Note 259 — Chapter V · —Geographical Location

It is otherwise in states of very simple vicinal grouping, coupled with only a single country or at best two. Spain, from the time Hamilcar Barca made it a colony of ancient Carthage, down to the decline of its Saracen conquerors, was historically linked with Africa. Freeman calls attention to "the general law by which, in almost all periods of history, either the masters of Spain have borne rule in Africa or the masters of Africa have borne rule in Spain." The history of such simply located countries tends to have a correspondingly one-sided character. Portugal's development has been under the exclusive influence of Spain, except for the oversea stimuli brought to it by the Atlantic. England's long southern face close to the French coast had for centuries the effect of interweaving its history with that of its southern neighbor. The conspicuous fact in the foreign history of Japan has been its intimate connection with Korea above all the other states.259 Egypt, which projects as an alluvial peninsula into an ocean of desert from southwestern Asia, has seen its history, from the time of the Shepherd Kings to that of Napoleon, repeatedly linked with Palestine and Syria. Every Asiatic or European conquest of these two countries has eventually been extended to the valley of the Nile; and Egypt's one great period of expansion saw this eastern coast of the Mediterranean as far as the Euphrates united to the dominion of the Pharaohs. Here is a one-sided geographical location in an exaggerated form, emphasized by the physical and political barrenness of the adjacent regions of Africa and the strategic importance of the isthmian district between the Mediterranean and Indian Ocean.