Borders are a pervasive feature of our world. We encounter them every day. Natural and artificial borders break up the landscape. Property lines separate what belongs to us from what belongs to our neighbors. Administrative boundaries divide our cities and towns, states and provinces. International frontiers partition the world into nation-states. The essays posted on this site all deal with subjects related to how we divide our physical and political space. They are academic in style and fall within the discipline of intellectual history. They consider a diverse group of thinkers, among them Jean-Jacques Rousseau, the British historian E. A. Freeman and geographer C. B. Fawcett, the Italians Carlo Cattaneo and Gaetano Salvemini.

This site does not argue for the elimination of borders. Rather, it is based on the observation that globalization is changing the character of borders whether we like it or not. Today, transnational corporations exceed the limits of national economies, an expanding system of international governance challenges the foundations of state sovereignty, large-scale migrations blur the divisions between cultures, while environmental degradation, climate change, and communicable diseases disregard boundaries altogether. Change will occur, making it worthwhile to reflect on what borders are, how they have come into being, the purposes they are supposed to serve, and what they actually achieve.

Contents

Readers may download a footnoted version of each essay by clicking on the link found at the essay’s end.