Before the distance-demolishing technology of railroads and all-weather
motor roads, land-bound polities in Southeast Asia and Europe found it
extremely difficult, without navigable waterways, to concentrate and then
project power. As Charles Tilly has noted, “Before the later nineteenth century,
land transport was so expensive everywhere in Europe that no country
could afford to supply a large army or big city with grain and other heavy
goods without having efficient water transport. Rulers fed major inland cities
such as Berlin and Madrid only at great effort and great cost to their hinterlands.
The exceptional efficiency of waterways in the Netherlands undoubtedly
gave the Dutch great advantages at peace and war.”