Geography Reference
In-Depth Information
Field Note
“Seeing the border between Italy and Slovenia marked
by a plaque on the ground reminded me of crossing
this border with my family as a teenager. The year was
1973, and after waiting in a long line we fi nally reached
the place where we showed our passports to the
authorities. They asked us many questions and they
looked through the luggage in our trunk. Now that
Slovenia is part of the European Union and has signed
the Schengen Agre e ment eliminating border controls
between countries, crossing that same border today is
literally like a walk in the park.”
Figure 8.20
Piazza della Transalpina
A square divided between the towns of Gorizia, Italy and
Nova Gorica, Slovenia.
© Alexander B. Murphy.
and Canada, and several of the Great Lakes of East Africa are
borders between Congo and its eastern neighbors.
Physical features sometimes make convenient
political boundaries, but topographic features are not
static. Rivers change course, volcanoes erupt, and slowly,
mountains erode. People perceive physical-political
boundaries as stable, but many states have entered ter-
ritorial confl icts over borders based on physical fea-
tures (notably Chile and Argentina). Similarly, physical
boundaries do not necessarily stop the fl ow of people or
goods across boundaries, leading some states to rein-
force physical boundaries with human-built obstacles
(the United States on the Rio Grande). The stability of
boundaries has more to do with local historical and geo-
graphical circumstances than with the character of the
boundary itself.
Boundary Disputes
The boundary we see as a line on a map is the product
of a complex series of legal steps that begins with a writ-
ten description of the boundary. Sometimes that legal
description is old and imprecise. Sometimes it was dic-
tated by a stronger power that is now less dominant,
giving the weaker neighbor a reason to argue for change.
At other times the geography of the borderland has actu-
ally changed; the river that marked the boundary may
have changed course, or a portion of it has been cut off.
