The law of the resolutions of forces applies in geography as in the
movement of planets. Failure to recognize this fact often enables
superficial critics of anthropo-geography to make a brave show of
argument. The analysis of these interacting forces and of their various
combinations requires careful investigation. Let us consider the
interplay of the forces of land and sea apparent in every country with
a maritime location. In some cases a small, infertile, niggardly country
conspires with a beckoning sea to drive its sons out upon the deep; in
others a wide territory with a generous soil keeps its well-fed children
at home and silences the call of the sea. In ancient Phoenicia and
Greece, in Norway, Finland, New England, in savage Chile and Tierra del
Fuego, and the Indian coast district of British Columbia and southern
Alaska, a long, broken shoreline, numerous harbors, outlying islands,
abundant timber for the construction of ships, difficult communication
by land, all tempted the inhabitants to a seafaring life. While the sea
drew, the land drove in the same direction. There a hilly or mountainous
interior putting obstacles in the way of landward expansion, sterile
slopes, a paucity of level, arable land, an excessive or deficient
rainfall withholding from agriculture the reward of tillage--some or all
of these factors combined to compel the inhabitants to seek on the sea
the livelihood denied by the land. Here both forces worked in the same
direction.

In England conditions were much the same, and from the sixteenth century
produced there a predominant maritime development which was due not
solely to a long indented coastline and an exceptional location for
participating in European and American trade. Its limited island area,
its large extent of rugged hills and chalky soil fit only for pasturage,
and the lack of a really generous natural endowment,[12] made it slow to
answer the demands of a growing population, till the industrial