Frontiers and boundaries

Abstract

Located at the interfaces between adjacent state territories, international boundaries have a special significance in determining the limits of sovereign authority and defining the spatial form of the contained political regions. Frontiers and boundaries have usually been studied in terms of their geographical relationships to the human and physical landscapes through which they pass, and though political geography is rich in morphological, empirical and generic boundary studies, the economic and psychological functioning of boundaries has not received the attention it merits. Boundaries have been loosely described as being linear; in fact they occur where the vertical interfaces between state sovereignties intersect the surface of the earth. Frontiers, in contrast, are zonal and therefore contain various geographical features and, frequently, populations. As vertical interfaces, boundaries have no horizontal extent, though the factor of border location can characterise surrounding landscapes, while a past frontier location may be marked in a landscape long after the frontier concerned has advanced, receded or contracted. The seaward extent of the coastal state is also marked by boundaries, and often by frontier-like extensions of diminished state control beyond the outer limit of sovereign authority; this contrasts with the situation on land, where frontiers associated with boundaries normally represent areas which are being integrated into the functioning state system and which are contained within the state boundaries.