Borders and borderlands

GEOG 220 – Geopolitics

This week

• Conceptualising borders and borderlands

• South Sudan

• US-Mexico border(s) – Juanita Sundberg

Conceptualisingborders and borderlands

– Borders is one expressing of ‘Othering’: those on the ‘other side’

– Definitions and typologies

• Borders: a form of boundary associated with the rise of modern NATION-STATE and the establishment of an inter-state GEOPOLITICAL order

Borders and state sovereignty

• Borders define an ‘inside/outside’ distinction

• Politically bounded space within which a state is (supposedly) sovereign

• Sovereignty: a claim to final and ultimate authority over a political community

=> Borders define the outer limits of territorial state sovereignty

From suzerains to sovereigns

‘Buffer Zone’Territorial entity under dual

suzerains <=> weak but relatively autonomous political entity

‘Marks or Marshes’Territorial entity under one

exclusive sovereign <=> militarized borderlands under

representative (Marquees) from central ruler

Imperial roots of borders

Roman Limes

Imperial boundaries

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Two governments (green and blue, want to define sovereignty over overseas territories, two of which are already identified and ‘possessed’ (small circles) while others yet ‘to discover and to claim’ (“?”). How would a third party seek to avert conflicts between the two claimants?

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Dividing up the world

• Treaty of Torsedillas (1494) between Spain and Portugal

Read background information , e.g. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Treaty_of_Tordesillas

Seeing the world ‘geopolitically’ and find the Torsedillas line

Cantino world map 1502 - One of the first world maps on which appear the American continent. Such maps allow for a ‘global’ vision - ’God’s eye’ – facilitating an intellectual and symbolic sense of ownership (seeing via the map, owning through the map)Source: http://lettreshg.ac-orleans-tours.fr/fileadmin/user_upload/lhg/TICE_Orient/cantino_planisphere_1502.jpg

Other examples:49th parallel border between the United States and British North America … set in 1818 to avoid tensions following war of 1812

Boundaries of the Congo Free State established through the 1884-5 Berlin Conference setting rules of European colonization in Africa

Typology of bordersType Characteristics Example

Antecedent Delimited prior to settlement or constitution of new political entity

49th parallel

Subsequent delimited according to existing settlement patterns and differences

Upper/Lower Canada

Superimposed imposed by an outside political entity (colonial power), often without concern for pre-existing political or broader cultural patterns

Many borders in America and Africa

Relict no longer in function, but can keep a social significance

North/South VietnamEast/West Germany

‘Natural’ or physiographic

using distinctive terrain features, such as mountain ranges and rivers

France/Spain – Pyrenees mountains

Borders as spaces

• Borders as territorial boundaries …

• Borders not simply ‘lines’ (or more precisely vertical plans) but spaces

– Narrow: inter-state border areas (borderlands)

– Broad: spaces where selective controls are to be found (even away from official ‘borders’)

At home …

• Check example of borders historical contingencies (see next slide)

Historically contingent borders:Changing borders within Europe

note that at most times, there were no simple ‘lines’where state border functions were enforced

• Europe 1-2000http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tApoKHjZA3g

• Europe 1000-2005http://www.youtube.com/watch?NR=1&v=__NLCyAJGFQ&feature=endscreen