Awards

• Nominated for Jerry Bentley Prize 2017
• Nominated for Laura Shannon Prize 2018
• Nominated for Leo Gershoy Award 2017
• Nominated for Lepgold Book Prize 2017

Overview

Throughout history, human societies have been organized preeminently as territories-politically bounded regions whose borders define the jurisdiction of laws and the movement of peoples. At a time when the technologies of globalization are eroding barriers to communication, transportation, and trade, Once Within Borders explores the fitful evolution of territorial organization as a worldwide practice of human societies. Master historian Charles S. Maier tracks the epochal changes that have defined territories over five centuries and draws attention to ideas and technologies that contribute to territoriality's remarkable resilience. Territorial boundaries transform geography into history by providing a framework for organizing political and economic life. But properties of territory-their meanings and applications-have changed considerably across space and time. In the West, modern territoriality developed in tandem with ideas of sovereignty in the seventeenth century. Sovereign rulers took steps to fortify their borders, map and privatize the land, and centralize their sway over the populations and resources within their domain. The arrival of railroads and the telegraph enabled territorial expansion at home and abroad as well as the extension of control over large spaces. By the late nineteenth century, the extent of a nation's territory had become an index of its power, with overseas colonial possessions augmenting prestige and wealth and redefining territoriality. Turning to the geopolitical crises of the twentieth century, Maier pays close attention to our present moment, asking in what ways modern nations and economies still live within borders and to what degree our societies have moved toward a post-territiorial world.

Full Product Details

9780674059788

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Reviews

Charles Maier's Once Within Borders is a splendid account of the changing notions of territory over the past five centuries. Maier is among the most distinguished living historians and this timely book has been years in the making...He shows how changing geopolitics, the advent of commercial society, rise of industrial technology and development of new techniques of governance impinged upon evolving the notions of territory.--Srinath Raghavan Mint (12/26/2016)

Charles Maier's <i>Once Within Borders</i> is a splendid account of the changing notions of territory over the past five centuries. Maier is among the most distinguished living historians and this timely book has been years in the making...He shows how changing geopolitics, the advent of commercial society, rise of industrial technology and development of new techniques of governance impinged upon evolving the notions of territory.--Srinath Raghavan Mint (12/26/2016)

A brilliant synthesis of a wealth of empirical material about the birth and development of what is conventionally considered to be modernity.--Geoff Eley, author of <i>Nazism as Fascism</i>

Author Information

Charles S. Maier is Leverett Saltonstall Research Professor of History at Harvard University. A member of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences and of the Council on Foreign Relations, he has written a number of award-winning books, including Recasting Bourgeois Europe, The Unmasterable Past, Dissolution: The Crisis of Communism and the End of East Germany, and Once Within Borders.

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