Jagged Landscapes: Conceptualizing Borders and Boundaries in the History of Human Societies

The present paper discusses ways in which thinking about this paradoxical nature of boundaries might be broadened so that familiar, contemporary, and ultimately very Western notions of what a border actually “is” might be probed and challenged. Borders have histories just as peoples do, and the history of Western borders is only one category among many in global and historical scope. The first part of the paper will focus on conceptual approaches that scholars have taken in examining borders as a rubric of social scientific study. The second part of the paper turns to some of the newer methodologies for this inquiry, as a range of specialists have utilized varying tool kits to hone their analyses of these liminal spaces. The third portion of the essay will look at some regional variations of borders, and how these “lines in space” have appeared in different guises in various global landscapes, and at varying points in the historical continuum. Early Modern Europe, Ottoman Turkey, pre-modern China, and the early Americas are all referenced here. Finally, the last quarter of the paper will pay particular attention to the morphogenesis of Southeast Asian borders, as these delineations came into being only over the last several centuries.