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Chapter One
                  Geographical Conditions







                  1 The changing importance of immutable
                      geographical factors
                 The geographical factors which determine a country's position in
                 relation to the rest of the world—its access to communication lines
                 such as rivers or the sea, its climate, the fertility of the land or its
                 natural resources—are fundamentally responsible for the quality of
                 life led by the inhabitants. These factors have to be considered as
                 immutable natural conditions. Some of them might have undergone
                 noticeable changes within historical times but this is hardly ever
                 realised within the span of one generation. What might change even
                 in the space of one decade, however, is the importance for the
                 population of one particular feature or another of the country’s
                 geography. The way in which certain geographical factors influence
                 and condition the life of the inhabitants can differ a great deal from
                 one century to another. Their impact either varies in intensity,
                 vanishes altogether or is reversed, depending on the socio-political
                 and economic situation of the area at a given point in time. The
                 geographical factors, for instance, which were at one time re­
                 sponsible for the country’s isolation from the mainstream of history,
                 become its vital strategic protection in another age. Similarly,
                 climatic factors which may enhance certain economic assets such as
                 the growth of pearl oysters may, a generation later, prove detrimental
                 to finding an economic alternative when the commodity ceases to be
                 in demand. Geographical proximity to an influential political,
                 religious or cultural power, too, can be beneficial to a region’s society
                 in a certain age, but become a burden when constellations change.
                   Statements about the bare scientific facts concerning the geog-
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