Note 522 — Chapter VIII · —Coast Peoples

Though the articulations of a coast determine the ease with which maritime influences are communicated to the land, nevertheless history shows repeated instances where an exceptional location, combined with restricted area, has raised a poorly indented seaboard to maritime and cultural preeminence. Phoenicia's brilliant history rose superior to the limitation of indifferent harbors, owing to a position on the Arabian isthmus between the Mediterranean and the Indian Ocean at the meeting place of Europe, Asia, and Africa. Moreover, the advantages of this particular location have in various times and in various degrees brought into prominence all parts of the Syrian and Egyptian coasts from Antioch to Alexandria. So the whole stretch of coast around the head of the Adriatic, marking the conjunction of a busy sea-route with various land-routes over the encircling mountains from Central Europe, has seen during the ages a long succession of thriving maritime cities, in spite of fast-silting harbors and impeded connection with the hinterland. Here in turn have ruled with maritime sway Spina, Ravenna, Aquileia,522 Venice, and Trieste. On the other side of the Italian peninsula, the location on the northernmost inlet of the western Mediterranean and at the seaward base of the Ligurian Apennines, just where this range opens two passes of only 1,800 feet elevation to the upper Po Valley, made an active maritime town of Genoa from Strabo's day to the present. In its incipiency it relied upon one mediocre harbor on an otherwise harborless coast, a local supply of timber for its ships, and a road northward across the mountains.523 The maritime ascendency in the Middle Ages of Genoa, Pisa, Venice, and Barcelona proves that no long indented coast is necessary, but only one tolerable harbor coupled with an advantageous location.