Description
Book SynopsisAt a time when the technologies of globalization are eroding barriers to communication, transportation, and trade, Charles Maier explores the fitful evolution of territories—politically bounded regions whose borders define the jurisdiction of laws and the movement of peoples—as a worldwide practice of human societies.
Trade ReviewCharles Maier's new and brilliantly insightful book is a history of how political borders came to be constructed, contested and—or so it appeared—effaced, only to revive with a vengeance. Here is a new and subtle geopolitics for the post-global era of walls and barbed wire. -- Niall Ferguson, author of
Kissinger, 1923–1968No other historian of our present age could better this scholarly discourse upon states, borders, sovereignty, and geographic space in modern, post-1500 Europe, America, and the world. Professor Maier's erudition results in a fabulous, original work on what land and sea borders have meant, and still do mean, to governments and peoples, and to state and non-state actors. His easy discussion with some of the greatest European and American public thinkers, geopoliticians, historians, and philosophers is breathtaking. -- Paul Kennedy, author of
Engineers of VictoryA brilliant synthesis of a wealth of empirical material about the birth and development of what is conventionally considered to be modernity. -- Geoff Eley, author of
Nazism as FascismIn this brilliant and sweeping narrative, Maier shows how, beginning in the seventeenth century, sovereignty and territory became intertwined as states built borders, reorganized systems of labor and capital, and forged domains of law and authority…Maier finds today’s world awash in fast-changing and deeply conflicting ideas about territory. The
interdependence of economies and the emergence of cyberspace seem to have reduced the salience of physical territorial control and weakened traditional notions of sovereignty and citizenship. But if Maier is correct, territory will continue to claim an important place in the human imagination.
-- G. John Ikenberry * Foreign Affairs *
It’s rare to find insightful contemporary political commentary in what is primarily a history book. Yet this tome could hardly be more timely. For anyone keen to understand the mass movements that fuelled everything from the EU referendum result to Trump’s election victory, you could do far worse than have a flick through
Once Within Borders, exploring how the tinderbox where these particular fires caught ablaze came into existence. -- Chris Fitch * Geographical *
Charles Maier’s
Once Within Borders is a splendid account of the changing notions of territory over the past five centuries. Maier is among the most distinguished living historians and this timely book has been years in the making…He shows how changing geopolitics, the advent of commercial society, rise of industrial technology and development of new techniques of governance impinged upon evolving the notions of territory. -- Srinath Raghavan * Mint *
Charles Maier ask[s] us to consider afresh the commonplace intellectual and experiential twinning of history and geography, of time and space, and by doing so open[s] up compelling new avenues for historical, geographical and social-scientific inquiry…A stimulating analysis of the history of territory as a concept. -- Robert Mayhew * Times Literary Supplement *
Maier’s book is a timely reminder that borders go back much farther than debates about border walls and hard borders…Maier shows how borders contributed to the creation of polities and our ideas about them, including sovereignty, in a sweeping review of the past 500 years of western history. -- Krisztina Csortea * International Affairs *
