[Sidenote:  Coast articulations of continents.]

It is necessary to distinguish two general classes of continental articulations; first, marginal dependences, like the fringe of European peninsulas and islands, resulting from a deeply serrated contour; and second, surface subdivisions of the interior, resulting from differences of relief or defined often by enclosing mountains or deserts, like the Tibetan Plateau, the Basin of Bohemia, the Po River trough, or the sand-rimmed valley of the Nile.  The first class is by far the more important, because of the intense historical activity which results from the vitalizing contact with the sea.  But in considering coast articulations, anthropo-geography is led astray unless it discriminates between these on the basis of size and location.  Without stopping to discuss the obvious results of a contrasted zonal location, such as that between Labrador and Yucatan, the Kola Peninsula and Spain, it is necessary to keep in mind always the effect of vicinal location.  An outlying coastal dependency like Ireland has had its history impoverished by excessive isolation, in contrast to the richer development of England, Jutland, and Zealand in the same latitude, because these have profited from the closer neighborhood of other peripheral regions.  So from ancient times, Greece has had a similar advantage over the Crimea, the Tunisian Peninsula of North Africa over Spain, the Cotentin Peninsula of France over Brittany, and Kent over Cornwall or Caithness in Great Britain.

[Sidenote:  Importance of size in continental articulations.]

Articulations on a vast scale, like the southern peninsulas of Asia, produce quite different cultural and historical effects from small physical sub-divisions, like the fiord promontories and “skerries” of Norway and southern Alaska, or the finger peninsulas of the Peloponnesus.  The significant difference lies in the degree of isolation which the two types yield.  Large continental dependencies of the Asiatic class resemble small continents in their power to segregate; while overgrown capes like ancient Attica and Argolis or the more bulky Peloponnesus have their exclusiveness tempered by the mediating power of the small marine inlets between them.  Small articulations, by making a coast accessible, tend to counteract the excessive isolation of a large articulation.  They themselves develop in their people only minor or inner differentiations, which serve to enrich the life of the island or peninsula as a whole, but do not invade its essential unity.  The contrast in the history of Hellas and the Peloponnesus was due largely to their separation from one another; yet neither was able to make of its people anything but Greeks.  Wales and Cornwall show in English history the same contrast and the same underlying unity.

[Sidenote:  Historical contrast of large and small peninsulas.]