Europe, remote from its great centers of development, has made Russia
only partially accessible to European culture and, furthermore, has
subjected her to the retarding ethnic and social influences emanating
from her Asiatic neighbors,[239] and if the rough tasks imposed by her
frontier situation have hampered her progress, these are all the
limitations of her geographical location, limitations which not even the
advantage of her vast area has been able to outweigh.

Area itself, important as it is, must yield to location. Location may
mean only a single spot, and yet from this spot powerful influences may
radiate. No one thinks of size when mention is made of Rome or Athens,
of Jerusalem or Mecca, of Gibraltar or Port Arthur. Iceland and
Greenland guided early Norse ships to the continent of America, as the
Canaries and Antilles did those of Spain; but the location of the
smaller islands in sub-tropical latitudes and in the course of the
northeast trade-winds made them determine the first permanent path
across the western seas.

The historical significance of many small peoples, and the historical
insignificance of many big ones even to the _nil_ point, is merely the
expression of the preponderant importance of location over area. The
Phoenicians, from their narrow strip of coast at the foot of Mount
Lebanon, were disseminators of culture over the whole Mediterranean.
Holland owed her commercial and maritime supremacy, from the thirteenth
to the middle of the seventeenth century, to her exceptional position at
the mouth of the great Rhine highway and at the southern angle of the
North Sea near the entrance to the unexploited regions of the Baltic.
The Iroquois tribes, located where the Mohawk Valley opened a way
through the Appalachian barrier between the Hudson River and Lake
Ontario, occupied both in the French wars and in the Revolution a