Thinking Territory Historically

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Notes

1. John Agnew, ‘The Territorial Trap: The Geographical Assumptions of International Relations Theory’, Review of International Political Economy 1 (1994) pp. 53–80.

2. This is an argument that Neil Brenner and I have made at length in ‘Henri Lefebvre on State, Space and Territory’, International Political Sociology 3 (2009) pp. 353–377.

3. The best work on territory, to my mind, remains Jean Gottmann, The Significance of Territory (Charlottesville: University Press of Virginia 1973). I have also learned a great deal from two unfortunately untranslated books: Paul Alliès, L'invention du territoire (Grenoble: Presses Universitaires de Grenoble 1980); and Claude Raffestin, Pour une géographie du pouvoir (Paris: Libraires Techniques 1980). The key work on territoriality is Robert D. Sack, Human Territoriality: Its Theory and History (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press 1986).

4. John Agnew, ‘The Hidden Geographies of Social Science and the Myth of the ‘Geographical Turn’ ′, Environment and Planning D: Society and Space 13 (1995) pp. 379–380.

5. Ibid., p. 379

6. See Agnew, ‘The Territorial Trap’ (note 1) p. 54. This is also highlighted in Reid-Henry's introduction to this section. Of recent studies, Rhys Jones, Peoples/States/Territories: The Political Geographies of British State Transformation (Oxford: Blackwell 2007) is much more successful than, for example, Saskia Sassen, Territory, Authority, Rights: From Medieval to Global Assemblages (Princeton: Princeton University Press 2006). See also Agnew's own Globalization and Sovereignty (Lanham: Rowman and Littlefield 2009); and Alexander B. Murphy, ‘The Sovereign State System as Political-Territorial Ideal: Historical and Contemporary Considerations’, in Thomas Biersteker and Cynthia Weber (eds.), State Sovereignty as a Social Construct (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press 1996) pp. 81–120.

7. See Stuart Elden, ‘Missing the Point: Globalisation, Deterritorialisation and the Space of the World’, Transactions of the Institute of British Geographers 30 (2005) pp. 8–19.

8. ‘Territoriality’ here, of course, means a condition of territory, rather than the more active connotation that has increasingly replaced that older meaning. The key figure here is Bartolus of Saxoferrato. On his work see, particularly, Francesco Maiolo, Medieval Sovereignty: Marsilius of Padua and Bartolus of Saxoferrato (Delft: Eburon 2007).

9. Innocent III, ‘Per Venerabilem’, in D. Carl Mirbt (ed.), Quellen zur Geschichte des Papsttums und des Römanischen Katholizismus, Vierte Auflage (Tübingen: J.C.B. Mohr 1924) pp. 175–177; translated in Brian Tierney, The Crisis of Church and State 1050–1300 (Toronto: University of Toronto Press 1988) pp. 136–138.

10. See, for instance the anonymous texts in R. W. Dyson (ed.), Quaestio de Potestate Papae (Rex Pacificus)/An Enquiry into the Power of the Pope: A Critical Edition and Translation (Lewiston: Edwin Mellon 1999); and ‘A Dispute between a Priest and a Knight’, Latin and English text, ed. and trans by Norma N. Erickson, Proceedings of the American Philosophical Society 111/5 (1967) pp. 288–309.

11. Useful works on these changes include Sharon Korman, The Right of Conquest: The Acquisition of Territory by Force in International Law and Practice (Oxford: Clarendon Press 1996); and Mark W. Zacher, ‘The Territorial Integrity Norm: International Boundaries and the Use of Force’, International Organization 55 (2001) pp. 215–230. A terrific recent book on some of the issues that this creates is Linda M. Bishai, Forgetting Ourselves: Secession and the (Im)possibility of Territorial Identity (Lanham: Lexington Books 2004).

12. This argument is made at much greater length in Stuart Elden, Terror and Territory: The Spatial Extent of Sovereignty (Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press 2009).

13. See Stuart Elden, ‘Land, Terrain, Territory’, Progress in Human Geography 35 (forthcoming, 2011). This is an article which develops a conceptual framework for the historical study I am currently undertaking.