Adriatic became drowsy corners. The busy traffic of the Mediterranean
was transferred to the open ocean, where, from Trafalger to Norway, the
western states of Europe held the choice location on the world's new
highway. Liverpool, Plymouth, Glasgow, Hamburg, Rotterdam, Antwerp,
Cherbourg, Lisbon and Cadiz were shifted from shadowy margin to
illuminated center, and became the foci of the new activity. Theirs was
a new continental location, maintaining relations of trade and
colonization with two hemispheres. Their neighbors were now found on the
Atlantic shores of the Americas and the peripheral lands of Asia. These
cities became the exponents of the intensity with which their respective
states exploited the natural advantages of this location.

The experience of Germany was typical of the change of front. From the
tenth to the middle of the sixteenth century, this heir of the old Roman
Empire was drawn toward Italy by every tie of culture, commerce, and
political ideal. This concentration of interest in its southern neighbor
made it ignore a fact so important as the maritime development of the
Hanse Towns, wherein lay the real promise of its future, the hope of its
commercial and colonial expansion. The shifting of its historical center
of gravity to the Atlantic seaboard therefore came late, further
retarded by lack of national unity and national purposes. But the
present wide circle of Germany's transoceanic commerce incident upon its
recent industrial development, the phenomenal increase of its merchant
marine, the growth of Hamburg and Bremen, the construction of ship
canals to that short North Sea coast, and the enormous utilization of
Dutch ports for German commerce, all point to the attraction of distant
economic interests, even when meagerly supported by colonial
possessions.

Location, therefore, while it is the most important single geographic