The production of borders in nineteenth-century Europe: between institutional boundaries and transnational practices of space

Abstract

The article proposes a synthesis of the major historical works on nineteenth-century European borders. Founded on an original methodological approach, the article advances a rethinking of the concept of ‘territoriality’ traditionally attributed to the rise of modern nation-states. The innovative method adopted is based on combining the focus on spatiality in recent historiography – especially in global history – with the categories and the ethnographic method developed within the border-studies field. The analysis is conducted in two directions. The first focuses on ‘borders’, specifically on some border-creation processes developing throughout the European continent. The second is more centred on European ‘borderlands’, conceived as trans-state and trans-national regions, mainly linked to the space's well-established social practices, familial and economic networks and religious experience. On the one hand, the article highlights how nineteenth-century borders were not simply the product of an institutional decision performed by emerging nation-states, but also the result of an interactive dialectic between state institutions and social actors inhabiting the borderlands. On the other, it shows how the borderlands as cross-border territorial entities continued to exist alongside the new territorial state limits, helping shape a more complex European spatiality than traditionally stated.

Keywords:

• Borders
• border studies
• global history
• spatial turn
• territory
• synthesis
• nineteenth-century Europe

Acknowledgements

I am really grateful to the Thyssen Stiftung for supporting my project. I thank DHI research staff and especially Director Martin Baumeister and Prof. Lutz Klinkhammer, who provided insight and expertise that greatly assisted the research. I am also grateful to anonymous reviewers for comments that surely improved the manuscript.

Notes

1. Donnan and Wilson, “Introduction,” 3.

2. O’ Dowd, “From a ‘Borderless World’ to a ‘World of Borders’: Bringing History Back In;” Paasi, “A Border Theory;” Mezzadra and Neilson, Border as Method, or, the Multiplication of Labor, 3.

3. Baud and van Shendel, “Towards a Comparative History of Borderlands.”

4. Donnan and Wilson, Border Identities, 3.

5. Balibar, Politics and the Other Scene.

6. Marchetti, “Spazio politico e confini nella scienza giuridica del tardo Medioevo,” 65.

7. Studies on nineteenth-century European borders are mostly to be found in collective volumes covering a wider timespan. See Stoklosa and Besier, European Border Regions in Comparison; Catala, Le Page, and Meuret, Frontières oubliées, frontières retrouvées; Desplat, Frontières; Kaplan, Carlson, and Cruz, Boundaries and their Meanings in the History of the Netherlands; Salvatici, Confini: costruzioni, attraversamenti, rappresentazioni. However, some works do indeed share the chronological framework used in the present essay. Apart from studies to which I will refer to in the course of my exposition, see also Heindl, Saurer, Burger, and Wendelin, Grenze und Staat; Di Fiore and Meriggi, Movimenti e confini. Spazi mobili nell’Italia preunitaria.

8. Barreyre and Verdo, “Souveraineté et territoire (XIX^e–XX^e siècle).”

9. Maier, “Consigning the Twentieth Century to History;” Maier, “Transformations of Territoriality, 1600–2000.”

10. Maier, “Consigning the Twentieth Century to History,” 816.

11. See Northrop, A Companion to World History; Berg, ed. Writing the History of the Global; Conrad, Globalgeschichte; Di Fiore and Meriggi, World History.

12. Amelina et al., Beyond Methodological Nationalism.

13. Warf and Arias, The Spatial Turn.

14. Middell and Naumann, “Global History and the Spatial Turn.”

15. Foucault, “Of Other Spaces.”

16. Lefebvre, The Production of Space.

17. Harvey, The Condition of Postmodernity; Harvey, Spaces of Global Capitalism.

18. Soja, Postmodern Geographies; Soja, Thirdspace: Journeys to Los Angeles and Other Real-and-Imagined Places; Soja, Postmetropolis: Critical Studies of Cities and Regions.

19. Langthaler, “Orte in Beziehung Mikrogeschichte nach dem Spatial Turn.”

20. Epple, “Storia globale e storia di genere: un rapporto promettente.”

21. Muller and Torp, “Conceptualising Transnational Spaces in History.”

22. In more recent years historians have joined other social scientists in rethinking spatial categories. For reflections on spatiality in history, see Aslanian, Chaplin, McGrath, and Mann, “AHR Conversation – How Size Matters: The Question of Scale in History;” Torre, “Un ‘tournant spatial’ en histoire? Paysages, regards, resources;” Ethington, “Placing the Past: ‘Groundwork’ for a Spatial Theory of History;” Carr, “Commentary on ‘Placing the Past’: ‘Groundwork’ for a Spatial Theory of History;’” Casey, “Boundary, Place and Event in the Spatiality of History;” the Special Issues (featuring empirical applications to case-studies); Dorsch, “Space/Time Practices;” Muller and Torp, “Conceptualising Transnational Spaces in History;” Giovannini and Giuntini, “Spazio e misura. Rappresentazioni, tecniche e modelli storici e geografici.” Among the monographs adopting this methodology, see for example Scott, The Art of Not being Governed; Raj, Relocating Modern Science; on the production of space through the circulation of knowledge see also Brevaglieri and Romano, “Produzione di saperi. Costruzione di spazi;” Torre, Luoghi. La produzione di località in età moderna e contemporanea; Salvemini, Il territorio sghembo. Forme e dinamiche degli spazi umani in età moderna; Di Fiore and Meriggi, Movimenti e confini. Spazi mobili nell’Italia preunitaria, “Spatial history” is the name of a project developed at Stanford University, while the conceptualisation of “local” and “locality” in history is also of particular interest: Freitag and von Oppen, Translocality: the Study of Globalising Processes from a Southern Perspective; De Vito, “Verso una microstoria translocale (micro-spatial history);” Gerritsen, “Scales of a Local.”

23. Wastl-Walter, The Ashgate Research Companion to Border Studies; Donnan and Wilson, A Companion to Border Studies.

24. De Vito, “Verso una microstoria translocale (micro-spatial history).”

25. There is a rewarding discussion of this point in Aslanian, Chaplin, McGrath and Mann, “AHR Conversation – How Size Matters: The Question of Scale in History.”

26. For the theoretical version of this proposal, see Di Fiore, “Border studies und global history. Grenzen als Gegenstand einer transnationalen Untersuchung.”

27. Asiwaju, “Borderlands in Africa,” quoted in Baud and van Shendel, “Towards a Comparative History of Borderlands,” 216.

28. Ibid.

29. Needless to say, it does not pretend to be exhaustive, as many other important border areas are missing. One example among many is that of Alsace-Lorraine.

30. Paasi, “A Border Theory?”

31. Osterhammel, The Transformation of the World, 77–113.

32. Harley and Laxton, The New Nature of Maps; Wood, Rethinking the Power of Maps.

33. Mezzadra and Neilson, Border as Method, or, the Multiplication of Labor, 27–59.

34. Ibid., 28.

35. Branch, The Cartographic State.

36. Osterhammel, The Transformation of the World. For a recent study of a specific case see Dunlop, Cartophilia. Maps and the Search for Identity in the French-German Borderland.

37. Garcìa Álvarez, “Las Comisiones Mixtas de Lìmites y las representaciones geográficas de la frontera hispano-portuguesa (1855–1906).”

38. Ibid.

39. Sahlins, Boundaries. On the border between France and Spain in the modern era see also Desplat, Pyrénées, terres, frontiers; Desplat, “Les caratères originaux de la contrebande dans les Pyrénées occidentales à l’époque modernee;” for an anthropological viewpoint, see Douglass, “A Western Perspective on an Eastern Interpretation of Where North meets South.”

40. Sahlins, Boundaries, 233.

41. Capdevila i Subirana, Historia del deslinde de la frontera hispano-francesa, Del tratado de los Pirineos (1659) a los tratados de Bayona (1856–1868).

42. See also Puyo, “Faceries et rectifications frontalières: le cas de la forêt d’Iraty (Pyrénées-Atlantiques).”

43. Capdevila, Historia del deslinde de la frontera hispano-francesa, 94–5.

44. Di Fiore, Alla frontiera. On this border in the modern era see Meriggi, Racconti di confine nel Mezzogiorno del Settecento.

45. ASN, Bourbon Archive, Envelope 979, May 1852.

46. ASN, Bourbon Archive, Envelope 971, Letter by a papal priest transmitted to the Neapolitan police force by the papal government on 12 September 1843.

47. Marchetti, “Spazio politico e confini nella scienza giuridica del tardo Medioevo,” 77.

48. Donnan and Wilson, “Introduction,” 8.

49. Newman, “Contemporary Research Agendas in Border Studies: an Overview.” A good example is provided by the smuggling activities, related to one of the central functions of a state border, in other words the fiscal one.

50. Di Fiore, “Border studies und global history.”

51. Wastl-Walter, “Introduction,” The Ashgate Research Companion to Border Studies, 1. See also Donnan and Wilson, A Companion to Border Studies.

52. Di Fiore, “Border studies und global history.”

53. “Editorial,” Storia e regione 1-2/2012.

54. Lentacker, La frontière franco-belge.

55. Petrowski, “Souvrainetés mouvantes, pratiques de la frontière et identités flamandes des années 1780 à 1815,” 259, 330.

56. Ibid., 259.

57. Ibid., 264–6. On this point, see also Vanden Borre and Verschaffel, “Between or Without Nations?”

58. Vanden Borre and Verschaffel, “Between or Without Nations?”

59. Lentacker, La frontière franco-belge, 295, 297.

60. Petrowski, “Souvrainetés mouvantes, pratiques de la frontiére et identités flamandes des années 1780 à 1815.”

61. Ibid., 263.

62. Di Fiore, Alla frontiera.

63. The Ticino parishes depended on the two Lombard dioceses in Como and Milan. The issue of a reform of Swiss dioceses remained unresolved. See Panzera, “Chiesa e Stato, Chiesa e società: la ricerca di nuovi rapporti (1803–1830).”

64. Milan State Archive, Presidenza di governo, 157, Delegato a Como al Governatore della Lombardia, 30 Dicember 1831.

65. Milan State Archive, envelopes in Fondo Presidenza di governo (1814–48); See on this point Ghiringhelli, “La formazione dei partiti (1830–1848).” For issues related to this permeable border in the Napoleonic epoch, see Ghiringhelli, “La costruzione del Cantone (1803–1830).”

66. Osterhammel, The Transformation of the World, 409.

67. Nordman, Frontières de France.

68. Tilse, Transnationalism in the Prussian East.

69. Bjork, Neither German nor Pole.

70. Beside the aforementioned work of James Bjork, see Judson, Guardians of the Nations; Zahra, Kidnapped Souls; Cole, “Differentiation or Indifference?”

71. Judson, Guardians of the Nations. For a critical debate in relation to this study see Cole and Thaler, “A proposito di ‘Guardians of the Nation: Activists on the Language Frontiers of Imperial Austria’ di Pieter M. Judson; Laurence Cole, Alla ricerca della frontiera linguistica: nazionalismo e identità nazionale nell'Austria imperial;” Thaler, “Una nazione non è fatta solo di nazionalisti.”

72. Thaler, “Fluid Identities in Central European Borderlands.”

73. Ibid., 541.

74. Consider also the case of the nineteenth-century Alpine region, on which see Ceschi, “Ricognizioni tra frontiere e confine.”

75. For a very illuminating example in this regard, see Brophy, “Which Political Nation?”

76. Epple, “The Global, the Transnational and the Subaltern,” 125.

77. Snyder, The Reconstruction of Nations.

78. Viazzo, “La Val d’Ossola e la Valsesia: sguardi storici e prospettive antropologiche.” On Alpine migrations, see also Viazzo, “La mobilità nelle frontiere alpine;” Radeff, “Montagnes, plat pays et ‘remues d’hommes’.”

79. Mineccia, “I flussi migratori trans-frontalieri tra lo Stato toscano e quello pontificio (1765–1815).”

80. Bouisset, “Le découpage de la frontière franco-italienne dans les Alpes-Maritimes en 1860 et ses consequences.” Similar concessions were introduced during the nineteenth century for the French-Belgium border zone. Lentacker, La frontière franco-belge.

81. Balani, “Confini tra Francia e Stato Sabaudo nel VIII secolo;” Balani, Per terra e per mare.

82. Turin State Archive, Fund Confini con la Francia, envelope 24, file 33, envelope 25, file 32; fund Commissione confini con la Francia, envelope 67.

83. An example is the dispute between the community of Sigalle and Aiglun. Turin State Archive, fund Confini con la Francia, envelope 24, file 33, May 1817, and, in the same fund, envelope 25, file 32, 6 November 1822.

84. Mezzadra and Neilson, Border as Method, or, the Multiplication of Labor, 13.

85. Ibid.

86. Middell and Naumann, “Global History and the Spatial Turn.”

87. Muller and Torp, “Conceptualising Transnational Spaces in History,” 612.

88. Osterhammel, The Transformation of the World; Bellabarba, Mazohl, Stauber and Verga, Gli imperi dopo l’Impero nell’Europa del XIX secolo. On the relation between empires and nation-states in the nineteenth century see also Leonhard and Von Hirschhausen, Imperi e stati nazionali nell’Ottocento.

89. Applegate, “A Europe of Regions.”

90. Meriggi, “Storia transnazionale e storia regionale.”

91. Profound reflections on this point are to be found in Muller and Torp, “Conceptualising Transnational Spaces in History,” 613.

92. Nordman, Frontières de France; Nordman,“La frontière: notions et problèmes en France (XVI ^e –XVIII ^e siècle).”