The Evolution of Borders: From Roman Limes to Modern Boundaries

Noviomagus, first century AD. A legionnaire stands on a watchtower and peers into the distance. He’s far from home. The soldier comes from the north of Italy, but now guards the border of the Roman Empire on the river Waal. The power of the Caesars ends here.

This summer, NRC will push the boundaries. The most fascinating science is found at the extremes.

There is a lot of activity around his camp. Women make food, while some of his comrades are busy with the brick factory they have set up near the city that is now called Nijmegen. The border is now wide open. From the north Frisians and Chauken report with their merchandise: pelts and grain. The legionnaire does keep a close eye on how many they come and whether they carry weapons.

In 2023, a border is a dotted line on the map and a sign at the highway. If necessary, a boundary correction is made that is measured to the nearest centimetre, as happened five years ago with a few islands in the Maas near Eijsden.

With Hadrian a more defensive phase began. Sturdy border works were built

Stephan Mols Radboud University

It wasn’t always like that. Boundaries – both the theoretical idea of ​​what a border is and the practical implementation of that idea – have evolved over a long period of time. The area around such a border was always a region where dangers and opportunities went hand in hand. An individual could make his fortune there or die, an empire could exploit it or be destroyed by raids by the inhabitants of the frontier country.

The Romans were the first in Europe to experience this dynamic. The borders of their empire, which were established in the course of the first and second centuries, have become known as the limes. They were “porous if possible, but hard if necessary,” says Stephan Mols, professor of history at Radboud University Nijmegen and specialized in the limes.

Wall of Hadrian

Such a hard border was necessary, for example, in the extreme north of the Roman Empire. Hadrian’s Wall was built there in England at the beginning of the second century. Mols: “In that area there was constant commotion due to raids from the north by the Picts. In the Netherlands, where the Romans established their authority in the first century, things were much quieter. That is why fewer forts were built here and there was no question of a continuous wall.”

The reign of Emperor Hadrian (between 117 and 138) was a turning point in the way Romans thought about their borders, says Mols. “Until then, they looked beyond the frontier of their empire and saw territory they could conquer. With Hadrian a more defensive phase began. Sturdy border works were built – if possible along natural barriers such as the Rhine and Danube – and the emperors set up the areas immediately outside those lines as buffer zones. The peoples there were used to protect the empire against invaders from further afield.”

Monarchs owned property that was scattered like specks across the map of Europe

Erik van der Vleuten Eindhoven University of Technology

The Dutch limes ran from Nijmegen along the Rhine to the North Sea. In the second century AD it also became more restless here, Mols knows, albeit not directly on the border. “The Chauken, who lived in what is now the province of Groningen, among other things, raided the coastal area behind the lines via the North Sea. The Romans responded to this by making the coastal defenses harder by building forts, such as Aardenburg in Zeeland.”

The pressure of Germanic barbarians on the empire continued to increase in the following centuries. Emperors such as Dioclentian (284-305) and Constantine (306-337) succeeded in guarding the borders well, but then the dam broke. Mols: “The pressure from Germanic tribes such as the Goths and the Vandals was no longer tenable. The Romans could no longer keep them out.”

Stains spread across Europe

With the disappearance of the Roman state in western Europe – in the east the Byzantine Empire survived until 1453 – new territorial units emerged. They were smaller and the boundaries mattered less. “In the Middle Ages, it was more about the center than about the edges of a territory,” says Erik van der Vleuten. He is professor of the history of technology at Eindhoven University of Technology and wrote an issue of it in 2016 Journal of Modern European History about the theme ‘Borders and Frontiers in Global and Transnational History’. “Princes had possessions that were scattered like specks across the map of Europe. Think of the Duke of Burgundy, who owned land from the Alps to the North Sea. What mattered were the cities. Not the exact place where one area merged into another.”

In the Middle Ages, the most important distinction was that between town and country

Helmut Walser Smith Vanderbilt University

Helmut Walser Smith confirms this. He is a professor of history at Vanderbilt University in Nashville in the US and published a thick book on nation building in Germany two years ago. “In the Middle Ages, the most important distinction was that between town and country. The border that mattered was the city wall: you were safer inside than outside.”

Cards play an important role in Smith’s book. How did the Germans capture the world around them on a two-dimensional plane? This was a daunting task, because the Holy Roman Empire of the German Nation was a patchwork of counties, duchies, and city-states that at its peak—or nadir, if you will—consisted of some 1,200 territorial units. Did people even know when they crossed from one piece of this patchwork to another?

“No, they didn’t know that until the 18th century,” says Smith. “We see in diaries that travelers note that they traveled from the city of one earl to the city of another earl. So they linked land to its owners, not so much to the physical territory.”

The last step is that you mark that border and start defending it

Erik van der Vleuten Eindhoven University of Technology

From the seventeenth century, the earls and dukes themselves became more interested in the exact size of their country, says Smith. “They read in Prince Mirrors – a kind of handbooks of how to rule – that a good monarch puts markers on the borders of his territory. That way you showed: at this stream or this forest my territory begins.”

For mapmakers, those boundaries weren’t important yet, says Smith. “They mainly wanted to get the distance between cities right. In any case, a map was used more to hang on the wall as a decoration than as a tool for on the road. Before that, people used travel descriptions with directions on how to walk.”

Initially, border markings also had few practical implications for travellers, but there were already numerous places where the free movement of people and goods was disrupted: at toll stations. Smith: “There were many along the Rhine, for example. We have an account of the well-known painter Albrecht Dürer who traveled across that river to the Netherlands in 1521. He was very annoyed that he had to pay every hour to be able to continue traveling.”

The measurable landscape

The eighteenth century brought the Enlightenment and the wish of increasingly powerful monarchs to properly map their possessions. “We will then enter the era of the measurable landscape,” says Erik van der Vleuten. “All over Europe, starting in France, major land mapping projects were started. Scientists developed methods that allowed them to measure distances and determine positions more accurately than ever before. If you can do that, then at some point you will also record exactly where your area ends and that of your neighbor begins. The last step is that you mark that border and start defending it.”

By the end of the eighteenth century, most of Europe’s major states were well mapped, says Helmut Smith. “Archduchess Maria Theresa of Austria had hundreds of maps of her territory made. Cartographers were also busy in Frederick the Great’s Prussia. The army was important in these countries, and that certainly played a role in this development.”

Because you set a limit, people want to cross it – for example because there are differences in tax rates

Erik van der Vleuten Eindhoven University of Technology

Within the Holy Roman Empire, land property was often divided among several heirs after the death of the owner, says Smith: “They then wanted to record exactly which territory was theirs. So boundaries mattered here and there were special land surveyors who offered their services for this. Such maps were not published, but you come across them in abundance in archives.”

It was quite normal for people to move from country to country in Europe between the sixteenth and mid-nineteenth centuries. In fact, says Smith, many monarchs did their best to attract migrants. “The more inhabitants a country had, the bigger the army was and the better the economy was. That is why farmers and craftsmen were lured with all kinds of benefits.”

This changed in the course of the nineteenth century. The cause: the migration flows had become too great. So many people were on their way by land and sea that those in power noticed that they lost the overview. Smith: “You read in documents from that time that people were really concerned about this. To control this migration, the borders became tougher. At the end of the nineteenth and beginning of the twentieth century, you could no longer enter a country without papers.”

Grensparadox

Those clear boundaries brought their own problems, says Erik van der Vleuten. “Something arose that my colleague Ad Knotter calls the ‘boundary paradox’. Because you set a limit, people want to be there correct over it – for example because there are differences in tax rates. The border itself becomes the reason that people travel, for example to smuggle.”

The people who lived within all those clearly defined territories developed their own national identity in the nineteenth century. In this way, land and people had to coincide, says Helmut Smith. “And that made it so that someone from outside the border not only lived somewhere else, but was someone else. This nationalism and the wars that resulted from it in the twentieth century have resulted in tough national borders in Europe, which only softened again after the fall of communism.”

Europe is trying to create a buffer zone around itself

Stephan Mols Radboud University

Surveying the story of two thousand years of borders in Europe, there seems to be an important red line: as migration increases – whether armed or not – the borders become harder. For example, don’t those agreements that the Romans made with peoples directly outside their limes to stop other barbarians resemble the deals that the European Union is now making with countries such as Turkey and Tunisia?

You always have to be very careful with those kinds of comparisons, says Stephan Mols, but “there is something of an agreement. Border control is outsourced to third parties and Europe is trying to create a buffer zone around itself.”

Helmut Smith still remembers the conversations he had with people in East Germany around the fall of the Berlin Wall in 1989. “I thought this was the beginning of a time with disappearing borders, but people in the GDR thought very differently. They said: the hard limits will simply be placed somewhere else. Of course they were right about that. You can travel freely within Europe, but the walls are now at the border of the continent.”

2023-07-07 07:00:31
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