districts of the Indian Ocean, the necessities of trade between Orient and Occident and the historical prestige of the lands bordering on the Mediterranean placed in this basin the center of gravity of the cultural, commercial and political life of Europe.  The continent was dominated by its Asiatic corner; its every country took on an historical significance proportionate to its proximity and accessibility to this center.  The Papacy was a Mediterranean power.  The Crusades were Mediterranean wars.  Athens, Rome, Constantinople, Venice, and Genoa held in turn the focal positions in this Asiatic-European sea; they were on the sunny side of the continent, while Portugal and England lay in shadow.  Only that portion of Britain facing France felt the cultural influences of the southern lands.  The estuaries of the Mersey and Clyde were marshy solitudes, echoing to the cry of the bittern and the ripple of Celtic fishing-boat.

[Sidenote:  Change of historical front.]

After the year 1492 inaugurated the Atlantic period of history, the western front of Europe superseded the Mediterranean side in the historical leadership of the continent.  The Breton coast of France waked up, the southern seaboard dozed.  The old centers in the Aegean and Adriatic became drowsy corners.  The busy traffic of the Mediterranean was transferred to the open ocean, where, from Trafalger to Norway, the western states of Europe held the choice location on the world’s new highway.  Liverpool, Plymouth, Glasgow, Hamburg, Rotterdam, Antwerp, Cherbourg, Lisbon and Cadiz were shifted from shadowy margin to illuminated center, and became the foci of the new activity.  Theirs was a new continental location, maintaining relations of trade and colonization with two hemispheres.  Their neighbors were now found on the Atlantic shores of the Americas and the peripheral lands of Asia.  These cities became the exponents of the intensity with which their respective states exploited the natural advantages of this location.

The experience of Germany was typical of the change of front.  From the tenth to the middle of the sixteenth century, this heir of the old Roman Empire was drawn toward Italy by every tie of culture, commerce, and political ideal.  This concentration of interest in its southern neighbor made it ignore a fact so important as the maritime development of the Hanse Towns, wherein lay the real promise of its future, the hope of its commercial and colonial expansion.  The shifting of its historical center of gravity to the Atlantic seaboard therefore came late, further retarded by lack of national unity and national purposes.  But the present wide circle of Germany’s transoceanic commerce incident upon its recent industrial development, the phenomenal increase of its merchant marine, the growth of Hamburg and Bremen, the construction of ship canals to that short North Sea coast, and the enormous utilization of Dutch ports for German commerce, all point to the attraction of distant economic interests, even when meagerly supported by colonial possessions.