The historic event that most profoundly affected the British Isles geographically was the discovery of America. A statue of Colum bus in Sefton Park, Liverpool, bears the in scription, • The man who discovered America made Liverpool.° In a wider sense, that dis covery shaped the future greatness of the islands. Up to 1492 the geographical position of those islands was rather a disadvantage than otherwise. Their insularity was no safeguard against invasion; that later attempts, such as that of the Spanish Armada, were frustrated was due mainly to good luck and fortuitous circumstances. Furthermore, the islands were geographically the northwestern cul-de-sac of Europe; mariners who visited the shores of Britain had perforce to return the way they came, since there was no beyond. The dis of 'America, however, at one stroke transformed an outlying °blind alley° into the most important station on the ocean highway between the Old World and the New. From that moment an overwhelmingly powerful fleet in other words, command of the sea, became a logical necessity dictated by the first law of nature and a highly vulnerable position. In an
ideal world, where wars are unknown, such necessity would obviously not arise. But neither the newly-created geographical position nor the subsequent maritime capacity of its people could alone have built the foundations of Greater Britain without the natural mineral wealth of the islands—the vast resources of coal and iron. Another equally important— and purely geographical — feature is the great natural harbors around the British Isles: Liv erpool, Portsmouth, Southampton, Glasgow, Leith, Plymouth, Belfast, Hull, London, etc. The accident of geography gave the 13 original States of the American Union a vast and solid °hinterland) of over 2,000,000 square miles for future expansion; less favored in regard to original area, it was primarily the accident of geographical position and its influence upon the inhabitants of the British Islands that made possible the creation of Great and Greater Britain. See BRMSH EMPIRE; GREAT BRITAIN; IRELAND; SCOTLAND; WALES.