Cultural contrast of coast and interior.
The long, indented coast of the Mediterranean has in all ages up to modern times presented the contrast of a littoral more advanced in civilization than the inland districts. The only exception was ancient Egypt before Psammeticus began to exploit his mud-choked seaboard. This contrast was apparent, not only wherever Phoenicians or Greeks had appropriated the remote coast of an alien and retarded people, but even in near-by Thrace the savage habits of the interior tribes were softened only where these dwelt in close proximity to the Ionian colonies along the coast, a fact as noticeable in the time of Tacitus as in that of Herodotus five hundred years before.[518] The ancient philosophers of Greece were awake to the deep-rooted differences between an inland and a maritime city, especially in respect to receptivity of ideas, activity of intellect, and affinity for culture.[519]
If we turn to the Philippines, we find that 65 per cent. of the Christian or civilized population of the islands live on or near the coast; and of the remaining 35 per cent. dwelling inland, by far the greater part represents simply the landward extension of the area of Christian civilization which had Manila Bay for a nucleus.[520] Otherwise, all the interior districts are occupied by wild or pagan tribes. Mohammedanism, too, a religion of civilization, rims the southernmost islands which face the eastern distributing point of the faith in Java; it is confined to the coasts, except for its one inland area of expansion along the lake and river system of the Rio Grande of Mindanao, which afforded an inland extension of sea navigation for the small Moro boat. Even the Fiji Islands show different shades of savagery between coasts and interior.[521]
Progress from thalassic to oceanic coasts.
Coasts are areas of out-going and in-coming maritime influences. The nature and amount of these influences depend upon the sea or ocean whose rim the coast in question helps to form, and the relations of that coast to its other tide-washed shores. Our land-made point of view dominates us so completely, that we are prone to consider a coast as margin of its land, and not also as margin of its sea, whence, moreover, it receives the most important contributions to its development. The geographic location of a coast as part of a thalassic or of an oceanic rim is a basic factor in its history; more potent than local conditions of fertility, irregular contour, or accessibility from sea and hinterland. Everything that can be said about the different degrees of historical importance attaching to inland seas and open oceans in successive ages applies equally to the countries and peoples along their shores; and everything that enhances or diminishes the cultural possibilities of a sea—its size, zonal location, its relation to the oceans and continents—finds its expression in the life along its coasts.
The anthropo-geographical evolution which has passed from small to large states and from small to large seas as fields of maritime activity has been attended by a continuous change in the value of coasts, according as these were located on enclosed basins like the Mediterranean, Red, and Baltic; on marginal ones like the China and North seas; or on the open ocean. In the earlier periods of the world's history, a location on a relatively small enclosed sea gave a maritime horizon wide enough to lure, but not so wide as to intimidate; and by its seclusion led to a concentration and intensification of historical development, which in many of its phases left models for subsequent ages to wonder at and imitate. This formative period and formative environment outgrown, historical development was transferred to locations on the open oceans, according to the law of human advance from small to large areas. The historical importance of the Mediterranean and the Baltic shores was transitory, a prelude to the larger importance of the Atlantic littoral of Europe, just as this in turn was to attain its full significance only when the circumnavigation of Africa and South America linked the Atlantic to the World Ocean. Thus that gradual expansion of the geographic horizon which has accompanied the progress of history has seen a slow evolution in the value of seaboard locations, the transfer of maritime leadership from small to large basins, from thalassic to oceanic ports, from Lubeck to Hamburg, from Venice to Genoa, as earlier from the Piræus to Ostia, and later from England's little Cinque Ports to Liverpool and the Clyde.
Geographic location of coasts.