Scholars and experts from the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill and King’s College London recently co-wrote and edited an essay collection covering more than 200 years of global borderland history. Palgrave Macmillan published the collection, Borderlands in World History, 1700–1914, on May 30, 2014.
The collection was edited by Paul Readman, senior lecturer in modern British history at King’s College London; Cynthia Radding, Gussenhoven Distinguished Professor of Latin American Studies and professor of history at UNC; and Chad Bryant, associate professor of Central and Eastern European history at UNC.
American poet Robert Frost famously wrote, “Good fences make good neighbors.” However on the world stage, fences and borders are rarely so clear, and borderlands are often sites of conflict, culture and change.
In the 200 years covered by the collection, numerous authoritative institutional presences—many of them new to world history—attempted to establish borders, thus forming the basis for a myriad of reactions, counter-reactions and interactions. These global borderlands were shaped by industrialization, the development of the modern city, faster means of communication, the spread of imperialism and the rise of the modern nation-state, and the effects were felt by more people than ever before.
The collection includes case studies in the Americas, Europe, Africa, Asia and Australia. The essays are accompanied by maps designed specifically for the collection.
The book was the outcome of the “Borderlands as Physical Reality: Producing Place in the Eighteenth and Nineteenth Centuries” conference held in London in October 2011 and co-hosted by the history departments at KCL and UNC. West Africa expert Lisa Lindsay and historian of modern Europe Lloyd Kramer, both professors in the UNC department of history, also participated in the conference and contributed essays to the collection.
The collection was born of the academic partnership that formalized between UNC and King’s College London in 2005, and which has flourished for more than a decade. The alliance was initiated between the UNC College of Arts and Sciences and King’s School of Arts and Humanities and School of Social Science and Public Policy; it continues to grow and include additional schools and disciplines campus-wide on both sides.
“The history departments on both sides of this partnership have built a robust and enduring collaboration,” said Bob Miles, UNC’s King’s College London partnership liaison and associate dean for study abroad and international exchanges in the UNC College of Arts and Sciences. “Their joint activities are truly a model of success in global partnerships, benefiting our faculty, graduate students and undergraduates.”
Article by UNC Global.
