square mile), which is quadruple that of remaining European Russia, and
also in its industrial and social development. The partition of Poland
among the three neighboring powers was the final expression of its
intermediate location and character.[244] One part was joined politically
to the Slav-German western border of Russia, and another to the
German-Slav border of Germany, while the portion that fell to the
Austrian Empire simply extended the northern Slav area of that country
found in Bohemia, Moravia, and the Slovak border of Hungary. [Map page
223.]

If the intermediate people greatly differs in race or civilization from
both neighbors, it exercises and receives slight influence. The Mongols
of Central Asia, between China on one side and Persia and India on the
other, have been poor vehicles for the exchange of culture between these
two great districts. The Hungarians, located between the Roumanians and
Germans on the east and west, Slovaks and Croatians on the north and
south, have helped little to reconcile race differences in the great
empire of the Danube.

[Sidenote: Thalassic vicinal location.]

The unifying effect of vicinal location is greatly enhanced if the
neighboring people are grouped about an enclosed sea which affords an
easy highway for communication. The integrating force of such a basin
will often overcome the disintegrating force of race antagonisms. The
Roman Empire in the Mediterranean was able to evolve an effective
centralized government and to spread one culture over the neighboring
shores, despite great variety of nationality and language and every
degree of cultural development. A certain similarity of natural
conditions, climatic and otherwise, from the Iberian Peninsula to the