n Lubbock, Prehistoric Times, pp. 589-593. New York, 1872.

[234] G.P. Marsh, The Earth as Modified by Human Action, New York, 1877.

[235] W.Z. Ripley, Races of Europe, pp. 261-267. New York, 1899.

[236] _Ibid._, pp. 475-485.

[237] Ratzel, History of Mankind, Vol. II, pp. 402-405. London,
1896-1898.

[238] W.Z. Ripley, Races of Europe, pp. 371-372. Map, p. 374. New York.
1899.

CHAPTER V

GEOGRAPHICAL LOCATION

[Sidenote: Importance of geographical location.]

The location of a country or people is always the supreme geographical
fact in its history. It outweighs every other single geographic force.
All that has been said of Russia's vast area, of her steppes and tundra
wastes, of her impotent seaboard on land-locked basins or ice-bound
coasts, of her poverty of mountains and wealth of rivers, fades into the
background before her location on the border of Asia. From her defeat by
the Tartar hordes in 1224 to her attack upon the Mongolian rulers of the
Bosporus in 1877, and her recent struggle with Japan, most of her wars
have been waged against Asiatics. Location made her the bulwark of
Central Europe against Asiatic invasion and the apostle of Western
civilization to the heart of Asia. If this position on the outskirts of
Europe, remote from its great centers of development, has made Russia
only partially accessible to European culture and, furthermore, has
subjected her to the retarding ethnic and social influences emanating
from her Asiatic neighbors,[239] and if the rough tasks imposed by her
frontier situation have hampered her progress, these are all the
limitations of her geographical location, limitations which not even the
advantage of her vast area has been able to outweigh.

Area itself, important as it is, must yield to location. Location may
mean only a single spot, and yet from this spot powerful influences may
radiate. No one thinks of size when mention is made of Rome or Athens,
of Jerusalem or Mecca, of Gibraltar or Port Arthur. Iceland and
Greenland guided early Norse ships to the continent of America, as the
Canaries and Antilles did those of Spain; but the location of the
smaller islands in sub-tropical latitudes and in the course of the
northeast trade-winds made them determine the first permanent path
across the western seas.

The historical significance of many small peoples, and the historical
insignificance of many big ones even to the _nil_ point, is merely the
expressi