The Politics of Territory and Place

Abstract

Political geography is involved in studying human claims and conflicts concerning the use, partitioning and ownership of the land and its resources. Such disputes can occur at many different levels. They can involve neighbours squabbling over the proper positioning of posts holding up a garden fence; territorial claims between rival tribes or different national groups living within a single state; territorial disputes between adjacent states, or competitions for global influence between great power blocs. They can occur within as well as between societies — as when environmental and neighbourhood groups oppose tree-felling or road-building operations.

I have heard by antient persons that at first there was onely three rows of Seates in Myddle Church, and that the space beetweene the South Isle and the South wall was voyd Ground, onely there was a bench all along the South wall. And that afterward Bayliffe Downton built for himselfe a large wainscott peiw att the upper end of this voyd ground, and Thomas Niclas of Balderton Hall built another nexte to him, and after, all the rest was furnished with formes.

Richard Gough, The History of Myddle (c.1700)