Research on borders and its theory has a very long tradition in historical science. At the end of the nineteenth century Frederic Jackson Turner pointed out the significance of a border from the American point of view. It was a border treated as a mere sphere, as a transgression, but not as a line. In 1955 on the Tenth International Congress of the Historical Sciences in Rome a huge discussion about Jackson’s theory and its usability for European history broke up. As a result Jackson’s theory started to be used also for European examples of borderlands (but not only) and nowadays we can observe a enormous escalation of social border history works. Nearly all themes, from ancient empires history till the present day, were already touched in border research. But, what it is all about? What are the most important points of border theory?

Border theory tries to define what it is border at all. The question sounds quite silly but it is not as easy as it seems to be. In whole Europe and in all European languages we can easily see that the words concerning the general concept of “border” have a very similar root. The English word frontier, the German terms Grenze, Grenzgebiet (borderland), the French frontière, the Spanish frontier and even the Gaelic teorainn have a very similar etymon and they all mean more or less frontier, border in the English sense of the word. To point it out – European terms suggest a general demarcation and the meaning is the same for the Slavonic granica, the German Grenze or the Greek horos (“marker”). Certainly there are some differences. Frontiercan be seen more as a linear connotation while border more like a zone. Using the same perspective, Lucien Febvre pointed out years ago that the French word frontière has some kind of military meaning while the word limite means border with a more peaceful connotation. Some interesting differences can be seen comparing occidental and oriental examples. The Turkish word uj has nearly the same meaning as its European equivalent. But the Arabic thagr (“mouth”, “breach”) and the Chinese guan (“gate” or “passage”) implicate a binding function of borders.

The easiest theory of border states that it is a “zone” between two or more states thorugh which they get into relation. That is why we should distinguish borderlands from the inner parts of every state. Border is so to say a tangency point, a non – homogenous space phenomenon. German science defined two different types of borders from a social point of view – Zusammenwachsgrenze (“converging frontiers”) and Trennungsgrenze (“frontiers of separation”) to characterize the social function of a border. Nowadays some scientists analyze “unstable”, “enclosing” or “expanding” frontiers. For instance one can define as an “expanding” one the American frontier in the second part of the nineteenth century. On the other hand, the Polish – German frontier in the second part of the twentieth century is an example of “frontier of separation”. Nevertheless frontiers never stay unchangeable in their function and from today’s perspective the Polish – German frontier has a converging denotation.

[Lees het volledige artikel in Donau 2009/2]
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Het volledige artikel is te lezen in Donau 2009/02.