A Brief History of the World in 47 Borders

Many lines on the map are worth far more than a thousand words, going well beyond merely marking divisions between nations. In this eye-opening investigation into the most remarkable points on the map, a single boundary might, upon closer inspection, reveal eons of history-from epic tales of conquest, treaties, and alliances to intimate, all-too-human stories of love, greed, and folly. Sometimes rooted in physical geography, sometimes entirely arbitrary, none of the lines we know today were inevitable, and all might have looked quite different if not for the intricate interplay of chance and ambition.

By listening to the stories these borders have to tell, we can learn how political identities are shaped, why the world's boundaries look the way they do-and what they tell us about our world and ourselves. From the very first maps in Egypt to the Roman attempts to define the boundaries of civilization, from the profound shift in meaning of the Mason-Dixon line to the secret British-French agreement to carve up the Ottoman Empire during the First World War, and from the dark consequences of Detroit's city limits to the intriguing reason why landlocked Bolivia still maintains a navy, this is a singular look at human history-told through its most spellbinding border stories.

List of Maps
Introduction

PART ONE: HISTORIES

• The Unification of Upper and Lower Egypt
• The Great Wall of China and the Border as Unifier
• Why is Europe Not a Peninsula in Asia?
• The Roman Limes and the Power of the Periphery
• The Legacies of Charlemagne
• The Borders of Great Britain
• Of Feudalism, Marquises, Margraves, and Marcher Lords
• The Open Borders Policies of Genghis Khan
• Spain and Portugal Carve up the World
• Holy, Roman and an Empire
• Britain, Ireland, and the Invention of Cartographic Colonialism
• The Much Misunderstood Mason-Dixon Line
• The Local Government Reforms of Emperor Napoleon I
• The American Invasion of Mexico
• The Schleswig-Holstein Business
• ". . . Where No White Man Ever Trod"
• The Sudan-Uganda Border Commission, 1913
• European Nationalism and the United States of Greater Austria
• Britain and France Carve up the Middle East
• The Partition of Ulster, 1916-22
• The Partition of India, 1947
• The Iron Curtain and the Division of Berlin, 1945-90

PART TWO: LEGACIES

• Koenigsberg/Kaliningrad, Eastern Germany/Western Russia
• The Strange Case of Bir Tawil
• The Dangers of Gardening in the Korean DMZ
• China's Nine-dash Line and Its Discontents
• The Uncertain Borders Between Israel and Palestine
• The Siamese Twin Towns of Baarle-Hertog and Baarle-Nassau
• The US-Canada border, and the Trouble with Straight Lines
• Some Places Which Aren't Switzerland
• Some Notes on Microstates
• City Limits
• The Curse of Suburbia and the Borders of Detroit
• Washington, DC and the Square Between the States
  Borders from a Land Down Under
• Some Accidental Invasions
• Costa Rica, Nicaragua and the "Google Maps War"
• The Mapmaker's Dilemma

PART THREE: EXTERNALITIES

• A Brief History of the Prime Meridian
• Some Notes on Time Zones
• A Brief History of the International Date Line
• Of Maritime Boundaries and the Law of the Sea
• Some Notes on Landlocked Countries
• How the World Froze Territorial Claims in Antarctica
• The Other, Bigger, More Musical Europe
• Boundaries in the Air
• The Final Frontier

Conclusion: The End of the Line
Sources
Acknowledgements
Index