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From Empires to Nations, 1800–2015

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Mapping Versatile Boundaries

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Abstract

There is a tense debate within the Balkan research community. No one knows the exact location of most past and present political boundaries. After the downfall of the Ottoman and Austrian Empires, the political map of the region never stopped changing. Such instability coupled with acute territorial cross-claims over land has generated border mappings that suffer from a number of defects. Besides, maps are made to express national points of view. They consistently understate the importance of unorthodox “in-between” spaces. The multitude of mistakes in historical cartography suggests that uncertainty is a basic principle of land categorization.

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Notes

  1. 1.

    Many references to debordering processes or blurred borders are to be found in the relevant literature. See for instance (Newman 2006; O'Dowd 2010; Omae 1990; Paasi 2009; Yeung 1998).

  2. 2.

    We shall handle this highly successful and controversial concept with extreme care (Yeung 1998). The introduction of such a term from economics to geography induces low significance levels inside this last discipline. As usual relatively to neologisms, language practices shall certainly refine its meaning in the future. For now, we will consider that this notion is quite ineffective in applied geography at local and regional scales.

  3. 3.

    This debated term illustrates the shift from a centrally planned economy to a market economy. Both capitalist and communist systems are not as much bipolar as they pretended to be.

  4. 4.

    The word is here deliberately understated.

  5. 5.

    The expression is used in a metaphoric sense. It is now common to treat places and spaces like subjects/actors and no more like a support for human activities. The stylistic device is hyperbolic and often misplaced.

  6. 6.

    There is no negative connotation. Although interesting, the issue stands out of our fieldwork.

  7. 7.

    Similarly, the Pulkovo 1942 datum parameters created by the Soviets are still kept secret.

  8. 8.

    In the Athenian IGME office, this color is the one adopted for displaying the forbidden areas (1/50.000 scale).

  9. 9.

    To maintain the consistency of this work maritime boundaries shall be considered not relevant to this discussion. Their study supposes the introduction of different investigation methods and concepts. The GIS database would have been thought in a completely different way (Prescott and Schofield 1986; Schofield et al. 2013).

  10. 10.

    For this reason, most manuals in geography simply gather information arising from national backgrounds without promoting bridging works.

  11. 11.

    The reverse process may also apply.

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  1. UMR 5281 ART-Dev, CNRS, Montpellier, France

    Régis Darques

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Darques, R. (2017). From Empires to Nations, 1800–2015. In: Mapping Versatile Boundaries. Springer Geography. Springer, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-40925-2_3

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