Beyond Boundaries

A Brief History of International Borders

Overview

In the modern political paradigm, every square inch of land outside Antarctica is claimed by a country. Each country has borders where its political influence is supposed to end. It’s easy to think that countries were always conceptualized in this way; the classic Civilization video game series extrapolates the paradigm all the way back to the Agricultural Revolution. But in reality, it’s less than 400 years old.

In 1648, the Treaty of Westphalia ended the misery of the Thirty Years War. Many regions in Europe responded to rampant corruption in Rome by switching from Catholicism to Protestantism. International borders were drawn up to stop the Pope from projecting political power into those regions.

Today, a massive migrant crisis is brewing at the southern border of the United States. Americans are left to wonder if any government actually has the power to stop the migratory ebb and flow that’s been fundamental to the human story since the dawn of time. After all, international borders are purely conceptual. They exist only on maps and not in real life.

Noted tech entrepreneur Balaji Srinivasan wrote a book called The Network State, in which he posited that physical location has lost all meaning and relevance in this digital age. His idea is that nations can be created in online spaces instead of physical ones. We could pay taxes and exercise rights according to our own political preferences, not where we happen to be born.

“The Network State in One Image”

In Srinivasan’s vision, international borders would no longer have any meaning or relevance. They’d be consigned to a tiny historical window. If he’s right, we’re all witnesses to the end of a major historical epoch and the beginning of a new one…

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Introduction

During the Middle Ages, the Pope was the highest political authority in Europe. This arrangement began on Christmas Day in the year 800—when Pope Leo III surprised Charlemagne with the crown of the Holy Roman Empire—and ended in 1648 when the Peace of Westphalia concluded the bitter Thirty Years War. Thereafter, states that wished to practice Protestantism were free to do so. The Treaty of Westphalia created our modern world by defining international borders and preventing the political power of the Pope from crossing them.

The Peace at Westphalia

The Thirty Years War was the final culmination of the Protestant Reformation. The Roman Catholic Church had become too corrupt. Pleonexia, or wealth addiction as described by Plato, ultimately cost the Pope his position atop the geopolitical hierarchy of Europe.

After three decades of brutal fighting, the Pope and the other belligerent powers were ready to negotiate. It was agreed that the world would be divided by international borders across which the Pope was no longer allowed to project influence. The Peace of Westphalia formally established the modern concept of the nation-state with borders, replacing the city-state as the principal unit of international politics. 

International Borders

The Treaty of Westphalia established nation-states as the fundamental basis of international relations. The known world was whacked up into sovereign nations with defined borders. And the Pope was no longer allowed to cross those borders with his influence. Countries that wished to become Protestant could decide for themselves, free from Vatican interference. In 800 AD, Pope Leo III established himself as the guy who crowns kings. But after 1648, the political influence of the Papacy was dramatically curtailed. The Treaty of Westphalia effectively re-subordinated the office of the Pope to a station below the crowned heads of Christendom.

Conclusion

The changing-of-the-guard that inaugurated the Medieval period in Europe was the crowning of Charlemagne by the Pope in 800 AD. The changing-of-the-guard that ended it was the Peace of Westphalia in 1648 AD. In between those two dates, European monarchs rarely disobeyed the Pope, who claimed to be the Vicar of Christ on Earth. But by 1648, international borders were drawn up such that the Pope would no longer be allowed to project political power across them. The Treaty of Westphalia ended the 800-year political dominance of the Vatican, established the modern nation-state, and left a power vacuum atop the political hierarchy of Europe.

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Further Reading

But though the Reformation had been saved, it suffered, along with Catholicism, from a skepticism encouraged by the coarseness of religious polemics, the brutality of the war, and the cruelties of belief. During the holocaust thousands of "witches" were put to death. Men began to doubt creeds that preached Christ and practiced wholesale fratricide. They discovered the political and economic motives that hid under religious formulas, and they suspected their rulers of having no real faith but the lust for power—though Ferdinand II had repeatedly risked his power for the sake of his faith. Even in this darkest of modern ages an increasing number of men turned to science and philosophy for answers less incarnadined than those which the faiths had so violently sought to enforce. Galileo was dramatizing the Copernican revolution, Descartes was questioning all tradition and authority, Bruno was crying out to Europe from his agonies at the stake. The Peace of Westphalia ended the reign of theology over the European mind, and left the road obstructed but passable for the tentatives of reason.

Will & Ariel Durant, The Age of Reason Begins, 1961, page 571