This thesis offers a theoretical analysis of the process by which borders have come to be precise, fixed, mappable, and infinitely thin lines traced over the surface of the earth. I argue that accounts of global modernity should understand the linearization of borders as a process related to, but relatively autonomous from processes of state formation and other structures and processes typically associated with global modernity. In other words, linear borders have their own causes and consequences, which the thesis aims to unpack. The contribution of the thesis lies within debates on the historical origins of modern international relations which often overlook the history of borders through a focus on sovereignty.
The thesis theorizes modern linear borders as an outcome of ‘survey rationality’, drawing on theories of rationalization. Survey rationality is a mode of territorial governance which conceives of the location of predefined borders as a technical and non-political question, and therefore susceptible to measurement and calculation through surveys and other technologies. The central argument of the thesis is that survey rationality on its own is not a natural or necessary part of territorial rule, but must be articulated with other historically particular rationalities in order to be effective in practice. I illustrate this argument historically by examining two such historically particular rationalities: first, the logic of agrarian capitalism in the English colonies of North America, and secondly, the logic of the civilizing mission in the ‘Scramble for Africa’. Finally, I show how international politics are different in a world of formally linearized borders. Linear borders underpin hierarchies by altering the distribution of geographical knowledge resources, for example at the 1919 Paris Peace Conference, and they contribute to a modular pattern of territorial partition, from Mysore and Poland in the 18th century to Vietnam and Korea in the 20th.

From frontiers to borders: the origins and consequences oflinear borders in international politics

This thesis investigates the relationship between environment and empire in late tsarist Central Asia, and suggests that the making and unmaking of space was integral to the imperial experience. It contends that land and its representation were crucial to processes undertaken on local and imperial scales to re-fashion parts of Central Asia from a ‘vast’, ‘alien’ and ‘inhospitable’ colony into an integrated frontier of empire. In examining the environment as a site for the physical enactment and negotiation of Russian rule, the chapters investigate how imperial settlers interacted with the region’s built and natural landscapes, through the planning of transport routes, the creation of settlements, irrigation, afforestation and planting projects. I use visual sources as the project’s access points into the Russian spatial imaginary: vital interfaces between material and metaphorical space that documented the changing environment but were also used to project future ambitions, to inscribe meaning, and to appropriate, segregate, contest and re-order terrain. Environment, image and the spatial imagination were entwined in a symbiotic relationship, with attempts to modify Central Asia’s landscapes, and the visual representations of these actions, revealing that the concept of Turkestan as a monolithic colonial space underwent significant fragmentation. The physical and imaginative transformation of terrain gave rise to new characterisations of the region as a modern, connected, innovative and fertile site, notions that were debated and disputed by a variety of state and sub-state actors in Central Asia and the imperial centre. I argue that the public circulation of images speaks to the importance of the environment as a visual component in the legitimisation of Russia’s presence on Central Asian soil, and as a key arena for the evolution of local and imperial spatial identities, some of which threatened to precipitate the eventual dissolution of the Turkestan Governor Generalship.

Space, image and display in Russian Central Asia, 1881-1914

This article deals with the first regulation project in the Danube Delta conducted by the European Commission of the Danube (ECD), one of the first international organizations in Europe. It looks at the ECD as a collective actor that planned and oversaw an infrastructural project under the auspices of the European Great Powers. In the name of free trade, the commissioners were able to overcome imperial rivalries and foster cooperation between diplomats and technical experts, thus shaping the collective identity of the commission. Hydraulic engineers acted as mediators in this system by adapting their formal knowledge to the political situation of the commission and to the complex environmental conditions at the mouth of the Danube. In this context, I argue that the regulation of the Danube Delta captures the evolution of the engineering knowledge at a point of transition between pre-modern river engineering and (high) modernist engineering projects. First, engineers rejected previous local practices of river management and relied exclusively on their own observations. And second, they did not try to contain nature's power but rather adapt their constructions to the agency of the river.

Building a Better Passage to the Sea: Engineering and River Management at the Mouth of the Danube, 1829–61

Taking as its subject the Russo-Ottoman borderland during the period between the Treaty of Berlin (1878) and the start of the First World War (1914), and making extensive use of Ottoman archival documents covering this period, this thesis focuses on the ways in which the Ottoman state attempted to establish two types of boundary in order to ensure sovereignty over its territory. Firstly, there was a new geo-political border, the line dividing the Russian and Ottoman Empires at the juncture of north-eastern Anatolia and the southern Caucasus, created by the Treaty of Berlin. Secondly, there was what can be called a citizenship boundary, shaped by various laws and regulations defining the Ottoman citizenry. The main issues examined in respect of the first boundary are various types of human movement across this border and their control by the Ottoman state. Primary concerns regarding the second boundary revolve around the inclusion in and exclusion from the Ottoman citizenship of ethno-religious groups as a result of the Ottoman state?s enforcement of the border. Our approach to studying how the citizenship boundary was established is two-fold, reflecting both local and state perspectives. The local perspective shows the actions of the inhabitants and travellers passing through this border region as shaped by their own day-to-day needs, livelihood patterns and pre-existing socio-economic relations; these resisted limitation by the logic of the sovereign state. The state perspective reflects the Ottoman view of Russia as the main threat to its border territories; this view led the Ottoman central authorities to perceive the entanglements and overlapping positions of its subjects in and with Russia as the cause of their ambiguous loyalties to the Ottoman state. In focusing on the specific policies and practices that the Ottoman state applied in order to deal with this ambiguity, two groups of people, Muslims and Armenians, are singled out. Notwithstanding the all-embracing state laws and discourse of legal equality, Ottoman border policy in respect of its Muslim subjects is shown to have differed greatly from that designed for its Armenian subjects. Therefore, the thesis offers a nuanced framework with which to understand Ottoman citizenship in the Russo-Ottoman border context, by revealing the normative and practical measures the Ottoman state employed to classify its Muslim and Armenian populations, thereby differentiating their status as subjects. This thesis ? the first English-language work on the Russo-Ottoman border region during the late nineteenth century and pre-WWI period? offers a range of original insights into this borderland in particular and related issues more generally. It unfolds the details of everyday life and represents the local people as active agents ? active, moreover, in relation both to the changing nature and effectiveness of the state?s assertion of territorial authority and also to the differences between the two empires? policies and practices. Overall, the thesis focuses on the end-of-empire border politics and the issue of Ottoman citizenship not only from the perspective of macro-level political developments and central state power but also in terms of the peripheral specificities of administration and the movements and subjecthood choices of villagers. Thus, this thesis presents a new type of multi-faceted account of borderland development in which ethno-religious considerations came to inform a somewhat messy production of sovereignty in the context of the modernizing transition between empire and nation-state.

Ambivalent loyalties and Imperial citizenship on the Russo-Ottoman border between 1878 and 1914 : an analysis of the Ottoman perspective

Mapping Europe's Borderlands: Russian Cartography in the Age of Empire

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Mapping Europe's Borderlands: Russian Cartography in the Age of Empire