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Limits, boundaries, borders

The definition of space

Anthropology and history have the job of studying the gradual settlement of free spaces, their appropriation and exploitation by their occupants and the exclusion of other human groups from these same territories. Over thousands of years, humanity has marked out increasingly clear and less porous borders, within which societies have developed and jurisdictions have taken form. The 193 member states of the United Nations have internationally recognized borders, from tiny Tuvalu (21 square kilometres) to vast Russia (17 million square kilometres), with histories and paths of development closely linked to the demographic events experienced by each. This process is not yet complete, because today, four centuries after the Treaty of Westphalia (1648), which established the modern form of relations between states, many borders are the subject of - sometimes even violent - disputes and controversies, and cannot be considered final. Studying the history of borders is useful if we want to understand the relations between the demographic variations of human groups and the functions of the boundaries that define and separate them. Here, we will rely not on abstract schemas but on historical examples.

In the Roman Empire, the limes's main purpose was to stop immigration and invasions by peoples from outside Rome's jurisdiction. But these frontier areas also drove mobility and exchange. The border developed along the Rhine was 1,300 kilometres long, and the one along the Danube more than twice that. The limes were dotted with forts, entrenched camps, posts and garrisons, and were guarded by tens of thousands of legionaries. Civilian populations started to build up around the fortresses and fortified camps, attracting a diverse array of merchants, artisans, tavern-keepers, prostitutes, jugglers and slaves. These then turned into permanent settlements, and even towns, becoming meeting places between the men from the garrisons and local populations on either side of the border. The limes did not remain cold and immobile defensive lines but were also lively hubs of activity that regulated human exchanges and relations.

In other cases, in modern times, frontier zones took on the function of attracting internal immigration, and in turn served as a 'bulwark' for the state. To populate an area is to declare possession over it, and to discourage the expansion of the neighbouring state far better than a deserted land - a seeming terra nullius - ever could. In the absence of natural borders that cannot normally be crossed - a mountain range, a river, an arm of the sea - populating an area can help ward off intrusions, invasions and annexations. Eighteenth-century Austria, seeking to secure its border with the Ottoman Empire, stimulated the agricultural settlement of colonists of mainly Germanic origin along the Danube from the confluence of the Sava to the Iron Gates. Good planning, the availability of land, appropriate farming techniques and the introduction of new crops helped to make a success of this immigration, and by the end of Maria Theresa's reign the border area was safeguarded by a now well-established Germanic society. In Russia, from the time of Peter the Great onwards, the expansion of the frontier southwards and eastwards also sought to protect the empire from the incursions of nomadic and semi-nomadic peoples from the east. This encouraged the rapid population of the province of New Russia, especially after the defeat of the Ottoman Empire (1774) and the annexation of Crimea (1785).1

One recent demographic trend underlines the magnetic pull of border zones. Between 2000 and 2020, the population settled in cross-border areas (i.e. within a 60-kilometre-wide strip either side of a border between two states) grew faster than populations in general did.2 It is not known what factors explain this growth (whether they were purely demographic or economic). Still, it is intriguing to see how, even though borders primarily serve as barriers, they do not hinder human settlement in the area concerned but actually stimulate it.

Texas and Sahrawi

In other cases, migration 'infiltrates' the borders of a state associated with a different culture or ethnicity - perhaps meaning a sparsely populated state - and thus turns sovereignty on its head. One historical example is Texas - a territory under Mexican sovereignty, where the semi-legal, but tolerated, immigration of English-speaking settlers drove independence in 1836 and its subsequent merger with the United States in 1845. The demographic factor was decisive, as in the other territories then under Mexican jurisdiction in what is today the southwestern United States. However, these were sparsely populated territories with often uncertain borders and weak state authority. Many believe that the extension of a given state's land area can no longer take place through the violent acquisition of other states' territories; such acts of conquest were frequent until the twentieth century, but today they come at too high a human, economic and political cost. While this had seemed a reasonable enough assumption, it was devastatingly confounded by the recent Russian invasion of Ukraine, which showed - if proof were needed - just how unpredictable human societies can be. However, the historical evidence shows that human mobility - be it spontaneous or deliberately induced - that settles cross-border zones, some terra nullius or contested areas or regions can provide the pretext for their origin country to acquire territory. The centuries-long immigration of Germanic peoples into Eastern Europe was one of the pretexts for the Third Reich's aggressive expansionism. In the Caucasus and in Himalayan regions, migratory movements, artificial borders and the conflicts between powerful neighbouring states have all interfered with the demography of local populations, in an extremely complicated pattern.

In today's world, there are also other, less complex situations in which demography plays a leading role. Consider the case of the Western Sahara, a region the size of Italy. This former Spanish colony is today disputed between Morocco, which administers four-fifths of its territory, and the SADR (Sahrawi Arab Democratic Republic, created by the Polisario Front, supported by Algeria). The region, of interest also because of its natural resources, was inhabited by just a few thousand people in the mid-twentieth century, but the strong incentives provided by Morocco have boosted immigration and growth rates. The territory's population is now approaching 600,000, it has been provided with new infrastructure, and it has even seen the rise of some urban centres. There is little doubt that this region is destined to be incorporated into Morocco de jure as well as de facto. In an entirely different political situation, the Israeli creation of settlements within the State of Palestine is intended to lay the groundwork for the final incorporation of the Occupied Territories. Israel has not yet annexed a large part of the West Bank, but 400,000 Israelis live in this territory, in settlements beyond the 'Green Line' of the 1949 armistice.3

As we shall see later, in many cases, the migration movements that then spill over into an attempt to acquire the infiltrated territories take place in cross-border areas settled by people of the same ethnicity or culture: 'States have made hundreds of irredentist claims since 1945, including attempts to forcibly annex nineteen different territories with co-ethnics, from Albania in Kosovo to Pakistan in Kashmir. Not coincidentally, some of these areas have higher numbers of co-ethnics due to previous attempts at "demographic engineering", such as "Russianization" in the Caucasus.'4

In large parts of the world, borders have been drawn by external powers, as happened in the Middle East with the dissolution of the Ottoman Empire, or with the end of colonial rule in Africa. In territories inhabited by nomadic, or otherwise highly mobile, populations, borders 'drawn with a ruler' have often interfered with centuries-old ways of life, divided ethnic groups, interrupted customary migration routes and fragmented previously unified economic spaces. Telling in this sense is Lord Salisbury's comment on the signing of the Anglo-French convention of 1898, which established the border between Nigeria and Niger: 'We [the British and the French] have been engaged in drawing lines upon maps where no white man's foot ever trod: we have been giving away mountains and rivers and lakes to each other, only hindered by the small impediments that we never knew exactly where the mountains and rivers and lakes were.'5 These examples illustrate the complex relationship between borders, which define the space of the state, and the populations that are separated by them. Borders have a function of defining, controlling and filtering, providing defences and raising up barriers. They interfere with mobility, even reducing it to nil. But they can also stimulate it, when populating the frontier takes on the role of building up a bulwark and hardening the border.

Another aspect worth highlighting is the evolving nature of borders from what we might call the standpoint of engineering. Indeed, today we are seeing a major contradiction: on the one hand, there is an unstoppable globalization of all things...