408 



THE NATIONAL GEOGRAPHIC MAGAZINE 



FOR EIGHT CENTURIES HER SOWINGS HAVE 



BEEN ABEE TO ACCUMUEATE BECAUSE 



NO INVADING ARMIES HAVE 



DESOLATED HER EAND 



The existence of the Channel and the 

 difficulty of invasion prevented interfer- 

 ence from Europe. In fact, England has 

 never known, since William the Norman 

 harried Yorkshire, such ravaging by 

 armies and consequent economic loss as 

 continued in Europe for centuries. There 

 were, to be sure, wars between kings and 

 barons, between bodies of nobles during 

 the Wars of the Roses, between national 

 parties during the civil wars of the 

 seventeenth century, but investigation 

 shows us that these were, comparatively 

 speaking, carefully and politely conduct- 

 ed, and whatever plundering or burning 

 there was seems to have been usually 

 confined to the personal estates of the 

 men concerned. 



No huge armies such as literally ate 

 up Germany during the Thirty Years' 

 War, year after year, have ever been 

 known on English soil. 



English wealth in ,the sixteenth cen- 

 tury, therefore, was the result of the nor- 

 mal increase of resources in a compara- 

 tively poor corntry freed from serious 

 artificial setbacks. In the long run she 

 became proportionately richer than larger 

 countries with much more extensive nat- 

 ural resources, which were decimated by 

 war. Neither extraordinary diligence nor 

 skill needs to be brought forward as the 

 explanation of the beginning of England's 

 capital fund ; nor must we allege robbery 

 to explain it. It was that most unusual 

 but simplest of all things — saznng. 



Already, in the time of Alfred, men 

 began to realize that the protection of 

 England would depend upon the posses- 

 sion of a fleet sufficiently large and effi- 

 cient to ward off invasion from the Con- 

 tinent. Experience had proved again 

 and again in the preceding centuries that 

 the geographical formation of England 

 afiforded the defender very little oppor- 

 tunity after the invader had once secured 

 a foothold. The invasions which had 

 landed in England had invariably suc- 

 ceeded, and it became at that early day 

 clear that invasions must be defeated be- 

 fore they landed. The causes of the 



creation of an English fleet were there- 

 fore purely defensive ; but that fleet, once 

 it had become capable of defending the 

 Channel, proved available for other uses, 

 which, as years went by, it was gradually 

 realized were of greater and greater con- 

 sequence. 



As always, the great truths regarding 

 a nation's position are realized slowly 

 and are borne in upon that nation by the 

 long experience of living rather than by 

 logic or by ambition. It was seen, in 

 short, that the English fleet controlled 

 the Channel, and in controlling the Chan- 

 nel controlled European trade. 



HER GEOGRAPHICAE POSITION WAS SUCH 



THAT SHE COULD MENACE THE 



DOMESTIC COMMERCE OE 



OTHER NATIONS 



The strategical position of England, 

 which is of consequence in economic his- 

 tory, is less the configuration of England 

 itself than the configuration of conti- 

 nental Europe. It so happened that the 

 great plain upon which France and Ger- 

 many- are located sloped to the Channel 

 and to the North Sea, and the rivers 

 draining that plain necessarily poured 

 their waters into the particularly small 

 part of the vast area of the world's 

 oceans which the English fleet controlled. 



We must not forget that, until the days 

 of the railroad, trade depended almost 

 entirely upon water communication. The 

 carriage of goods overland on the backs 

 of horses, for there were few roads in 

 the Middle Ages capable of sustaining a 

 loaded cart, was a difficult and costly 

 procedure and could be profitably em- 

 ployed only in the case of luxuries where 

 the bulk was small and the value great. 



As Europe did not produce such goods 

 in any quantity, domestic trade consisted 

 in the shipping of more or less bulky 

 articles up and down the rivers. Those 

 around which trade centered were the 

 Seine, the Rhine, and the Elbe, and Ger- 

 many's domestic trade between Hamburg 

 and Cologne was compelled to pass 

 through the North Sea and the English 

 Channel, just as the trade of France 

 from Paris to Bordeaux had to pass 

 through the Channel and the Bay of 

 Biscay. 



