Papers by Kerry Goettlich
American Political Science Review, 2021
Most scholars agree the rise of states led to modern territoriality. Yet globally the transition ... more Most scholars agree the rise of states led to modern territoriality. Yet globally the transition to precise boundaries occurred most often in colonies, and there are virtually no systematic explanations of its occurrence outside Europe. This article explains how precise boundaries emerged in the earliest context where they were regularly and generally implemented: seventeenth- and eighteenth-century colonial North America. Unlike explanations of modern territoriality in Europe, it argues property boundary surveys became an entrenched practice on the part of settlers and were a readily available response to intercolonial boundary disputes. After independence, settlers who were accustomed to surveys pursued linear boundaries with Britain, Spain, and Russia. Moreover, the article argues that linear borders (delimited linearly and typically physically demarcated), not sovereignty, are constitutive of modern territoriality. By disentangling the literature’s Eurocentric confusion between modern territoriality and sovereign statehood, the article makes possible a global comparative study of the emergence of modern territoriality.
International Political Sociology, 2022
This article theorizes connected memory, or in other words how people remember each other's memor... more This article theorizes connected memory, or in other words how people remember each other's memories, through the connected histories of territorial partition in different contexts. It claims that social memories can travel beyond their original context, pushing beyond efforts to understand supranational "mnemonic communities," or to understand cosmopolitan memory as a thin memory community encompassing all humanity. It builds on the idea of "connected histories," arguing that existing approaches to social memory in world politics either neglect connections across national and regional boundaries or scale up the national model to the global level. The article uses the history of territorial partitions as an illustration of three types of connected memory: sympathetic, vicarious, and modular. Partition has often been studied in comparative or aggregative ways, ruling out the possibility that partitions affect each other. But from the partitions of Poland to the breakup of the Ottoman Empire, to Ireland, Palestine, and India, partitions have often been events remembered beyond the national context and in the plural. Such memories have, in turn, altered the imaginable possibilities of the future, for example, by providing precedents for or warnings about future partitions. Este artÃculo teoriza sobre la memoria conectada, o, en otras palabras, sobre cómo las personas recuerdan las memorias de los demás, a través de las historias conectadas de la partición territorial en diferentes Goettlich, Kerry. (2022) Connected Memories:
European Journal of International Relations, 2019
This article argues that the dominance of precise, linear borders as an ideal in the demarcation ... more This article argues that the dominance of precise, linear borders as an ideal in the demarcation of territory is an outcome of a relatively recent and ongoing historical process, and that this process has had important effects on international politics since circa 1900. Existing accounts of the origins of territorial sovereignty are in wide disagreement largely because they fail to specify the relationship between territory and borders, often conflating the two concepts. I outline a history of the linearization of borders which is separate from that of territorial sovereignty, having a very different timeline and featuring different actors, and offer an explanation for the dominance of this universalizing system of managing and demarcating space, based on the concept of rationalization. Finally I describe two broad ways in which linearizing borders has affected international politics, by making space divisible in new ways, and underpinning hierarchies by altering the distribution of geographical knowledge resources.
Routledge Handbook of Historical International Relations (Edited by Benjamin de Carvalho, Julia Costa Lopez, Halvard Leira), 2021
The concepts of 'borders' and 'boundaries' are in some sense inherently central to International ... more The concepts of 'borders' and 'boundaries' are in some sense inherently central to International Relations (IR). Yet the terms 'border' and 'boundary', as well as related concepts such as 'frontier' and 'territory', are difficult to define and have shifted in meaning over time and space. Moreover, historical IR is an area of the discipline where comparatively little work has been done which takes as its primary goal the analysis of 'borders' or 'boundaries' per se, either in terms of what those concepts have meant in the past, or in terms of what has happened on borderlines or in the spaces between polities. That said, there is plenty of IR scholarship which, in one way or another, engages with the history of borders and boundaries, as well as scholarship in other disciplines on the history of borders which IR has made use of. This chapter provides a brief overview of this work, approaching the topic from two different angles. First, we review Historical IR scholarship which has been concerned with changes over long periods of time in the international system, which engages in one way or another with the character and role of borders and boundaries. Second, we explore a number of themes in IR research on territory and borders more generally in which scholars either draw on historical work or could fruitfully do so. In the final section, we point out some challenges in working with the topic which we suggest historical IR should consider, as well as opportunities for future research.
Oxford Research Encyclopedia of International Studies, 2020
Since roughly the late 19th century, international borders have generally been characterized by l... more Since roughly the late 19th century, international borders have generally been characterized by linearity, or the appearance as a series of one-dimensional points, connected by straight lines. Prior to this, various kinds of frontiers existed globally, some of them being more linear than others, but most included some kind of formal ambiguity. International relations (IR) often takes for granted the historical process which brought about the glob al linearization of borders, culminating in the late 19th century and still ongoing in ocean spaces and in outer space. But because cross-border relations are the main substance of inquiry in IR, many theories and areas of study in IR contain some perspective on that process, at least implicitly. Theories of linear borders can be traced back to geographers of the late 19th century and early 20th century, who were primarily concerned with issues of colonial administration, and then the First World War. Despite internal debates, this literature affirmed that the precise delimitation and demarcation of borders was an important part of a progressive Western civilization emanating from Europe. IR during the Cold War was less concerned with the nature of borders, the assumption being that all borders were already effectively linear. Yet the legacy of earlier border studies remained and set the context for discus sions of how the drawing of linear borders might be related to "state failure" in the Global South. The rise to prominence of globalization narratives built on previous understandings of the history of borders, by anticipating a future era of borders declining in relevance. Other interventions have led in different directions, however, pointing to colonial history as central to the origins of linear borders, on one hand, and on the other hand anticipating not a borderless future but one in which borders are increasingly heterogeneous and ubiquitous.
Mapping, Connectivity, and the Making of European Empires (Edited by Luis Lobo-Guerrero, Laura Lo Presti, Filipe Dos Reis), 2021
Property and territory have often been thought of as related concepts and as related ways of gove... more Property and territory have often been thought of as related concepts and as related ways of governing space. Little work has been done, however, to place this relationship in rich historical context. This chapter looks at this relationship in the context of the Thirteen Colonies of North America, where a surveying practice was integral at first to the creation of individual properties in land, and then to the management of territorial disputes between colonies. On one hand, reliance on a gradually emerging surveying practice made it possible to manage the distribution of land without great means of direct coercion, but on the other, it created peculiar kinds of problems in managing disputes between colonies.
The Disorder of Things, 2019
Millennium: Journal of International Studies, 2018
Book Reviews by Kerry Goettlich
International Affairs, 2017
Once within borders: territories of power, wealth, and belonging since 1500. By Charles S. Maier.... more Once within borders: territories of power, wealth, and belonging since 1500. By Charles S. Maier. Cambridge, MA, and London: Harvard University Press. 2016. 387pp. £23.95. ISBN 978 0 674 05978 8. Available as e-book.
Edited Journals by Kerry Goettlich
Millennium: Journal of International Studies, 2018
Millennium: Journal of International Studies, 2018
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Papers by Kerry Goettlich
Book Reviews by Kerry Goettlich
Edited Journals by Kerry Goettlich