The Nature of Frontiers and Boundaries

This chapter deals with the problem of clarifying, and disentangling for the purpose of theoretical understanding, the two elements which combine what we commonly call frontiers and boundaries: the physical and the political that is moral and legal, element. Historically, the word implied what it suggests etymologically, that is, that which is in front. The importance of the relative compatibility of cultures which meet on a given frontier can be illustrated by comparing the advance of the Russian and the northern Chinese frontier. Both of these frontiers have been biting into the heritage of the Mongol Empire. The nature of frontiers differs greatly from the nature of boundaries. Frontiers are a characteristic of rudimentary socio-political relations; relations marked by rebelliousness, lawlessness, and/or absence of laws. Both frontiers and boundaries are manifestations of socio-political forces, and as such are subjective, not objective.