Meanwhile, local geographic advantages in the old basins remain the same, although they are dwarfed by the development of relatively greater advantages elsewhere.  The broken coastline, limited area and favorable position of Greece make its people to-day a nation of seamen, and enable them to absorb by their considerable merchant fleet a great part of the trade of the eastern Mediterranean,[10] just as they did in the days of Pericles; but that youthful Aegean world which once constituted so large a part of the oikoumene, has shrunken to a modest province, and its highways to local paths.  The coast cities of northern Germany still maintain a large commerce in the Baltic, but no longer hold the pre-eminence of the old Hanse Towns.  The glory of the Venetian Adriatic is gone; but that the sea has still a local significance is proven by the vast sums spent by Austria and Hungary on their hand-made harbors of Trieste and Fiume.[11] The analytical geographer, therefore, while studying a given combination of geographic forces, must be prepared for a momentous readjustment and a new interplay after any marked turning point in the economic, cultural, or world relations of a people.

[Sidenote:  Interplay of geographic factors.]

Skepticism as to the effect of geographic conditions upon human development is apparently justifiable, owing to the multiplicity of the underlying causes and the difficulty of distinguishing between stronger and weaker factors on the one hand, as between permanent and temporary effects on the other.  We see the result, but find it difficult to state the equation producing this result.  But the important thing is to avoid seizing upon one or two conspicuous geographic elements in the problem and ignoring the rest.  The physical environment of a people consists of all the natural conditions to which they have been subjected, not merely a part.  Geography admits no single blanket theory.  The slow historical development of the Russian folk has been due to many geographic causes—­to excess of cold and deficiency of rain, an outskirt location on the Asiatic border of Europe exposed to the attacks of nomadic hordes, a meager and, for the most part, ice-bound coast which was slowly acquired, an undiversified surface, a lack of segregated regions where an infant civilization might be cradled, and a vast area of unfenced plains wherein the national energies spread out thin and dissipated themselves.  The better Baltic and Black Sea coasts, the fertility of its Ukraine soil, and location next to wide-awake Germany along the western frontier have helped to accelerate progress, but the slow-moving body carried too heavy a drag.

[Sidenote:  Land and sea in co-operation.]