The maritime periphery of a country receives a variety of oversea influences, blends and assimilates these to its own culture, Hellenizes, Americanizes or Japanizes them, as the case may be, and then passes them on into the interior. Here no one foreign influence prevails. On the land boundaries the case is different. Each inland frontier has to reckon with a different neighbor and its undiluted influence. A predominant central location means a succession of such neighbors, on all sides friction which may polish or rub sore. The distinction between a many-sided and a one-sided historical development depends upon the contact of a people with its neighbors. Consider the multiplicity of influences which have flowed in upon Austria from all sides. But not all such influences are similar in kind or in degree. The most powerful neighbor will chiefly determine on which boundary of a country its dominant historical processes are to work themselves out in a given epoch. Therefore, it is of supreme importance to the character of a peopled history on which side this most powerful neighbor is located. Russia had for several centuries such a neighbor in the Tartar hordes along its southeastern frontier, and therefore its history received an Asiatic stamp; so, too, did that of Austria and Hungary in the long resistance to Turkish invasion. All three states suffered in consequence a retardation of development on their western sides. After the turmoil on the Asiatic frontier had subsided, the great centers of European culture and commerce in Italy, Germany and the Baltic lands began to assert their powers of attraction. The young Roman Republic drew up its forces to face the threatening power of Carthage in the south, and thereby was forced into rapid maritime development; the Roman Empire faced north to meet the inroads of the barbarians, and thereby was drawn into inland expansion. All these instances show that a vital historical turning-point is reached in the development of every country, when the scene of its great historical happenings shifts from one side to another. [Sidenote: The Mediterranean side of Europe.]