In a peninsula political ascendency often falls to the broad base connecting it with the continent, because this part alone has the area to support a large population, and moreover commands a large hinterland, whence it continually draws new and invigorating blood.  The geographical basis of the Aryan and later the Mongol supremacy in India was the wide zone of lowlands between the Indus and the Brahmaputra. [See map page 103.] The only ancient Greek state ever able to dominate the Balkan Peninsula was non-Hellenic Macedonia, after it had extended its boundaries to the Euxine and the Adriatic.  To-day a much larger area in this same peninsular base harbors the widespread southern Slavs, who numerically and economically far outweigh Albanians and Greeks, and who could with ease achieve political domination over the small Turkish minority, were it not for the European fear of a Slavic Bosporus, and its union with Russia.  The Cisalpine Gauls of the wide Po basin repeatedly threatened the existence of the smaller but more civilized Etruscan and Latin tribes.  The latter, maturing their civilization under the concentrating influences of a limited area, at last dominated the larger Celtic district to the north.  But in the nineteenth century this district took the lead in the movement for a United Italy, and now exercises the strong influence in Italian affairs which belongs to it by reason of its superior area, location, and more vigorous race. [See map of Italy’s population, Chap.  XVI.]

The broad territorial base of the Anglo-Saxon race, Slavs, Germans and Chinese promises a long ethnic life, whereas the narrow foothold, of the Danes, Dutch, Greeks, and the Turks in Europe carries with it the persistent risk of conquest and absorption by a larger neighbor.  Such a fate repeatedly threatens these people, but has thus far been warded off, now by the protection of an isolating environment, now by the diplomatic intervention of some not disinterested power.  The scattered fragments of Osman stock in European Turkey, which constitute only about ten per cent. of the total population, and are almost lost in the surrounding mass of Slavs and Greeks, provide a poor guarantee for the duration of the race and their empire on European soil.  On the other hand, the Osmani who are compactly spread over the whole interior of Asia Minor have a better prospect of national survival.

[Sidenote:  Area and literature.]

An important factor in the preservation of national consciousness and the spread of national influence is always a national language and literature.  This principle is recognized by the government of the Czar in its Russification of Finland,[311] Poland, and the German centers in the Baltic provinces, when it substitutes Russian for the local language in education, law courts and all public offices, and restricts the publication of local literature.  The survival of a language and its literature is intimately connected