Page 63 - Encyclopedia Of World History

comparative borders and frontiers 413

claims his house, garden, and field, it shall not be given to him, but he
who has taken possession of it and used it shall continue to use it.
• Hammurabi (eighteenth century bce)

control cattle during the late nineteenth century) and after 2000. Such borders continued to be maintained
antipersonnel land mines (developed during the U.S. between India and Pakistan, between the two Koreas, in
Civil War). Israel, parts of the former U.S.S.R., China, and so forth.
The Soviet border infrastructure,dubbed the“Iron Cur- Economic migration has spurred the construction of new
tain” during the Cold War, was the earliest and most border infrastructures in certain areas.Administrative bar-
extensive of these structures. Although the Bolsheviks riers to movement (primarily entry visas and residence
espoused internationalism, they also embraced borders. restrictions) still limit and regulate movement from devel-
Early Soviet boundary maintenance began during the oping (or “southern,” Third World) countries to industri-
Russian CivilWar (1917–1920) when secret police units alized countries.Although the European Union abolished
were given jurisdiction over the internal lines of demar- border controls among its member states in 1999, it
cation between Soviet areas and the various “counterrev- strengthened its external borders in southern and eastern
olutionary” governments within the boundaries of the old Europe. In particular, a highly sophisticated border infra-
Russian empire. Fears of encirclement by aggressive cap- structure (a twenty-first-century Berlin Wall) was created
italist enemies eager to undermine the Soviet state, cou- to protect Spanish enclaves in Morocco from mass migra-
pled with economic pressures to stem the flight of special- tion.The U.S.-Mexico border,which was only sporadically
ists and millions of disaffected citizens, led Soviet leaders patrolled for much of the twentieth century, has become
to solidify border patrols. By around 1930 more than an increasingly complex border infrastructure.During the
50,000 kilometers of Soviet borders were being guarded late 1990s border sectors near major metropolises such as
by forty thousand border guards who were assigned to ten San Diego, California, and El Paso,Texas, were equipped
border patrol districts. Borders tended to be more heav- with walls, infrared scopes, underground sensors, and
ily patrolled in the west and in densely populated areas in increased mobile and air patrols. By 2004, 9,600 kilo-
other parts of Eurasia. In those areas patrol density aver- meters of U.S. land borders were patrolled by roughly
aged 2.5 men per kilometer of border,but fewer resources eight thousand officers, a figure that rivals the density of
were devoted to areas in Asia or the far north that were Soviet border patrol deployments during the 1930s.
remote and difficult to cross because of extreme terrains. Thus, globalization did not bring about a“world without
An expensive and expansive infrastructure utilized patrols borders” during the waning years of the twentieth century.
by land,air, and sea, networks of local informants,watch-
Brian J. Boeck
towers, land mines, tens of thousands of miles of tracking
strips (areas that were cleared of inhabitants and vegeta-
tion and specially maintained to make surveillance possi-
Further Reading
ble and footprints visible), thousands of miles of barbed-
Artemiev,V. P. (1957).The protection of the frontiers of the U.S.S.R. In
wire fences and, eventually, electronic signalization S.Wolin (Ed.), The Soviet secret police (pp. 260–279). New York: Fred-
systems. Militarily sensitive areas might also be mined to erick Praeger.
Barfield,T. J. (1989). The perilous frontier: Nomadic empires and China.
prevent “border violations.” Access to border zones was Cambridge, UK: Basil Blackwell.
rigidly controlled, and Soviet citizens could enter these Biggs, M. (1999). Putting the state on the map: Cartography, territory,
and European state formation. Comparative Studies in Society and His-
areas only with official permission. As a result of these
tory, 41(2), 374–411.
measures, unauthorized entry and exit became virtually Brauer, R.W. (1995). Boundaries and frontiers in medieval Muslim geog-
impossible between the 1950s and 1991.These measures raphy. Philadelphia: American Philosophical Society.
Chandler, A. (1998). Institutions of isolation: Border controls in the
were replicated in Soviet satellite states, most notably in Soviet Union and its successor states, 1917–1993. Montreal, Canada:
Germany’s Berlin Wall (1961–1989). McGill-Queen’s University Press.
Faragher, J. M. (Ed.). (1994). Rereading Frederick Jackson Turner:The sig-
Although many such extreme borders disappeared
nificance of the frontier in American history, and other essays. New
with the end of the Cold War, many remained in place York: H. Holt.