Editorial, pp. 379-380
Megan Maruschke

Aufsätze, Articles

Maike Schmidt
Naturgrenzen – Stand der Forschung und Problemaufriss aus deutscher Perspektive, pp. 381-403
The idea that France was determined by geography had a decisive impact on the rise of the French nation-state and the way national territory has been imagined ever since. The myth of France’s natural borders (frontières naturelles) has been discussed by historians for decades, who asked whether or not such a political doctrine has existed before 1792. Before WW II, nationalist historians in Germany became obsessed with the role of the Rhine River within the politics of Old Regime. At least until the 1950s, the question of the Rhine dominated the hostile relations between German and French colleagues. Coming up with a volume on natural boundaries in a German-French context might therefore be irritating. The article argues that it is important to reopen the debate on natural borders. Interest in territorialization has increased recently among historians as a correlation to research in a globalized world, producing a marked interest in border studies, now finally no longer encumbered by national animosities. By revisiting the key moments of the historiographical debate and the various functions of natural features, the article shows why it is worth focusing on pre-national territoriality and pre-industrial populations. It outlines the characteristics of early modern borders and sheds light on recent approaches in environmental history in order to determine how historians can include socio-natural settings and natural resources in our perspectives on natural boundaries. The paper argues that special emphasize should be put rather on local practices of border making and social experiences than on discourses.

Henrik Schwanitz
Geografie und Reform: Die Idee der „natürlichen Grenzen“ und die Neuordnung des Raumes im rheinbündischen Sachsen, pp. 404-421
This article focuses on the idea of “natural borders”, which developed considerable urgency in the crisis-ridden period around 1800. Triggered by the “territorial revolution” following the coalition wars and the expansion of revolutionary and Napoleonic France, the idea of reorganizing political space on the basis of natural geographical features such as mountains, rivers and seas gained popularity. While the French revolutionaries and the representatives of the early German national movement sought to demarcate their own nation from the outside with reference to natural borders, the reformers in the Kingdom of Saxony presented in this article were concerned with reorganizing the interior of the state with reference to geography. Following the example of the French départements, the state’s own territory was to be unified, breaking with the old political spatial organization: the traditional territorial units were to be dissolved in favour of uniform districts and, where possible, demarcated according to natural geographical boundaries. The break with the old was ultimately manifested in the fact that in some drafts the new districts were to be given names that were no longer based on the historical regions, but on the rivers that characterized the respective district. The reorganization along geographic lines not only served to homogenize the territory and standardize the administration, but also to evoke a Saxon patriotism aimed at the “nation in miniature”. The article shows how references to nature and geography were used in this period of upheaval around 1800 to argue and legitimize the state’s own plans for reorganization. It also points to the importance of spatial-geographical factors for identity-forming processes at the beginning of the nineteenth century.

Axelle Chassagnette
Des objets multiples : fleuves et rivières dans les discours géographiques et les cartes en Europe au début de l’époque moderne (XVIe–XVIIe siècle), pp. 422-438
This article deals with the evocation and representation of rivers in geographical texts and maps in early modern Europe (sixteenth–seventeenth centuries). Acknowledging the diversity of purposes for the description and representation of rivers within geographical knowledge, it addresses three significant aspects. The first section highlights the central role played by rivers in map design and the structuring of geographical descriptions: as fairly stable elements of the landscape, they were essential reference points for geographers and cartographers. The second part examines the ways in which watercourses were used to understand and practice space, particularly in the context of travel, warfare, and economic activities. Finally, the third section identifies two clearly differentiated (but concomitant) ways of approaching watercourses: the first is a symbolic use of rivers, which makes them metonyms for a specific territory; the second is a naturalization, which integrates into geographical discourse the description of the natural characteristics of watercourses as well as questions about their origin, formation, or evolution over time. This study highlights the fact that, in the geographical discourses and texts of early modernity, watercourses are only rarely used as boundary markers.

Sandra Schieweck-Heringer
Super divisione terre Yspanie: Naturräumliche Referenzen in iberischen Grenzziehungen des 12. bis 14. Jahrhunderts, pp. 439-453
The medieval Iberian Peninsula was deeply shaped by inner-Christian as well as an interreligious frontier. The Castilian rulers in particular concluded numerous treaties with the kings of the neighboring kingdoms, containing border demarcations. This article sheds light on references to the natural environment as one means among others to draw these frontiers. While historical references prevail in the context of hierarchical feudal relationships, many treaties contained mutual territorial allocations. References to rivers or mountain passes particularly played a role within the framework of equal-ranking or friendly diplomatic relations. References had a pragmatic and descriptive, rather than a legitimating function. They do appear in combination with artificial border demarcations such as the setting of boundary stones. Against the backdrop of sociological spatial theory, Iberian border demarcations therefore are to be considered as important spatial technique. References to the natural environment seemed to have successively replaced historical arguments of border demarcation.

Isabelle Schübel
Zwischen herrschaftlicher Inszenierung und lokaler Nutzung: Der Bidassoa als fluviale Grenze im 17. Jahrhundert, pp. 454-469
The Bidassoa River, marking the border between the French province of Guyenne and the Spanish province of Guipuzcoa, was a focal point of Franco-Spanish interaction that intensified in the seventeenth century. To understand early modern border dynamics, the article examines the multifaceted role of this natural boundary as a dynamic space for royal ceremonies, diplomatic interactions and local disputes over water usage such as shipping and fishing. The river’s strategic location, particularly the island situated in its middle, made it a preferred site for royal meetings and dynastic marriages as seen in 1615 and 1660. By using Pheasant Island as a neutral negotiation ground, ceremonial challenges could be dealt with regarding the pivotal peace talks of the Treaty of the Pyrenees in 1659 and subsequent commission negotiations from 1663 to 1667. But the river was also a crucial resource for the local population, leading to significant conflicts over its management. These disputes were intertwined with state interests due to the river’s function. Thus, the Bidassoa exemplifies the conflicting dynamics in managing a river that served as an economic resource and a boundary. In the seventeenth century, dynastic, territorial, and local interests converged at the Bidassoa, where both state actors at court and local actors on the river jointly shaped the border. Consequently, the Bidassoa River was a site of both peace and conflict, illustrating the complex implications of establishing rivers as borders.

Alexandre Ruelle
Entre France et Piémont-Savoie, la limite des Alpes à l’épreuve de la diplomatie et des contradictions historico-géographiques (1713–1718), pp. 470-487
During the Congress of Utrecht (1713), Victor Amadeus II of Savoy wanted to establish the Alps as a physically marked border, therefore indisputable, based on the traces of nature – mountains and rivers – sometimes qualified as limites arcifinies and used to perpetuate the existence of a duchy threatened by French expansionism. Intended to transcend the interests of states, nature became for diplomats an essential factor to set a boundary – which replaced the moving borders of armies – justified by the principles of “summits” and “pending waters” promoted by article 4 of the Treaty of Utrecht and thereafter contested by the Dauphinois authorities, in particular by the intendant Angervilliers. However, to draw a boundary on the mountains is far from obvious due to economic exchanges between the two slopes and the existence of communities straddling both sides of the mountains for several centuries. Until the Treaty of Paris (1718), the Alps became the scene of conflicting diplomatic discussions between the French and the Piedmontese, the former defending the historical rights and uses of communities while the latter cared about geographical realities based on the traces of nature. Based on Franco-Piedmontese diplomatic correspondence, this article analyses the actors’ practices – state and regional powers – setting a boundary rather contrary to local realities since it promoted a geographical and not a historical conception of the Alps.

Florian Riedler
The Danube and the Sava as Bodies of Water and Lines of Separation: The Negotiation of the Ottoman-Habsburg Border in the Eighteenth Century, pp. 488-508
In a succession of peace treaties between 1699 and 1739 a new border between the Habsburg and the Ottoman empires was drawn in Southeastern Europe. Both parties agreed on a linear border that was to be clearly demarcated and to a large extent demilitarised along its course. In the process of drawing this new border, the big rivers of the region such as Danube and Sava but also many smaller rivers played an important role. This chapter examines the challenges for the historical actors on both sides to turn rivers into linear borders. Particularly river islands as military and economic assets undermined the idea that a body of water could easily be turned into a line of demarcation. Border commissions had to take into account the integrating and connecting functions of rivers that were related to their economic potential. At the same time, by turning rivers into borders, an additional integrating function emerged: the diplomatic negotiations surrounding the delimitation of borders served as a field for cooperation and exchange of knowledge between the rival empires.

Maike Schmidt
Die Saar als limite naturelle: Grenz- und Flussregulierung am Vorabend der Französischen Revolution, pp. 509-528
This article examines two cases of border making and river engineering in the late 18th century that crucially involved the Saar as well as the smaller river, the Blies. At that time, the French Ministry of Foreign Affairs sought to negotiate exchanges of subjects and land with various German states in order to territorialize the Eastern periphery of the Kingdom. Peter Sahlins was one of the first historians to stress the importance of France’s politique d’échange arguing that this era illustrates a non-ideological way of integrating the concept of limites naturelles (“natural boundaries”) into the official practice of the Old Regime. In the treaties concluded with the Elector of Treves (1778) and with the Countess von der Leyen (1781), micro-sections of the rivers Saar and Blies were indeed referenced as borders and determined territorial formats. But decisions on where the boundary was supposed to run largely varied as did the legal, political and economic objectives. Even if the border treaties coincided with river regulations there is no proof of a major geostrategic purpose behind the concept of natural boundaries which rather arose from international law and the idea of peaceful coexistence and neighbourliness. Nevertheless, much effort was made to realize natural boundaries, including drawing maps and physically demarcating the boundary. The article sheds light on activities such as border making, river surveying and building that confronted commissioners and engineers with nature in the field. It also outlines the role of local knowledge and the commercial function of the Saar.

Maxime Kaci
Limite et ressource : Quand les usages concurrents de la rivière Doubs provoquent des négociations diplomatiques (1720–1824), pp. 529-544
This article focuses on the Doubs canyon, where the incised river separates the kingdom of France from the principality of Neuchâtel belonging to the king of Prussia. In this area, a micro-conflict broke out in 1720 between the glassmakers of Blancheroche on the French side of the Doubs and the town of La Chaux-de-Fonds on the Neuchâtel side. A study of this conflict over the use of woodland and the river provides an insight into the socio-environmental dimensions of life on the border. It also provides an opportunity to re-examine the processes by which borders are created. Here, it is not the implementation of a previously concluded diplomatic treaty that triggers border negotiations. Instead, it was the micro-conflict, which gradually became a conflict over sovereignty, that mobilised the courts in Versailles and Berlin. This case study shows that borders were co-productions between several states and rooted in the powerful spatial imaginary of natural boundaries. But this imaginary sometimes came up against social and environmental uses. This led to complex interactions between border populations and state powers. Negotiations between these states were conducted on the ground by boundary commissions, which provided a forum for exchange and mediation. The commissioners were negotiators who tried to reconcile territorial ideals with local practices. This reconciliation was tricky, and it was not until 1824 that an agreement put an end to the conflicts by distinguishing between a line delimiting sovereignty, based on natural landmarks, and a zone for the use of natural resources.

Benjamin Furst
«Le grand cours de ce fleuve sert de barrière et fait la séparation»: la monarchie française et la gestion du Rhin-frontière aux XVIIe et XVIIIe siècles, pp. 545-562
As soon as France’s progressive conquest of Alsace began, administrators and engineers faced the many challenges that emerged out of the province’s hydrographic network and particularly the Rhine. Between strategic and economic opportunities and challenges, the agents of royal power strove to make the most of the rivers and, in this process, the Rhine occupied a singular place: it effectively separated France from the Empire, making it a particular focus of attention in fortification policies, leading to the regulation of its use and development in peace treaties, and occasionally obliging the monarchy to intervene diplomatically in order to protect the interests of its subjects. However, most of the time, the Rhine was managed like the other rivers in the province: the governor (intendant) and the Ponts et chaussées paid close attention to conflicts of use and the protection of riparian communities against flooding. Archives stay mostly silent about any overall design for a “natural” border, whether historical or geographical, from the agents of the monarchy operating in Alsace. The Rhine, however, does constitute a de facto boundary with the Empire. Combined with the other stakes involved in the conquest and subsequent administration of Alsace, this state of affair forced the crown to maintain a military, diplomatic, and administrative presence that helped make the royal state visible in its various incarnations.

Christophe Duhamelle
Au confluent de l’histoire des frontières, pp. 563-567

Bericht, Review Article

Helmut Goerlich
Die nächste Generation – der erste Band der vierten Auflage des Dreier-Grundgesetz-Kommentars, der Vorbehalt des Möglichen und rechtsdogmatische Vergleiche in einer Welt der Unterschiede, pp. 568-578

Rezensionen, Reviews

Matthias Middell
D’ici et d’ailleurs. Histoires globales de la France contemporaine, sous la direction de Quentin Deluermoz, Paris: La Découverte, 2021, pp. 579-581

Max Trecker
James Mark/Paul Betts (eds.): Socialism Goes Global: The Soviet Union and Eastern Europe in the Age of Decolonization, Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2022, pp. 581-583

Stefan Messingschlager
Katrin Hudey: China in der Literatur der Zwischenkriegszeit. Studien zum deutsch-chinesischen Austausch (1919–1937/39). Mit einer Bibliographie (Studien und Texte zur Sozialgeschichte der Literatur, Bd. 163), Berlin/Boston: De Gruyter Oldenbourg, 2023, pp. 584-586

William Blakemore Lyon
Thijs Brocades Zaalberg/Bart Luttikhuis (eds.): Empire’s Violent End. Comparing Dutch, British, and French Wars of Decolonization, 1945–1962, Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 2022, pp. 586-588

Ulf Engel
Ferial Haffajee (with Ivor Chipkin): Days of Zondo: The Fight for Freedom from Corruption, Johannesburg: Maverick, 2022, pp. 588-590

Autorinnen und Autoren | Authors, pp. 591-592