On the borders we have created
INVISIBLE LINES Boundaries and belts that define the world
MAXIM SAMSON 416pp. Profile. £22.
A HISTORY OF THE WORLD IN 47 BORDERS The stories behind the lines on our maps
JONN ELLEDGE 368pp. Wildfire. £25.
THE PICNIC An escape to freedom and the collapse of the Iron Curtain
MATTHEW LONGO 320pp. Bodley Head. £22.
IN 2022 the Russian tech business Yandex, an online navigation app, announced that it was removing national borders from its maps. This was a creative response in the circumstances. The world is full of disputed territories. Since Vladimir Putin’s annexation of Crimea, then invasion of Ukraine, mapmakers in Russian that don’t show the Kremlin’s version of national borders face nasty consequences. Google Maps, which has offices in Russia, has compromised by showing different maps to Russian and non-Russian users.
Our habit of carving up the globe is a relatively recent one. But we need boundaries, of course. They help us make sense of the natural world and manage political affairs. They work to discourage invasions; enable ordered government; sustain cultures and, in some cases, democracy. Borders turn spaces into places and individuals into compatriots or even citizens. Our identities and legal authorities are more numerous, however, and our borders more fluid and political, than neatly coloured maps suggest.
Two new books – one by Maxim Samson, the other by Jonn Elledge – explore both the line boundaries humans have drawn and their frequently unintended effects. Samson is a Chicagobased academic geographer, and his book attempts a neatness it does not in fact attain, enumerating five categories of “invisible lines”, each illustrated by six case studies. Some lines, such as the Arctic tree line or the malaria belt, can be used to understand the natural world and how it is changing. Some, like the International Date Line or the Chernobyl Exclusion Zone, are used to help us exert influence on the planet. And some are used to claim territory, to divide “us” from “them” or to sustain group distinctiveness. Samson’s examples of the last category include Jewish eruvim (the perimeters within which observant Jews can carry objects on the Sabbath), the 5km boundary around North Sentinel Island – home to an “uncontacted” indigenous people in the Indian Ocean – and the measures taken to protect and promote ancient languages still spoken in parts of Brittany.
Elledge, a British journalist, takes a broadly narrative approach, starting with the unification of Upper and Lower Egypt, then moving through the creation of Charlemagne’s empire at the turn of the eighth century and the partition of India in 1947 to present-day quarrels about where national airspace ends and outer space begi
