[Sidenote:  The process of territorial growth.]

In vast unobstructed territories, on the other hand, the evil of wide, sparse dispersal is checked only by natural increase of population and the impinging of one growing people upon another, which restricts the territory of either.  When the boundary waste between the small scattered tribal groups has been occupied, encroachment from the side of the stronger follows; then comes war, incorporation of territory, amalgamation of race and coalescence, or the extinction of the weaker.  The larger people, commanding its larger area, expands numerically and territorially, and continues to throw out wider frontiers, till it meets insurmountable natural obstacles or the confines of a people strong as itself.  After a pause, during which the existing area is outgrown and population begins to press harder upon the limits of subsistence, the weight of a nation is thrown against the barrier, be it physical or political.  In consequence, the old boundaries are enlarged, either by successful encroachment upon a neighbor, or, in case of defeat, by incorporation in the antagonist’s territory.  But even defeat brings participation in a larger geographic base, wider cooeperation, a greater sum total of common national interests, and especially the protection of the larger social group.  The Transvaal and the Orange Free State find compensation for the loss of independence by their incorporation in the British Empire, even if gradual absorption be the destiny of the Boer stock.

[Sidenote:  Area and growth.]

Of adjacent areas equally advanced in civilization and in density of population but of unequal size, the larger must dominate because its people have the resistance and aggressive force inherent in the larger mass.  This is the explanation of the absorption of so many colonies and conquerors by the native races, when no great cultural abyss or race antagonism separates the two.  The long rule of the Scandinavians in the Hebrides ended in their absorption by the local Gaelic stock, simply because their settlements were too small and the number of their women too few.  The lowlands on the eastern coasts of Scotland accommodated larger bands of Norse, who even to-day can be distinguished from the neighboring Scotch of the Highlands; but on the rugged western coast, where only small and widely separated deltas at the heads of the fiords offered a narrow foothold to the invaders, their scattered ethnic islands were soon inundated by the contiguous population.[312] The Teutonic elements, both English and Norwegian, which for centuries filtered into Ireland, have been swallowed up in the native Celtic stock, except where religious antagonisms served to keep the two apart.  So the dominant Anglo-Saxon population of England was a solvent for the Norman French, and the densely packed humanity of China for their Manchu conquerors.