switzerland and Belgium afford the most fruitful soil in Europe today for international dreams and plans, not seldom Utopian in their character, reminds us of the saying: "The Swiss must have a loophole."'

A number of the effects of these naturally isolated regions result simply from their limited area, and therefore characterize islands also, inasmuch as in them the limitation of the territory is absolute. While the population of a small country can spread beyond its boundaries as far as the habitable land extends, in islands all habitation ceases at their shores. This condition makes for that rapidly increasing density of population which we have characterized in our Anthropogeographie as their " early statistic maturity," with the immediate consequences, emigra- tion, colonization, and commerce. Upon islands, therefore, the question of space acquires particular importance = as an element in economic and political affairs ; their nature and form lead

' HiLTY, VorUsungen iiber die Politik der Eidgenossenschaft, 187S, p. 69. » See Anthropogeographie, II, pp. 237 et seq.