India Blank Map Pdf: Fill & Download for Free

You can get the blank river map of INDIA by downloading ICSE geography specimen paper CISCE.For all map pointings these are the two sites which I generally prefer :-1 ICSE HELPLINE FOR CLASS 10 STUDENTS - You will get pdf files of solved maps.2 watch Eduception videos of ICSE geography map pointing in YouTube.There may be other sites but I prefer the two mentioned above.Be precise and yes mark the cities with great accuracy.Hope it helps.Stay healthy, enjoy and study smart.Best Of Luck!!!!

My strategy( I KNOW YOU ASKED JUST MAINS, BUT I HAVE RESPONDED FOR ALL THREE, so that many messages in my inbox can get it all in one place. I don't say it's a perfect stratergy and it will 10000% work for everyone, but even if it serves one person in achieving his/her dream then my purpose is served).Few basic pointsI dont read line to line.I cant cram much. ( my short term memory is really very short and long term memory is lost for long term, so I try to revise fast and be specific during revisions)I cant sit in stretch for days ( i need breaks, episodes from tv series like two and a half men, friends have saved my mental peace)Disclaimer : I don't advice you to watch TV series, we all have our escapes this was mineI covered broad areas and avoided doing phd in any one topicI am fan of flowcharts and diagrams and tried my best to use themI practiced world map, south Asia map, india map, central Asia map etc for rough ideaprep strategyPrepared mains and pre together.Only pre was focussed from April 1.Interview was focussed only after mains.Prelims-History -•i read ncerts properly and highlighted potential mcqs from them ( ncert11/12)•insight prelims booster(balyan sir book available in market too) - cannot cram whole.. So maximum number of tables were crammed. ( made mnemonics for almost everything so if you want I can upload the same) you can all have your own sources.Had a chart of all historical events (available in market) ( if you want I will attach the pic)Geography: 11/12 ncerts and some topics from mrunal ( all the videos were scrolled at 2x speed)(for main _ selected topics from gc leong- if you want I will upload the list)PolityLaxmikant by heart ( as many times you can read)I had a chart of Constitution. ( if you want I can attach it)Economics - mrunal sir videos on youTubeEnvironment:Selected topics from shankar ias, selected videos from mrunal and factual info from wikepedia.Science and tech -Any coaching institute notes for basic science.Current affairs -•Pt365 by heart. Line to line word to word.•Daily current mcqs by insights on india( they are compiled monthly in to booklets of 80-90 pages per month) and are available in any shop•Pib- cabinet meetings (add extra factual information in your own pt)•I had read pt365 of previous year during my first attempt. ( so i tore the index pages from previous year.. Wrote one line regarding each page on the index as to why it was in news and then stapled them to present year pt 365)•Onlyias prelims booster discussion daily ( 15 min daily you tube videos, watch at 2x speed)I always took screenshots from online lecture videos of any relevant information and created a folder for the same in my mobile. Every night I scrutinised those screenshots and important ones to be revised on last day were marked as favourites and rest which were added to pt/ mains and the ones not required were deleted.. Similar was the story with quotes for essays.•Budget summary and niti aayog three year agenda from vajiram yellow book ( pdf is available online)•Could not do India Year Book. As per cost benefit analysis time would have been used more.•Economic survey not relevant for this year as its not there.•Government ministries summary report of one year. (GsScore most probably) Read it. It's around 90 pages.i dont remember I think gs score gives it, pdf is available online. Don't cram but if you read you will feel confident.•Shankar ias (ias parliament) launches reports and indices booklets every year and also of international organisations. They both are hardly 50pages each and can be done in half a day. Cram specially which organisation releases which report. Upsc usually doesn't ask the rank but it definitely asks the organisation releasing report. It's a long list and can't be prepared in one day. Cram 20 each day and learn with your friend..Sab ka mnemonic ban jata h a to z. If you want.. I can make a video on my mnemonics ASAP.Organisation k members headquarters, India signatory h ya ni.. Last meeting and founding yearMcqs.1. Do previous years very sincerely. Make a diary and note down all the options of questions and you will find repetition at many places to in type of questions and also questions. Cover all the noted down topics.2.Mcqs - any two test series questions at home ( don't have time then I think 15 - 15 from each are enough) I did insights and vision. ( available in market.)Strategy in prelims.Score was not that great (105.34) but anyways my strategy was that I knew my error rate while attempting previous years. So I knew I have to attempt as much as possible. I did not attempt only those questions where I had no idea of any of the options or risk as very wrong.I attempted near about 85 questions.In first attempt i attempted hardly 70 questions and ended up missing the line. So I think you must try to attempt at least in 80s as no matter how tough the exam gets. Chances of cutoff falling very low in upsc are very low. Please see the change in previous years specially past 2 years. 3 years back it was totally current affair dominated. Past two years., paper has become a bit complex.Mains :After wasting a month crying about positive negative of result snd getting result as positive I realised I am in a mess. Alternate days for optional and gs and weekend half day for essay etc. Was tried.. My study buddies were shashi ranjan for prelims, sahil singh for mains and rest of the time ahead and Dr Rachna singh (my senior and bro like bro for rest of life) for optional:) we seriously sticked to studies and when I say seriously I mean no gossips. And of course.. Special thanks to Ishani Lohchab my childhood bestie for last minute gyan floods on topics of optional especially pharmacology. ☺☺☺For gs 1-4 I have read mains 365 of visionOther specifics1. Gs 1 - history from balyan sir notesSocial issues _ certain pdfs are available on mrunal website.( I can post the link for the same)I made handwritten notes compiling from best sources on net as well as mrunal and collected fodder ( by checking against topics in syllabus list) . Geography was largely done from same sources.. I practiced many diagrams in a blank a4 sized register with pen itself .. For eg, if question is on earthquake these three diagrams are to be made.. If it's on cyclone then these.. ( if you want I can upload certain pdfs of my rough notes online)Gs _2 polity notes of m puri and siddiqui sir ( available again anywhere) were done thoroughly. International relations.. Country specific markings were done on world map ( it became messy but I liked it because all the masala and relevant points of India and neighbourhood could be revised from one political map of India itself ) that if question comes regarding India maldives these ten points must be highlighted. Revised economic survey summary.. ( it's one of the best) It helped in all 4 papers in its own way.Gs_3 other than older sources, I saw the syllabus and saw many topics which were not covered thoroughly anywhere.. Collected there fodder from mrunal pdfs, govt websites and wikipedia.. Please do check syllabus here as for each word mentioned you must have quality content of at least three pages.Gs_4 prepared ethics in a week time. Read it first time there and then.Mrunal pdfs for basic knowledge about terms. Case studies are also good. Got photostated lukmaan ias notes and read them.2nd a. R. C. Every chapter has quotes.. And chapter 4 is great as it has some great material on probity in governance. So quotes in introductory mention were jotted down and also certain diagrams examples were beirfly copied.. It was a cursory reading so whatever I could get I copied. For famous personalities. .. I noted which ones are to be studied and wrote down two pages each about them in rough handwriting from wikipedia and mrunal again nd how I can use them. Certain theories were applied in many case studies for clear picture. We can discuss these in any length you guys want.Essay _had very high expectations so did my test series mentors but anyways at times upsc is unpredictable and whatever comes we should accept it with a big smile. I scored 115 in it.I love reading stories, books, I love observing things around me and then I use them as an example or story..Choose essay topics wisely.. I chose poverty ( most common) and customary morality( I guess here my essay might have become a bit of controversial..but these are guesses and what matters is score..( won't mention much because of my score(115).. For more details you guys can see my written answers in forum ias test series)Optional_Medical science.I left 60 marks paper blank due to Mismanaged time..Will discuss it in separate postStrategy in mains _It was race against time for me. I had never completed a single paper in my forumias test series and always completed in 3.30 hours or so.I wrote the fastest. Completed all the papers though could not underline but I guess upsc rewards for content so could score fairly in gs. Two coloured pens could obviously not be used because of time issue.. Used pilot pen.. Used pencils and colors in one or two diagrams like magma plume, ashghabad agreent map etcI did not leave a single question blank. Whether I knew it or not, I wrote it. I knew only factual five Points about chaitanya mahaprabhu ( that too prelims specific) yet I wrote 1 page on it. Similar was with bose Einstein condensate. Ethics gets very lengthy and writing became what we all doctors are famous for.. They were scribbles and bad hand writing. I approached case studies first.In between exam:Please don't waste time crying about how your previous paper went. I missed 60 marker in paper 1 of optional so I was all crying in the time in between and next paper itself. Irony is in both exams I scored 138. So we really cannot judge the attempt in mains. Just because some shit happened in some paper please don't let your next paper be ruined. Learn from my mistake rather than commiting blunder yourself.In evenings between exams, things used to become stressful, but it's for everyone. Please don't spend time discussing the paper at home with friends.. Here also I wasted time. Sleep at max by 1.30 no matter how much your brain wants to read more.Do reach centre at time, the schools don't allow late entry and it unnecessarily shoots adrenaline and increases stress.Check your pens, documents to carry etc before hand. Carry your water bottles if it's allowed.If sun light is irritating you in any sense don't feel awkward and ask them to cover the window. It happened with me on day one, couldn't be arranged so I carried chunni the next day.Most of all, be so confident about yourself that you can and will attempt any question that comes in your way. 100% syllabus is not possible and you just can't do it. Many a times people will say there exam was so nice paper was easy how could you attempt so bad and all.. Please avoid such people and rather block them for exam days. Trust the blessings, your struggle and God's purpose for you. You will succeed, just accept the fact that every step you are taking will lead you to the horizon of your dreams and it will become reality.Interview _This time I knew that in paper 1 of optional I have messed up so even if I don't get good score.. I will aim for 200+ in interview and work on my personality so that I manage to get any service in final list.. ( was expecting at the last)1. Mirror practice2. Discuss and debate things with people3. English speaking is not a greater issue but hesitation in speaking Is.4. Don't take extreme stands or one sided stands on topics like secular fabric of country, reservation or any other controversial issue, try to balance the positive negatives and always give a positive hopeful outlook at the end of your opinion. Don't be fatalist that nothing can be done on this issue. Always give hope. No country is perfect and every step in right direction is great achievement and all we need is to speed up the pace. We the youth are future of rising India and complaining about problems without giving hope and solutions is a futile exercise.Take extreme stand on certain issues like terrorism, drug abuse, women empowerment, dowry, patriarchy, honour killing, female feticide, caste divides, poverty,witch hunting etc, social and health issues.You always don't have to be calm middle path person but you should no where to sway and when to sway from the golden mean and that's in handful of circumstances only.Prepare your detailed application form like a holy book. Word by word in full details.. Please don't over elaborate, do take guidance while filling it. I wrote a lot so had to prepare a lot in depth.We can discuss interview strategy in a seperate post. I read three newspapers a day at this stage.My discussion buddies here were sahil singh( we discussed each conteoversial topic after indepth studies and reached conclusions and how to present them etc. ) and the one who corrected minute details of how I go wrong in mock or how mypace should have been and even more tiny stuff was abhishek phougat.Some extra stuff I didWhenever I used to read a boring or too much technical topic anywhere and I knew I would not revise it last day Or the fodder material in it is very important.. I would record the content in my own voice in my mobile and save the audio recording with topic name.. I would listen to that audio when I would get tired and my mind would behave unreceptive to the reading andunderstanding thing.I had green flash cards for geography ncerts and peach for history.. On last day of prelims.. Used them like deck of cards to shuffle and revise..I know it's all roughly written.. But I will keep on editing it and make it presentable and add various minute details I have missed...Forgive me for the grammar and spelling errors.. I am running on time deadlines.. All the very best future civil servants.. I know we all will make India proud one day and we will witness India at the top of world through our talent, largest strength and dedication towards country. Thank you all talented fellas for going through all this.

I started writing this for another question from last month, “Why did the Romans not invade (modern-day) Ukrainian land, which is some of the best soil on Earth?”Effectively, it’s the same question. The Romans confined their activities within their own borders, in spite of living in a much vaster world with many places to which they could have travelled, and many economic opportunities, including ones that were first grasped in the “Dark Ages” that followed the end of the Roman Empire.In the case of America, the Romans were unaware that a western continent existed. At the same time, they were aware that the world was round, and that if you sailed west into the Atlantic, you would get to “India.” Like Columbus, later, the Roman statesman, Seneca the Younger, believed that India was only a few days sail westward of Spain. In the same passage, which I found here, he also fretted that an unknown monarch way out over there, might have been fitting out a fleet to attack the Romans from the west. I did not know that! It’s also interesting, because the Romans had a solid track record of defending themselves all over foreign countries, often before the residents of those countries were even aware that they were threatening Rome!Needless to say, the Romans did not fit out ships and go looking for China out in the broad Atlantic. Why not? A number of people have cited technological narratives. There is no question that the Romans didn’t build ships suitable for intercontinental voyages, but it is worth asking why they didn’t. As I said, I started this answer in response to a question about Ukraine, and the reason that the Romans didn’t settle Ukraine is certainly not that they lacked the ships!There’s a systemic problem here that bears investigating, from one end of the Roman frontier to the other. I’ll show this by taking an “S” curve wander around the frontiers of the Roman Empire in an “S” curve, starting in Morocco and entering Ukraine from the Baltic.(By Subhros - Own work, CC BY-SA 3.0, File:Volubilis Longshot II.jpg)This is Volubilis, a former Roman city not far from Rabat, Morocco. Well known from French-era excavations and frequent tourist visits, Volubilis was the capital of a North African tribal kingdom before being annexed to the Roman Empire. Volubilis was abandoned by the Romans under Diocletian under 280.It appears that no-one told the residents, who kept on being Roman in religion, culture and language until the Islamic conquest, at which point everyone realised that Rabat was a nice place to live, which is why the ruins are so strikingly well preserved. So: Good land, good people, nice town, no Romans. Heck, it’s north of Casablanca, which is downright Californian, but which the Romans had no interest in. Basically, the Romans gave up on the economic heartland of the medieval Moroccan kingdom, in spite of it remaining culturally and economically Roman.What?So let’s head out from Volubilis towards the Empire, namely, Carthage on the coast of modern Tunisia. Unless you want to spend the whole trip going up one ridge and down the other (you don’t, no-one does), you’ll take a short cut over the mountains and across the Sahara. Here’s a nice map of the Sahara from just before the colonial era. As you can see, it’s a long walk from Morocco to Tunisia, but the route runs through one oasis after the other.Only in Roman times, they didn’t look like oases (farms with lots of date palm plantations and the big old casbah in the middle of town, if you want a definition). They looked like what an old-time Westerner would call a “cienfeugas,” or waterhole:This is the Ash Meadows National Wildlife Preserve, in the Mojave Desert of southern Nevada. They’re a natural phenomena in all deserts, because water finds a way, and where it can’t run across the surface, it ends up in the aquifer below, breaking out in natural declivities to form wet areas in the middle of the desert which teem with life. In North America, we know that these waterholes supported everything from fish to woolly mammoths. It’s likely that these Roman-era “cienfuegas” in the Sahara Desert supported hunter-gatherers, lions and elephants. What they did not support was farmers. The modern oasis farm is made possible by extensive, tunnel-based artificial irrigation systems, called foggaras. Foggaras existed in the Roman Sahara, in the large oasis area of the Fezzan in central Libya. they were not cut in the western oases until the Middle Ages. We’re not absolutely sure why, but foggaras take a lot of labour to maintain, and there has to be a reason to do it. The explanation would appear to be that it was in this period that the trans-Saharan (to Morocco, that is) trade in West African gold began.So to sum up: in spite of being on the gold standard and short of gold, the Empire of Domitian was retreating from contact with the Sahara, even though vast gold fields lay just south of the desert, which could be accessed by investing in the oases.So what about Fezzan? It isn’t just the largest constellation of oasis communities in the Sahara. It is also the easiest route to sub-Saharan Africa. In Roman times, the Garamantes, who were in regular contact with the Romans did trade across the Sahara. But, apparently, they did not go beyond the “cienfuegas,” where they found enough African exotica (your “beasts” for the arena, black slaves, etc.) to satisfy the Roman market —from which we can safely conclude that the Roman market was actually pretty small. No need to go to Lake Chad and tap the resources of all Africa!But maybe the Romans didn’t know about Africa and stuff like that? Let me introduce you to the “forty day road,” a north-south string of oases lying about 150km west of the Nile. It’s a good “road” to take from Egypt to sub-Saharan Africa because you don’t have to pick your way through all the farms along the Nile, or portage across all the cataracts. The ancient Egyptian capital of Memphis lies on an inward bend of the Nile where the Nile river route meets the Forty Day Road, and that doesn’t appear to be a coincidence. For as long as there’s been an Egypt, since long before Rome, people have been moving along the Forty Day Road. It’s just that they’re mainly cattle herders and their cattle, and no-one talks to cattle herders.-Would be Roman explorer: “I should like to travel to distant Africa and see the sights, and return to Rome, and write a very literary exposition of the ways of far off places!”Trail boss: “Fine, but there’s only so much grain and fodder in the oases: Can you pull your weight on camp duties so I don’t have to hire another drover?”Would-be Roman explorer: “Gross. On second thought, I’ll stay in Rome and write overwrought satires about how people are so lazy and effete these days.”So back up along the Nile and —oh, wait, here’s a road striking out due east across the desert towards the mysterious southern sea. Down it we go, past the Roman customs duties station, to a port on the Red Sea, where we can take a ship to India —And, oh, wait, the whole thing took three years, and we died.Seriously, lots of Romans took the trip across the Indian Ocean to India to trade for exotic spices. We even have a surviving guide book. The problem is that author has to cover so much land in Africa and India that even he gets a bit confused and vague on the details. Honestly, if just one guy has to describe this whole area based on his travels, it’s going to be confused. There’s just too much information to cram into your brain. You probably need an entire city’s worth of geographers and authors, and even some assholes who take credit where it’s not deserved, to make sense of it all. It’s an issue of scale, in other words. (I’m describing the situation in Europe in 1500, where you had your Waldseemuller Map to put it all together, and Amerigo Vespucci to “synthesise” it into a comprehensible picture of the world. Evidently, that didn’t exist in Roman times.)So we don’t take that detour. It goes to a silly place. Instead, we head up into the Middle East, and instead of heading along the coast, we go inland to find the edges of the Roman world, on the frontier with “Persia.” Hmm. Persia is powerful. Much rich. Very big. Why don’t the Romans conquer it and gain all of those tax revenues?Turns out, they tried. Sometimes successfully, more usually, not. Everyone basically agrees that the Romans were in trouble when they tried to fight the “Persians” because the “Persians” had so much good cavalry, and cavalry is useful in open, dry terrain like the Middle East. (People will blather on about open areas and flanks and horse archers; but it really comes down to gathering fodder, where you have this positive feedback loop where the more cavalry you have, the more fodder you can gather; but the more fodder you need, until you basically need all the cavalry in the world to feed your army, which depends on fodder to haul tents, grain and water for the troops, as well as feed for the horses.)So, in other words, horses, lots of horses, of which the Romans don’t have enough. Given the outline of the world’s stud (horsebreeding industry) in the Nineteenth Century, we have a pretty clear idea why that is, which is that, given the Romans already control huge studs in Europe, North Africa and Anatolian Turkey, while the Persians do not; the only remaining stud that could possibly make a difference is the Central Asian one. To reach and trade for horses raised in Mongolia, Siberia, Xinjiang, Kazakhstan, Tibet and the lesser ‘Stans, the Russians maintained trading stations on the Volga. Lacking that, the horses are going to end up on eastern Iran.If you’ll recall, I made a point earlier about answering an earlier draft of this question where the problem is the Romans not getting to the black soil territory of Ukraine, rather than the Americas. So we’re back to that. If the Romans want the tax revenues of “Mesopotamia,” they’re going to have to reach out into central Asia and get those horses. This isn’t a crazy ambitious idea: the Byzantines did exactly this, and so did the Ottomans.)So back through Anatolia we go, not pausing at the turnoff to Sinope, from which the Romans are perfectly positioned to trade with the north coast of the Black Sea and get those horses flowing, and over the water to the Balkans. Here we have a sad history of one “barbarian invasion” after another down through the centuries. People often treat this area as a backwater of the Roman Empire. It’s not. The main land route from Italy to Asia runs through the Balkans. But when you say that, people shrug and say, “There’s a land route from Italy to Asia?” Of course there is! They wouldn’t have been able to march armies all the way from France to Iraq without it. And then people say, “I don’t like looking at maps, it’s hard, and Croatia is a funny name. Hah. ‘Croatia.’ Silly Balkans.”Sorry, ranting . . . Anyway, point is, the Romans basically held onto the Balkans for as long as it matters, except that Trajan, the same guy who temporarily conquered Iraq, added Transylvania, or whatever we’re calling it this week, to the Empire for a while, until Diocletian gave it up. He did so because there’s lots of gold and silver mines there, and there still are, and the Roman Empire was short of precious metal, as mentioned: but not enough to bother holding onto the region if it was going to cost some money.I, uhm, er —You’re giving up your gold mines because you’re short of money? Okay, whatever, dude.So we’re going to skip the south side of the Alps, because you’re already tired of me whining about Roman roads. Up the Danube we go, to the Rhine, from Raetia to Germania via. . .Oops, wait. We just crossed a province called the Agri Decumates, which is kind of important in Roman history, because it’s where that long wall that protects the Romans from those virile Germanic barbarians(I see where you’ve got that spear pointed, artist dude.). . . live. Thing is, we don’t know when the Agri Decumates were conquered, we don’t know who named it, or for what, and we don’t know when it was abandoned by the Romans, although it might have been at the same time as Volubilis and Dacia. As far as we have any information, Roman settlers went there because there was money to be made, and the legions followed them.Now I am going to offer a weird observation. It might look like the Agri Decumates points west, but it lies on the main north-south communication lines between Germany and Italy, which were humming with trade during the Middle Ages. It might seem unlikely to have a major trade route running over mountains, but it’s not that uncommon in the old animal caravan days, because, as with the Forty Day Road, you don’t care how hard the animals have to work as long as they’re using grass that you wouldn’t otherwise be using. (This way is easy on your car-that-replaces itself; this way has free gas. Which one do you take?) So you go up over the Alps, graze the alpine pastures on the way. You don’t pay for hay, and you get to sell stuff in a faraway market. So did that happen in Roman times? It turns out that it did. There’s a Roman customs station near modern Zurich where the “fortieth of Gaul,” a 2.5% tax on all goods moved in and out of “Gaul” was levied. We’d know squat all about this were it not for some gravestones, since roadside tolls aren’t something that Roman elite authors cared about; but, basically, when the Romans gave up the Agri Decumates, it was because they couldn’t be bothered to levy this kind of tax on goods crossing that frontier, any more.To be honest, I don’t know that abandoning the Agri Decumates meant abandoning the Fortieth of Gaul, specifically. I’m just calling your attention to another Roman frontier, the vertical one. It appears that extensive human agricultural and pastoral occupation of the high altitude pastures of the Alps and Appenines began in the Bronze Age, intensified in the early Iron Age, fell into neglect in Roman times, and was revived in the post-Roman period. This doesn’t mean that the Romans didn’t exploit the high pastures. They just didn’t do it efficiently, preferring to drive livestock, mainly cattle, long distances across the lowland plains and into the mountains to fatten on the alpine pastures, then driving them back down in the fall for sale.A much more efficient way to use this resource is to live up there and make cheese, although this requires a thriving trade. People have to go up into the mountains to sell the mountain folk the salt that they need for their cheese, and also all the consumer goods that will inspire them to produce for the market.Why did the Romans effectively abandon high altitude living in favour of this less efficient resource utilisation method? We don’t know, but there is a striking pattern in parts of the Mediterranean where “dark age” period people live at high altitudes (Mycenae, supposed “refuge” settlements in Crete, Mystras, Spoleto, Tiaret, Toledo) and then come down to live near sea level in periods with particularly intensive seaborne inter-regional trade. (Note that you can have inter-regional trade in the Mediterranean without ships just fine if your main item of trade is livestock.)Okay, that paragraph is full of enough speculation to sink a galley; the point is that, never mind distant frontiers of the Atlantic and Sub-Saharan Africa and such. The Romans couldn’t even colonise those green pastures you see halfway up the side of the mountain on a clear day.Onwards! To Britain, specifically, which the Romans conquered in 54AD, kept for three-and-a-half centuries, and never quite knew what to do with. (Roman armies in Britain were always revolting and proclaiming new emperors, beginning in 194AD.)Here’s a curious thing: The Romans had a “Fleet of Britain,” which has led generations of historians to say, “OMG, Rule Britannia, only with Romans!” But the Classis Britannica hardly ever shows up as a navy, which actually makes sense, given that there were no enemy navies to fight. We basically know about it because there’s a hilly forest between the Thames and the Channel in the far southeast of England (I know, I know, it doesn’t really fit the stereotype of green and pleasant land, but there you go). This “Wealden forest” is crammed with archaeological survivals of the Classis in the form of iron smelters and brickworks.That’s it. That’s your evidence of the existence of the “Fleet of Britain.” Inscribed tiles and piles of iron slag. The easiest way to explain this is that the Classis’s basic job was making and running ships for the cross-Channel trade, which was in the hands of the Roman army. From other sources, we know that that is how the Romans often organised trade.Since the Roman army was the only major group of customers in Britain, it makes sense that the army would run the trade across the Channel.At this point, are you at all surprised to hear that the Classis disappeared in the middle of the Third Century? We even have some evidence that saltmakers took over the managed forests that used to provide the fuel for the iron smelters and brick works, and that the Romans, pragmatic to a fault, built forts at the salteries to, er, protect the trade. Yeah, that’s it. Protect it.If this all seems crap and desperate, the history of the Roman Empire in Britain from 280 on is basically all crap and desperate. From Valerian’s defeat in, perhaps, 255AD to 294AD, Britain was effectively independent of Rome. The Tetrarchy reconquered it, and, as long as the Constantinians were running things, it went along well enough, but after Julian the Apostate lost his army in Iraq in 363, everything fell apart again. One army after another was sent to Britain, mutinied, cross the Channel under a claimant emperor, and started trouble. In 411, when the British wrote to point out that they hadn’t got another new army lately, Emperor Honorius wrote, “LOL” on the letter and sent it back, and that was the end of that.So Rome couldn’t hold onto Britain. So sad.Now let’s head up towards Scandinavia via Rosemary Clooney, singing about, amongst other old-time Italian things, “cod baccala.”We’re not exactly clear on when Scandinavian “dry, salt cod,” which is actually lutefisk started coming into the Mediterranean from Scandinavia, but the latest archaeological work is pushing the origins of the Baltic trade back before the Viking era, and there is some interesting work being done in the northern islands off Scotland with “deep, anthropogenic soils,” which is science-talk for huge piles of cow manure, fish guts, seal poop, seaweed and stuff, all going to make fertile soils for growing wheat and such in places where you wouldn’t think that grain farming would be a big thing, such as the Orkneys. [this links to the pdf thesis that seems to summarise recent work, so don’t click on it unless you’ve got the download and memory to spare. Otherwise, look up Barrett’s work on Viking manure piles. Fascinating stuff! Uhm . . .yeah, whatever.)The Atlantic from the south of England up the the north of Norway, had, by Viking times, been organised into a gigantic fishing industry, with the ships to carry the fish, and potential markets in Italy.So the basic point is that there’s a huge Atlantic-based Italian trade for a popular luxury good just waiting to be exploited. And the Romans are so far from reaching out to it that they’re actually retreating from Britain because they can’t make it work without state-subsidised trade. The fucking Anglo-Saxons made it work, guys.Iceland is a surprisingly nice place!(Credit: “Kernowclimber.” I guess I should be all formal and say that I’m asserting copyright, 2015 for “Kernowclimber,” whoever that is.)I’m cheating here because this is Greenland, and not pre-colonisation Iceland, and because I’m reproducing someone’s vacation pictures. The point is, see that scrubby forest? That’s what Iceland looked like in Roman times. At one level, it’s a lot less fertile and inviting than it looks, because once you get in there, it’s all tangled bush and it’ll rip your bare calves to shreds. At another level, an Iron Age farmer knew how to deal with this stuff: Burn it and plough in the ashes if it’s dry, for fertile soil, or let the sheep and goats loose on it for meat, milk and wool, if wet.Note, by the way, that ashes are a huge resource in old Roman times. You can make iron out of it, or soda, or potash. With that, you can make soap, glass, lye, even salt, if you want it. Iceland is an entire island’s worth of this kind of land. Oh, sure, it’s not going to support your teeming millions, but a few hundred smallholdings, fine. And they’re surrounded by seal rookeries and bird nesting habitats and walrus beaches and cod fisheries.Well, it just makes sense that in the immediate sub-Roman times, people began to move into the area. (Icelanders tend to get shirty if you suggest that people were there before Viking times, so maybe you only want to make the claim that people made it as far as the Faeroe islands by 600. On the other hand, there are anomalous carbon dates from Greenland and even Baffin Island that go back to sub-Roman times. I don’t put too much credence on them, but they exist.)So never mind the far-voyaging. All that we need to know is that the Romans couldn’t make it to the Faeroes and Iceland. Frankly, you do not need to know about lateen sails and tacking against the wind and navigation and stuff like that to get what’s going on here. It’s not the technology that matters here, because you can fucking row to the Faeroes. It’s the funding.I promised to end my tour with the top-front of the “S” in Ukraine, which is where I now arrive.By en:User:Wiglaf, en:User:Dbachmann - Wiglaf's map, based on Dbachmann's blank map., CC BY-SA 3.0, File:Chernyakhov.PNG - Wikimedia CommonsI don’t like this map, which not-too-implicitly links a set of not-obviously-linked archaeological cultural horizons to assert a connection that goes back to classical historians who said that the “Goths” started in Sweden and eventually arrived east of the Roman frontiers in the Balkans or thereabouts. The problem with this is that Classical historians were always bringing the barbarians from the farthest and most exotic places up to the frontiers. It’s not that it’s necessarily wrong, but when it becomes a cliche that they repeat for everybody, it’s starting to be a bit untrustworthy.What we do know is that there was this tribe called “the Goths,” who might or might not have been the bearers of the “Chernyakhov culture,” which flourished in the black soil region of Ukraine from the 2nd to 5th centuries, AD. As far as we can tell, the difference between this and later cultures is that the Chernyakhovs raised more horses and traded more than their successors, which makes sense considering that the Romans made heavy use of Gothic cavalry. I guess the key point here is that after the Romans lost a heap of cavalry with Julian, they were unable to recruit more, and instead ended up with a major situation on their hands with respect to invading “Goths,” pretty much your prototypical collapse of the Roman Empire.So what does this story come back around to? Finance. Finance. FINANCE. They say that you have to spend money to make money. Clearly, the Romans didn’t get that. On the contrary, when it came to investing more money to keep the flow of money up, the Romans kept cutting and running.There’s a theory that explains similar phenomena in modern times called “secular stagnation.” It’s hugely anachronistic to suggest that that is what is going on in Roman times, but it fits the evidence. The Romans didn’t expand because this would have required a growing economy, and their economy wasn’t growing. It was in a downward spiral of deflation (yes, I know, that’s a bit of a lift, but still) and disinvestment that wasn’t going to end until they got rid of their paid army, or discovered the political will to tax the rich enough to pay for it. (Or both: The Roman army was a ludicrously over-developed institution.)The Roman Empire lacked clear channels of capital investment that would have allowed people to make money off all of these exotic destinations. Without investment, all these remote places were, at best, curiosities. You might go there and write a guidebook, if it is easy enough, or you might not, if it is even vaguely hard. What you’re not going to get is an extension of the “Roman world” to these faraway places. Not unless someone shows you the money!Instead, the money gets buried and sat on. That’s your explanation, and it is as good an explanation for not investing in Ukraine as for not investing in a trans-Atlantic trade.