de in Poland;
expansive and radical in a different way in colonial Siberia; aggressive
in the south, bending its energies toward political expansion along the
Mediterranean and Persian Gulf seaboards. In all such countries there is
a constant shifting and readjustment of extra-territorial influences.

[Sidenote: One-sided historical relations.]

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.

[Sidenote: Scattered location due to geographic conditions.]

The forms of vicinal location thus far considered presuppose a compact
or continuous distribution, such as characterizes the more fertile and
populous areas of the earth. Desert regions, whether due to Arctic cold
or extreme aridity, distribute their sparse population in small groups
at a few favored points, and thus from physical causes give