The Physical Basis Of The State

Importance of the state’s physical basis: in the last analysis, all phenomena are manifestations of physical energy, and the activities of the state are no exception.Given the individuals that compose the state, the various combinations of these individuals that the natural environment in which they exist, and the interrelations among these, natural science will explain the state in its own terms. Without encroaching upon this field, political science may view the raw materials that the state is composed of and their influence on state formation and development. The analysis of the essential factors of the state has already indicated its physical basis.

Territory and population, or stated more broadly nature and man, are the foundation of man’s efforts may, of course, modify the influence that the contour of the earth’s surface would otherwise exert on states’ area. The maintenance for several centuries of Roman legions along the Rhine frontier served the same purpose at an impenetrable mountain barrier. It helped to explain the present separation between France and Germany.

On the other hand, man’s engineering skill, the development of transportation and communication, and improvements in the methods of government enable modern States to include several geographic unities, as the expansion of the United States bears witness. Even in early times, the Romans’ military genius and governing ability enabled them to establish a great empire regardless of geographic obstacles.

The mere question of size exercises considerable influence on state development. It was Rome’s expansion that checked her democratic tendencies and caused a reaction toward the centralized despotism of the Empire. The territorial growth of modern democracies has necessitated the present highly developed forms of representative government and federation.

2. The isolation of the physical basis of the state:

The earth’s configuration determines in large degree whether a state shall develop apart from external influences or whether it shall constantly have peaceful or hostile relations with other states. The Rhine boundary, the weak spot in France and Germany’s frontiers, has been the bone of contention between them and the battlefield of Europe.

With her excellent harbors and her coast fringed with islands, Greece was naturally led to intercourse, commerce, and colonization. Spain and England, both cut off by natural boundaries from neighboring states, worked out their political institutions with little interference, and each developed commerce, a navy, and a colonial empire. States such as Russia, France, and Germany, with powerful neighbors across weak frontiers, naturally maintain large armies. States sum as England, Japan, and the United States, protected by the sea from Powerful neighbors, depend primarily upon naval protection.

What a state gains in the way of protection by a natural frontier is partly offset by the danger of provincialism and internal stagnation, in the case of water boundaries by the dependence upon naval strength to maintain external relations. The wall that keeps others out also shuts those behind it in. An isolated state tends to develop a strong but narrow national spirit; a state with many external contacts becomes more cosmopolitan in its point of view.

The fall of Spain was brought about both by her internal narrowness and by the loss of her colonies due to naval decline. England, comparatively safe from invasion, must protect her commerce to avoid a similar fate. The body of water that separates Ireland from the remainder of the British Isles is largely responsible for the differences of nationality and religion and the feeling of hostility against England that the Irish retain.

The existence of mountains in Wales and Scotland have had somewhat similar effects upon the Unity of Great Britain. Customs and laws are affected by isolation. For example, Blackstone states that in the Isle of Man, take away a horse or ex was no felony. Still, a trespass, because of the difficulty in that little territory of concealing them or carrying them off but to steal a pig or a fowl, which could easily be consumed was a capital misdemeanor, and the offender was punished by death.

The arrangement of land and water areas largely determines the commercial importance of a state. When the Nile and Euphrates valleys were the seats of the empire, Phoenicia, the middle country facing the Mediterranean, was the great commercial power as civilization shifted westward and surrounded the Mediterranean. Greece and Rome, in turn, held the strategic position. The discovery of the New World and the growing importance of the Atlantic gave Spain, France. Holland and England’s advantages of the geographic location while present conditions, in the opening up of Pacific lands, find the United States, facing both oceans, in an enviable position.

The direction of external activity :

Social and physical movements tend to follow lines of least resistance to the arrangement of mountains, rivers, and seas, determining in large measure the trend of migration and conquest. With its chief mountain system on the west and with good harbors and numerous islands on the east, Greece naturally came into contact with the old and powerful Asian peoples.

Rome facing in the opposite direction, had early relations with Carthage and with the Gauls and other barbarians to the west. While not until late in her development, did she contact Greece, with whom she stood, as it were, back to back? As a result, Greece, compelled at first to wage defensive wars against powerful invaders, was thrown back upon herself and developed an internal life of remarkable energy Rome, thrown into relations with inferior peoples, naturally began her career of external conquest that resulted in worldwide dominion and an imperial form of government.

River valleys have always formed the easiest means of access to new lands and mountains, deserts, and the sea, the greatest barriers. St. Lawrence and Missionaries the French traders and missionaries to scattered settlements, while the Appalachian Mountains restricted the English colonists to a narrow strip of the coast for over a century. The resultant spirit of unity and common interests among the English colonists was manifested later.

Besides, it was no accident that the final clash between the English and French in America should occur over the possession of Ohio’s headwaters, one of the natural en~ trances into the western lands. The early migrations of peoples, the colonization of newly discovered areas, and the immigration of recent times have followed natural movement lines.

Civilization and culture and war and conquest expand in the directions where natural barriers least prevent social intercourse. In ancient times physical features determined the trails of savages and the routes of caravans. In modern times, cities’ location and the direction and nature of facilities for communication, travel, transportation, and trade have been fundamentally affected by geographic contour.

Climate.

Climate, by which we mean especially natural conditions of light, heat, and moisture, affects the individuals that compose the state, rather than the state as a unit. However, it isn’t easy to separate its influence (tom that of the sail’s fertility and resultant animal and vegetables resources, which affect the group and the individual. In general, it may be said that climatic extremes of any kind interfere with the higher forms of state existence.

The dazzling brilliancy of reflected light from arctic snows or tropical deserts, the long nights of the polar regions, the extreme cold, which checks vigorous growth, the extreme heat, which enervates, the malarial marshes of rainy regions, the parched lands of rainless areas all these make existence and organized political life possible only in its undeveloped forms. All great states have arisen in areas where a temperate climate is combined with a moderate moisture amount.

While the earliest states emerged in a comparatively warm climate, where the bounty of nature furnished food in abundance and gave leisure for social development, the highest forms of state life arose in those cooler climates that stimulated energy continuous progress. A temperate climate also gives contrasted season, with resultant variety of activities which react sharply on one another and make for progress.

In general, a close correspondence obtains between climate and racial temperament, with important consequences in state life. People are energetic, provident, serious, thoughtful rather than emotional, cautious rather than impulsive in the colder temperate zone. The peoples of warm countries are easy-going, improvident, gay, emotional, and imaginative. A cold climate, where they struggle with nature for food is severe and where shelter is essential, gives an autumn tinge to life and has a steadying effect on the human heart and brain.

In warmer lands, where nature is generous, national life has the buoyancy and thoughtlessness of childhood, with its charm and its weaknesses. The tropical climate tends to relax the mental and moral fiber, induces indolence, self-indulgence, and various excesses, which lower the population’s physical tone. The political stability of northern peoples has often been contrasted with the instability of their southern neighbors.

A people’s ability to adjust itself to a climate different from that in which it originated has important effects on political life. The black race is not adapted to the rigors of life in a cold climate; its death rate increasing markedly as it moves into a winter zone. The white race finds it difficult to live in the tropics. As it expands its colonial policy, it is compelled to import a ruling class, constantly renewed the machine of governmental and economic exploitation being supported by a servile native population engaged in agriculture, which in the tropics is fatal to the white man. The Chinese’s ability to adapt to a wide climatic range gives them a marked advantage in the world’s political future.

The effect of climate on birth rate and the age of maturity influences the state indirectly. It has even been asserted that the type of crime in warm countries differs from that in cold countries.

In the former, where the population is dense, human life cheap, and the contact of man with man consequently great, crime takes the form of offenses against the person murder, assault, rape in colder climates, where sparser population brings man less in touch with his fellows, and where the means of overcoming nature are more important, crime takes chiefly the form of offenses against property.

As a result, different ideas of morality, influenced somewhat at least by climate, will prevail, which will affect the laws and organization of the state. While it is, of course, easy to push such reasoning to extremes, the truth remains that political existence, as one of the forms of social activity, is modified by every phase of the physical environment in which that activity takes place.

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