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 its beginning
in a modest central location about the sources of the Dwina, Dnieper and
Volga, was aided by the physical unity of its unobstructed plains, which
facilitated political combination. Hence, on every side it burst through
its encompassing neighbors and stretched its boundaries to the
untenanted frontier of the sea. Central location was the undoing of the
Transvaal Republic. Its efforts to expand to the Indian Ocean were
blocked by its powerful British rival at every point--at Delagoa Bay in
1875 by treaty with Portugal, at Santa Lucia Bay in 1884, and through
Swaziland in 1894. The Orange Free State was maimed in the same way
when, in 1868, she tried to stretch out an arm through Basutoland to the
sea.[249] Here even weak neighbors were effective to curtail the seaward
growth of these inland states, because they were made the tools of one
strong, rapacious neighbor. A central position teaches always the lesson
of vigilance and preparedness for hostilities, as the Boer equipment in
1899, the military organization of Germany, and the bristling fortresses
on the Swiss Alpine passes prove.

[Sidenote: Mutual relations between center and periphery.]

How intimate and necessary are the relations between central and
peripheral location is shown by the fact that all states strive to
combine the two. In countries like Norway, France, Spain, Japan, Korea
and Chile, peripheral location predominates, and therefore confers upon
them at once the security and commercial accessibility which result from
contact with the sea. Other countries, like Russia, Germany and