INTRODUCTION TO SOCIOLOGY 665
which was stationed there under a commander who retained at the same time with the military also the civil power. During the following centuries the themes multiplied, especially at the fron- tiers. Toward the middle of the tenth, the empire comprised thirty-one, each with a strategus a commander with arbitrary powers, who was directly responsible only to the emperor. Every- where were social forces with their essentially military structure forces which triturated and combined societies, with their groupings and boundaries, without much regard to differences either ethnic or physical. About the time when Charlemagne re-established the imperial unity in the Gallic and Germanic West, England was becoming unified under the hegemony of the king- dom of Wessex. This kingdom included all the southern coast of England, the frontier which faced the continent and was the most exposed, the most military, and hence destined to become a center for conquest, the cradle of a great power. This kingdom had already annexed the peninsula of Cornwall, after having put itself at the head of all the other Saxon principalities. These latter had finally formed three kingdoms (Wessex, Sussex, Essex), of which the first had become predominant. Kent had been colo- nized by the Jutes; to the north the Angles formed three king- doms beyond the Humber Northumberland, East Anglia, and Mercia.
All these populations were Germanic, and their political unity was realized from the first half of the tenth century. The country of Wales, containing three small kingdoms, was made subject to England only in 1282. In Scotland the Picts had been subjugated by the Scots from 842. In the following century their domina- tion extended over the kingdom of Sutherland toward the South, territory where the Picts and the Britons had already mixed.
Great Britain is made up of three distinct regions. Masses of mountains separate them. The southeast of England is a country of plains and low hills. The inhabitants of this region remained naturally for a long time separated from the neighboring regions by their interests, their customs, and their history. To the west and the south, the long mountainous peninsula of Cornwall pro- jects into the ocean; and to its north, the country of Wales,
