One of the central components in the rise of the modern nation-state across the 17-19C was the idea of territoriality: a demarcated chunk of ground over which each particular nation-state claimed jurisdiction to the exclusion of other claimants. Contributing factors included the decline of feudalism and dynastic claims that had made Europe a hodge-podge of allegiances, the rise of nationalism in which geographically-concentrated groups of ethnically similar folks recognized themselves as the foundation of political power and organization, and—not least—the development of more systematic and precise methods of surveying and mapmaking.
We’ve come some distance from the development of ground-based surveying that enabled governments to comprehend and depict the scope of their country’s territory to the satellite-based precision of the 21C. Still, we shouldn’t conflate precision with accuracy; nor with political realities. Issues about terrains that were inaccessible (at least to Europeans) in the 18/19 C were resolved by the expedient of drawing a straight line on a map in some Chancery in St. Petersburg, London or Berlin. Such lines were drawn for expedience and clarity, a little thought was given to any sense of social or economic or geographic sensibility; much less to any cultural traditions of the peoples who had lived in those lands for centuries.
We see the remnants of this practice all across the maps of the contemporary world. The end of empire in both Africa (20C) and Latin America (early 19C) brought issues as to how newly independent countries would draw their own lines and claim territory. In the latter case, with a few exceptions, and in the former case (almost completely) the imperial lines were accepted and fixed. Conscious decisions were made to avoid the complexity and conflicts inherent in revisiting those old lines, regardless of the contemporary cost or historical rationales. Thus, the hodge-podge of imperial claims in Africa shows up today in the plethora of small countries with too many straight lines; largely because the British, French, and other Euro powers didn’t sort things out, but merely passed on power to their own local elites. In Latin America, which was nearly all Spanish, it was administrative boundaries originally sanctioned in Iberia in the 16C, that froze the lines we see today.
In sum, in these places, it was a shared decision to forget the past that set the stage for a more stable (even if “inaccurate”) future. Nonetheless, there are still a long list of unresolved border issues on the books today (Wikipedia lists over 150). The underlying principle seems to be that if some predecessor regime (no matter how many centuries ago) once claimed/ruled/occupied a particular chunk of dirt, then the current government maintains that it still should be recognized as including that territory. In some cases, there is an ambiguity in some treaty language; in others, the treaty is criticized as being “unequal” and therefore not binding (as if there ever was a treaty among “equals”). Sometimes, inaccessibility meant that lines specified were inaccurate. The modern world seems increasingly reluctant to accept the traditional model of acquisition of territory by conquest, the basis of a bunch of claims.
Most of these disputed lands are pretty small and quite obscure. You have to wonder why countries continue to bicker. Why does China pick on tiny Bhutan over a few square miles of the Himalaya? Doesn’t Venezuela have something better to do than bluster over a (larger) chunk of Guyana? Often the answer is that a nice foreign “enemy” makes for rousing nationalistic politics, ripe for exploitation in terms of domestic insecurity or as a make-weight in an international dispute on some other issue.
Unfortunately, things sometime spiral out of control and actual military conflict results. People die because of disputes over our modern remnants of national “honor”: the Falklands War in the 1980s was one example, a series of “low-level” fights between China and India since the 1960s is another.
Fortunately, most of the time, these disputes are put on the back shelf and the local folks “make-do.” No one expects a confrontation between the US and Haiti over Navassa, a small, uninhabited island south of Cuba. Nor will Italy and France start shooting over the precise demarcation of their border on Mont Blanc. On the other hand, Russia claims some (all?) of Ukraine, and places such as Kashmir (India and Pakistan), Jerusalem (Israel, Jordan, and Palestine), and much of the South China Sea (China, Vietnam, Indonesia, Malaysia, Philippines) remain live and dangerous disputes.
More fundamentally, the very idea of territoriality as the premise of a governance regime/state is coming under increased pressure. New diasporas—caused by wars or climate change—are putting larger, reasonably coherent populations in new places, with the potential for dispute or new forms of shared power structures. Global integration, particularly through telecommunications /internet capabilities, means that link between land and jurisdiction mean much less than a century ago.
In the 19C, Ernst Renan noted that modern national sensibilities were formed by a shared agreement to forget past disputes. Where this doesn’t occur (Catalonia, Scotland, South Sudan, Taiwan) various degrees of trouble continue to brew. The same is true of international boundaries. For all of the challenges which Africa has faced since decolonization, things would likely have been much worse if extensive international boundary disputes had led to wars, destruction, and distraction.
So, even if fictitious, the acceptance of the status quo; consigning the past to the past is likely the better course. China would gain a great deal of diplomatic prestige by renouncing a bunch of claims to bits of snowy mountains or piles of rock in the South China Sea that had minimal social or economic value. The majority of the global list of open issues could be similarly resolved and attention and effort put to more pressing issues. But “planting the flag” remains a powerful symbol of national glory. It’s another way in which we are trapped by the past.
We’ve come some distance from the development of ground-based surveying that enabled governments to comprehend and depict the scope of their country’s territory to the satellite-based precision of the 21C. Still, we shouldn’t conflate precision with accuracy; nor with political realities. Issues about terrains that were inaccessible (at least to Europeans) in the 18/19 C were resolved by the expedient of drawing a straight line on a map in some Chancery in St. Petersburg, London or Berlin. Such lines were drawn for expedience and clarity, a little thought was given to any sense of social or economic or geographic sensibility; much less to any cultural traditions of the peoples who had lived in those lands for centuries.
We see the remnants of this practice all across the maps of the contemporary world. The end of empire in both Africa (20C) and Latin America (early 19C) brought issues as to how newly independent countries would draw their own lines and claim territory. In the latter case, with a few exceptions, and in the former case (almost completely) the imperial lines were accepted and fixed. Conscious decisions were made to avoid the complexity and conflicts inherent in revisiting those old lines, regardless of the contemporary cost or historical rationales. Thus, the hodge-podge of imperial claims in Africa shows up today in the plethora of small countries with too many straight lines; largely because the British, French, and other Euro powers didn’t sort things out, but merely passed on power to their own local elites. In Latin America, which was nearly all Spanish, it was administrative boundaries originally sanctioned in Iberia in the 16C, that froze the lines we see today.
In sum, in these places, it was a shared decision to forget the past that set the stage for a more stable (even if “inaccurate”) future. Nonetheless, there are still a long list of unresolved border issues on the books today (Wikipedia lists over 150). The underlying principle seems to be that if some predecessor regime (no matter how many centuries ago) once claimed/ruled/occupied a particular chunk of dirt, then the current government maintains that it still should be recognized as including that territory. In some cases, there is an ambiguity in some treaty language; in others, the treaty is criticized as being “unequal” and therefore not binding (as if there ever was a treaty among “equals”). Sometimes, inaccessibility meant that lines specified were inaccurate. The modern world seems increasingly reluctant to accept the traditional model of acquisition of territory by conquest, the basis of a bunch of claims.
Most of these disputed lands are pretty small and quite obscure. You have to wonder why countries continue to bicker. Why does China pick on tiny Bhutan over a few square miles of the Himalaya? Doesn’t Venezuela have something better to do than bluster over a (larger) chunk of Guyana? Often the answer is that a nice foreign “enemy” makes for rousing nationalistic politics, ripe for exploitation in terms of domestic insecurity or as a make-weight in an international dispute on some other issue.
Unfortunately, things sometime spiral out of control and actual military conflict results. People die because of disputes over our modern remnants of national “honor”: the Falklands War in the 1980s was one example, a series of “low-level” fights between China and India since the 1960s is another.
Fortunately, most of the time, these disputes are put on the back shelf and the local folks “make-do.” No one expects a confrontation between the US and Haiti over Navassa, a small, uninhabited island south of Cuba. Nor will Italy and France start shooting over the precise demarcation of their border on Mont Blanc. On the other hand, Russia claims some (all?) of Ukraine, and places such as Kashmir (India and Pakistan), Jerusalem (Israel, Jordan, and Palestine), and much of the South China Sea (China, Vietnam, Indonesia, Malaysia, Philippines) remain live and dangerous disputes.
More fundamentally, the very idea of territoriality as the premise of a governance regime/state is coming under increased pressure. New diasporas—caused by wars or climate change—are putting larger, reasonably coherent populations in new places, with the potential for dispute or new forms of shared power structures. Global integration, particularly through telecommunications /internet capabilities, means that link between land and jurisdiction mean much less than a century ago.
In the 19C, Ernst Renan noted that modern national sensibilities were formed by a shared agreement to forget past disputes. Where this doesn’t occur (Catalonia, Scotland, South Sudan, Taiwan) various degrees of trouble continue to brew. The same is true of international boundaries. For all of the challenges which Africa has faced since decolonization, things would likely have been much worse if extensive international boundary disputes had led to wars, destruction, and distraction.
So, even if fictitious, the acceptance of the status quo; consigning the past to the past is likely the better course. China would gain a great deal of diplomatic prestige by renouncing a bunch of claims to bits of snowy mountains or piles of rock in the South China Sea that had minimal social or economic value. The majority of the global list of open issues could be similarly resolved and attention and effort put to more pressing issues. But “planting the flag” remains a powerful symbol of national glory. It’s another way in which we are trapped by the past.
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