Note 875 — Chapter XIII · —Island Peoples

From the border character of many islands there follow often far-reaching historical effects. Like all border regions they are natural battlegrounds. Their historical episodes are small, often slow and insidious in their movement, but large in their final content; for they are prone to end in a sudden dramatic denouement that draws the startled gaze of all the neighboring world. It was the destiny of Sicily to make and unmake the fortunes of ancient Carthage. Ceylon, from the dawn of history, lured traders who enriched and conquerors who oppressed peninsular India. The advance of Spain to the Canary Isles was the drowsy prologue to the brilliant drama of American discovery. The island of Tsushima in the Korean Strait was seized by the forces of Kublai Khan in 1280 as the base of their attack upon Japan;875 and when in 1857 the Russian bear tried to plant a foot on this island, Japan saw danger in the movement and ordered him off.876 Now we find Japan newly established in Sakhalin, the Elliot Islands and Formosa, by means of which and her own archipelago she blankets the coast of Asia for twenty-two hundred miles. This geographical situation may be productive of history.