Borders & Boundaries: A History of Protection & Division - Essay Sample

Introduction

Since the dawn of civilization, borders and boundaries have existed between individual entities. From villages to kingdoms, these boundaries have defined the existence of different dominions amongst human beings. With natural features such as rivers and mountains being used to determine the borders, a more robust structure in some instances became a factor of consideration. These structures would need to be more shielded and hard to pass through. The use of walls would then be this kind of structure. As protective walls emerged around the world, they affected people's ways of living, working and their domination in warfare.

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The use of walls dates back to the beginning of the existence of humankind. The mere fact of living inside caves was for the natural aspect of the being surrounded by protective physical occurring form of walls. Humankind then moved from depending on natural occurring structures to building themselves homes surrounded by walls to provide the needed sense of being secure and also privacy from other fellow humans. As humans kept building, cities grew to create kingdoms and dynasties all over the world with a form of government in place. For these governments to protect themselves from being invaded by others, they built walls around their kingdoms. Walls were not just made for defense but also to control migration and to some territories, to signal power.

The scale of the walls has changed considerably throughout history, from simple city barriers to massive fortress among the kingdoms. In as early as 8000 BC the city of Jericho in modern day Palestine had a 600 meter long stone wall built around it (Nigro, 2014). Studies have shown that the wall was probably constructed for flood protection and protecting the city from raiders. As cities grew in ancient times, they most likely had walls built around them just like the city of Jericho. In 3000 BC the largest city in the world, Sumerian Uruk, which is modern-day Iraq, was surrounded by a 9 km wall. By around 2030 BC, ancient Sumerians had also built a 160 kilometers fortified barrier across their kingdom to allegedly keep nomadic Amorite tribes out, from getting into their territory (Spring, 2015)

In ancient Greece, they built siege-proof long walls of Athens around 460 BC. During one war with Sparta, Athens was protected by its fortifications from the city to its harbor. In around 83-260 AD, with several walls and tile structures of turf and stone known as limes, the Roman Empire strengthened its borders (Wycherley, 2015). Limes intention was to keep barbarian tribes away from the Roman Empire and also to be used for the movement of goods and peoples as customs checkpoints. The 118 kilometers Hadrian's Wall, the 60 km Antonine Wall in Scotland and the 750 km North African wall are amongst the most known limes. Roman Limes defended the empire well from rival armies.

The history of the use of walls spreads across diverse locations in the whole world, but only one wall is the most iconic of all, which is the Great Wall of China. With the wall labeled as one of the wonders of the world, it stretched to a distance of 21, 196 kilometers. Its original objective was to separate Chinese civilized farming core from the northern nomadic neighbors and to demand the disputed land. Over time the wall was a tool for controlling trade, preventing prohibited items and serving as a customs checkpoint and entry point (Jing, 2015).

The use of walls has then been in use since ancient times to modern times. From the 19th century, the world has seen the rise of walls and other similar forms of border fortifications amongst countries. Modern walls played a role in the geopolitical history of the contemporary world. As seen in ancient times, walls limited the number of access points. Moreover, as the world grew and movement of people increasing, migration management became one of the primary objectives for every country. Europe saw a rise in the use of walls as a defense mechanism just before the Second World War. Between the years of 1922 to 1940, Finland built a wall at the Soviet border, called the Mannerheim Line (Grom Et al. 2018). France also took the option of constructing a 380-kilometer Maginot line from 1929 to 1938. It was made to stop German invasion and force German forces to move around the fortifications. The Maginot Line was a line of concrete barricades, blockades, and weapons systems. Sweden also built a 500 km Skane Line on its borders, with barbed wire and shore-side concrete walls armed with engine pistols and cannons. The Alpine Wall of Mussolini in Italy, built between the years of 1930 to 1942 was the defensive fortification system for the 1,851 km of its border with France, Switzerland, Austria, and Yugoslavia (Grom Et al. 2018).

The United Nations, which was formed after the Second World War made countries to start recognizing the political and territorial borders of each other. A diplomatic triumph and peaceful coexistence would have made the need for frontier walls and fences obsolete. However, there have been regional conflicts, and security walls are still becoming a standard solution. Israel is one of the countries that used the system of walls as a form of the border security barrier. In a 1967 six day war with Egypt, Israel built a 150 km sand wall supported by a concrete wall, along the Suez Canal (Larteguy, 2014). Walls have also been used in recent years to mark a demilitarized zone between the North and South Korea. The two countries built a 243 km heavily fortified demilitarized zone in the late 1970s.

Throughout the history of border walls and its use, the Berlin wall was another iconic structure that highlighted the reliance of walls as a form of barrier. East Germany's Communist government built the Berlin Wall (Agh, 2014). They built a 150 kilometers barbed wire and a concrete wall. The wall had electrical sensors and dog runs to ensure maximum security which employed approximately 12,000 soldiers and 1,000 dogs. The Berlin wall operated much like a prison fortification system to keep Western fascists from entering the socialist East Germany state. The wall collapsed along with the ideology that supported it after standing for 28 years.

Conclusion

In conclusion, humankind still embraces the use of walls as barriers. Today, at least 77 walls stand as separation barriers, while some are still in debate and budgeted for to be built (Hjelmgaard, 2019). In areas such as the borderline between Kenya and Somalia, a border wall has been suggested to be part of the solution for Kenya, in the fight against a terror group called the Al-Shabaab from Somalia (Cannon, 2016). As the world also experiences a migrant crisis, the building of walls to manage migration is becoming a popular topic of discussion to many governments. The most recent one, being the building of a new wall between the United States of America and Mexico. The ideology of the wall stirs mixed reactions from American citizens if a wall is the right kind of measure. However, as President Trump pushes for the building of the wall, it portrays the idea that its effectiveness and significance, is still valid for humankind to co-exist.

References

Agh, A. (2014). The fall of the Berlin Wall and European politics: perspectives of new Europe in the early twenty-first century. In Routledge Handbook of European Politics (pp. 160-175). Routledge.

Cannon, B. (2016). Terrorists, Geopolitics and Kenya's Proposed Border Wall with Somalia. Journal of Terrorism research, 7(2)

GROM, J. P., FIKFAK, A., & SKANSI, L. (2018). FORTIFICATIONS OF THE RAPALLO BORDER AND THEIR ROLE AS CO-CREATORS OF SPACE. Science: Future of Lithuania, 10.

Hjelmgaard, K. (2019). From 7 to 77: There's been an explosion in building border walls since World War II. [online] Usatoday.com. Available at: https://www.usatoday.com/story/news/world/2018/05/24/border-walls-berlin-wall-donald-trump-wall/553250002/ [Accessed 12 May 2019].

Jing, A. (2015). A History of the Great Wall of China. World Scientific.

Larteguy, J. (2014). The Walls of Israel. Rowman & Littlefield

Nigro, L. (2014). The archaeology of collapse and resilience: Tell es-Sultan/ancient Jericho as a case study. Overcoming Catastrophes. Essays on disastrous agents characterization and resilience strategies in pre-classical Southern Levant, Rome <> Studies on the Archaeology of Palestine and Transjordan, 11, 55-85.

Spring, P. (2015). Great Walls and Linear Barriers. Pen and Sword.

Wycherley, R. E. (2015). The stones of Athens. Princeton University Press.