often
brilliant, are likely to be short-lived and to end suddenly or
disastrously, because not sustained by a deep-seated national impulse
animating the whole mass of the people. They cease when the first
enthusiasm spends itself, or when outside competition is intensified, or
the material rewards decrease.

[Sidenote: The case of Spain.]

An illustration is found in the mediaeval history of Spain. The
intercontinental location of the Iberian Peninsula exposed it to the
Saracen conquest and to the constant reinforcements to Islam power
furnished by the Mohammedanized Berbers of North Africa. For seven
centuries this location was the dominant geographic factor in Spain's
history. It made the expulsion of the Moors the sole object of all the
Iberian states, converted the country into an armed camp, made the
gentleman adventurer and Christian knight the national ideal. It placed
the center of political control high up on the barren plateau of
Castile, far from the centers of population and culture in the river
lowlands or along the coast. It excluded the industrial and commercial
development which was giving bone and sinew to the other European
states. The release of the national energies by the fall of Granada in
1492 and the now ingrained spirit of adventure enabled Spain and
Portugal to utilize the unparalleled advantage of their geographical
position at the junction of the Mediterranean and Atlantic highways, and
by their great maritime explorations in the fifteenth and sixteenth
centuries, to become foremost among European colonial powers. But the
development was sporadic, not supported by any widespread national
movement. In a few decades the maritime preeminence of the Iberian
Peninsula began to yield to the competition of the Dutch and English,
who were, so to speak, saturated with their own maritime environment.
Then followed the rapid decay of the sea power of Spain, followed by
that of Portugal, till by 1648 even her coasting trade was in the hands
of the Dutch, and Dutch vessels were employed to maintain communication
with the West Indies.[30]

[Sidenote: Sporadic response to a new environment.]

We have a later instance of sporadic development under the stimulus of
new and favorable geographic conditions, a similar anti-climax. The
expansion of the Russians across the lowlands of Siberia was quite in
harmony with the genius of that land-bred people; but when they reached
Bering Sea, the enclosed basin, t