rants and the original population, as well as the small numbers of
the Invaders, made the struggle for the ownership of the island not
wholly one-sided, and was later favorable to amalgamation in England as
in Japan; whereas very small bands of far-coming Spaniards in the
Canaries, Cuba, and Porto Rico resulted in the extinction of the
original inhabitants, by the process operating now in New Zealand and
Australia. Prior to the arrival of the Europeans in the Antilles, the
conquest of these islands by South American Caribs had resulted in race
intermixture. These sea-marauders brought no women with them in their
small boats from the distant mainland, so they killed off the men and
married the Arawak women of the islands. Here again insular location
plus similarity of race and culture produced amalgamation, as opposed
to extermination of the vanquished by over-sea invaders.

While the insular security of a primitive folk like the Tasmanians,
Hawaiians and Malagasies is only passive, that of a civilized people
like the English and modern Japanese is active, consciously utilized and
reinforced. It is therefore more effective, and productive of more
varied political and cultural results. Such people can allow themselves
extensive contact with other nations, because they know it is in their
power to control or check such contact at will. Japan took refuge in its
medieval period in a policy of seclusion suggested by its island
habitat,[897] relying on the passive protection of isolation. England, on
the other hand, from the time of King Alfred, built up a navy to resist
invasion. The effect, after the political unification of Great Britain,
was a guarantee of protection against foreign attack, the concentration
of the national defenses in a navy,[898] the elimination of the standing
army which despotic monarchs might have used to crush the people, the
consequent release of a large working force from military service, and
the application of these to the development of English Industry.[899]

[Sidenote: Islands as places of refuge.]

Islands, as naturally protected districts, are often sought places of
refuge by the weak or vanquished, and thus are drawn into the field of
historical movement. We find this principle operating also in the animal
world. The fur seals of the North Pacific have fled from the American
coasts and found an asylum on the Pribiloff Islands of Bering Sea, where
their concentration and isolation have enab