Peripheral location means a narrow base but a
protected frontier along the sea; central location means opportunity for
widening the territory, but it also means danger. A state embedded in
the heart of a continent has, if strong, every prospect of radial
expansion and the exercise of widespread influence; but if weak, its
very existence is imperilled, because it is exposed to encroachments on
every side. A central location minus the bulwark of natural boundaries
enabled the kingdom of Poland to be devoured piecemeal by its voracious
neighbors. The kingdom of Burgundy, always a state of fluctuating
boundaries and shifting allegiances, fell at last a victim to its
central location, and saw its name obliterated from the map. Hungary,
which, in the year 1000, occupied a restricted inland location on the
middle Danube, by the 14th century broke through the barriers of its
close-hugging neighbors, and stretched its boundaries from the Adriatic
to the Euxine; two hundred years later its territory contracted to a
fragment before the encroachments of the Turks, but afterwards recovered
in part its old dimensions. Germany has, in common with the little
Sudanese state of Wadai, an influential and dangerous position. A
central location in the Sudan has made Wadai accessible to the rich
caravan trade from Tripoli and Barca on the north, from the great market
town of Kano in Sokoto on the west, and from the Nile Valley and Red Sea
on the east. But the little state has had to fight for its life against
the aggressions of its western rival Bornu and its eastern neighbor
Darfur. And now more formidable enemies menace it in the French, who
have occupied the territory between it and Bornu, and the English, who
have already caught Darfur in the dragnet of the Egyptian Sudan.[248]

[Sidenote: Danger of central location.]

Germany, crowded in among three powerful neighbors like France, Russia,
and Austria, has had no choice about maintaining a strong standing army
and impregnable frontier defenses. The location of the Central European
states between the Baltic and the Balkans has exposed them to all the
limitations and dangers arising from a narrow circle of land neighbors.
Moreover, the diversified character of the area, its complex mountain
systems, and diverging river courses have acted as disintegrating forces
which have prevented the political concentration necessary to repel
interference from without. The Muscovite power, which had it