To this attempted explanation of the English case, as due to its geographic isolation, the objection may well suggest itself that other cases which parallel the British in this respect do not show like results. So, for instance, the Scandinavian countries enjoyed an isolation nearly if not quite as effective as that of Great Britain during this period of history; whereas the outcome in these countries is notoriously not the same. The Scandinavian case, however, differs in at least one essential respect, which seems decisive even apart from secondary circumstances. These countries were too small to make up a self-supporting community under the conditions required by the system of handicraft. They had neither the population nor the natural resources on such a scale as a passably full development of the handicraft system required. At any advanced stage of its growth the system can work out into a self-balanced technological organisation, with full specialisation of labour and local differentiation of industry, only in a community of a certain (considerable) size. This condition was not met by the Scandinavian countries. Hence they remained in a relatively backward state, on the whole, through the handicraft era, and never reached anything like an independent position in the industrial world of that time, either technologically or in point of commercial development; hence also they failed to achieve or maintain that degree of independence, or isolation, in their political relations that left England free to pursue a self-directed course of material development.