Welcome to the Frontiers, Borderlands, and Liminal Spaces AMA!
Frontiers evoke the imagination. They exist on the edge of the known, on the border of chaos, the last line of comfort from the wilds beyond. Power ebbs and flows on this ragged edge as languages, ethnicities, and empires negotiate their position over imaginary lines etched across the landscape, or sunk deep into the heart of the sea. Here, on the edge of the world, borderlands and liminal spaces allow unique insight into exerting power, resistance through conventional and unconventional means, and the lives of everday people inhabiting a changing world.
From the deep blue waters of the Pacific to the pirate coasts of the Caribbean, from the Red Sea outposts of Ancient Rome to the northwestern Ming frontier, and from the lines drawn over the Middle East to the landscapes of South Africa our panelists invite you to Ask Us Anything!
/u/Abrytan focuses on the history of the Second and Third Reichs and can answer questions about its disputed territories and borderlands.
/u/anthropology_nerd focuses on Native American demography on the northern frontier of the Spanish Empire in North America, as well as the evolving eastern borderlands during the first centuries of contact. Specific foci of interest include the Native American slave trade, epidemic disease transmission, and structural violence theory. They will be available to answer questions Friday evening and Saturday, EST.
/u/AshkenazeeYankee focuses on central and eastern Europe in the Early Modern Period, with emphasis on the experiences of ethnic and religious minority groups in the Polish-Lithuanian commonwealth. They remind you that "Ukraine" literally means "border".
/u/b1uepenguin focuses on history of empire in the Pacific with an emphasis on the reorganization of space, or the attempt to bring European idea's of order and rationality to an aquatic world. Topics include the attempt to extend state authority over island chains whose oceanic borders made some many times larger than the European nations who claimed them, the creation of capital towns and cities in an attempt to direct/observe oceanic traffic, and the extension of state authority to underwater realms.
/u/CommodoreCoCo is an archaeologist working in Bolivia who studies transformations in regional and political identities. He is particularly interested in how polities throughout the Andean past have used frontier encounters with the "other" to reinforce cohesive group identify, even as those encounters generate new culture. These encounters include the borderlands between ancient Andean polities, the ongoing battles between Aymara natives and Spanish colonizers, and the attempts by early archaeologists to discover a "final frontier" of archaeology in the fledgling nation states of Peru and Bolivia.
/u/CptBuck has worked professionally as a journalist, researcher, and analyst on the contemporary Middle East. His primary historical interest is the drawing of Middle Eastern borders during and after the First World War and the effects those decisions have had down to the present. They will be available to answer questions on Saturday.
/u/depanneur looks at people who lived in liminal social spaces in early medieval Ireland such as hermits, outlaws or the mentally ill, specifically by studying Old Irish terminology for mental illness.
u/Elphinstone1842 focuses on the history of the Caribbean in the 17th century when it was a frontier of constantly warring European colonial powers, privateers/buccaneers using the conflict as a pretext to plunder, and even natives allying with or against the Spanish as it suited them. A phrase used in the 17th century summing this up—“No peace beyond the line”—referred to the impracticality of enforcing official treaties and alliances in the New World beyond the Tropic of Cancer and prime meridian so that it was essentially in a constant state of war.
/u/FlavivsAetivs Focuses on the History, Historiography, and Ethnography of the Romans, Germanics, and the Huns in the 5th Century AD and can answer questions regarding the late Roman military limes and also the Hun/Xiongnu interactions across the frontier with the Han and Ancient China, Sogdia, Bactria, and Sassanid Persia.
u/JimeDorje is an M.A. in Tibetology, specializing in the history of Tibet, Bhutan, and Buddhism in Central and South Asia and can answer questions on the religious, political, and social transformations of the Himalayan Kingdoms.
u/keyilan is a historical linguist working with undocumented language communities on the India-Burma-China border in politically contested land. As part of this work he has had to become familiar with the various insurgent groups, civil wars and migrations that arise in such perpetual frontiers these make up in the forgotten spaces between South, East and Southeast Asia. He will be answering questions about NE India, Upper Burma and South China, from the 19th century on.
/u/khosikulu specializes on land and landscape formation from the 17th to early 20th centuries in present-day South Africa, Lesotho, Botswana, and eSwatini, as well as African settler colonies generally, and can answer questions about political and social processes of colonization and cultural interaction in contested zones of Afro-European contact.
/u/lordtiandao focuses on the state's employment of officials, military officers, and soldiers and its relationship with state formation and state capacity during the Song-Yuan-Ming period. He can answer questions on the external and internal borderlands of southwest China (Yunnan, Guizhou, and Sichuan) during the Yuan, Ming, and early Qing dynasties as well as the northwestern frontier (Gansu and Xinjiang) during the Ming. They will be available to answer questions Friday afternoon and Saturday.
/u/rusoved is interested in language policy and language contact in 19th-20th century Eastern Europe, specifically in Ukraine and Macedonia. He can also speak more generally about language contact issues in the Balkan sprachbund. They will be available Saturday PDT.
/u/Steelcan909 focuses on Germanic "migratory" movements into the former Roman provinces of Britannia and Gaul, relations between Christianity and Germanic religious traditions in these areas, and Anglo-Saxon and Norse history.
/u/Tiako focuses on trade and interaction across the borders of the Roman empire, how it was affected by politics, and how it affected the societies and economies involved. Particular focus on the Red Sea.
I’ve heard the American frontier described as a “release valve” for dissenters and rebels. How true is this?
Was there ever any equivalent in any other large nation/empire (Rome, Ming dynasty unified China, etc.)?
If my pop history memory serves me right, Qing China eventually took control over the Tarim Basin (today southern Xinjiang) to solidify control over the silk road trade. With the advent of Portugese, Dutch, all in all western European traders and their East India Companies taking over trade and exercising physical control, and in a similar matter Russia and their Cossacks doing the same to the north, did China try to extend their control over the silk route further into central Asia? Was there an attempt to increase the attractivity of the route, or make it easier to trade alongside it?
How should I imagine the Tarim Basin / Yarkand / Kashgar cultures/political entities during the silk road, when the alternative sea trade routes have been established, and when the Qing took over?
Thanks for doing this! A question for u/CommodoreCoCo:
During the early formation of Latin American nations in the 19th century, the Incas (like the Aztecs) were held up as national symbols in many countries. This often went hand in hand with the exclusion of other native groups from the national "pantheons" - as e.g. Rebecca Earle has discussed. I'm wondering how this process played out in some Andean nations like Peru and Bolivia? And whether/how less internationally "famous" indigenous groups were further marginalized there through this process? (Hopefully this isn't too broad for an AMA)
To the panel: In decolonial theory, scholars like Gloria Anzaldúa and Walter Mignolo introduced the concept of "border thinking". It's used to describe forms of knowledge that lie outside of a "Western" or European canon, and can form in response to colonialism and/or Western modernity. This can mean that "‘Modern’ science, philosophy, and the social sciences are not grounded in Russian, Chinese and Arabic languages", and that " in the global distribution of intellectual and scientific labour, knowledge produced in English, French or German does not need to take into account knowledge in Russian, Chinese and Arabic" (Mignolo & Tlostanova, 2006:206), creating qualitive differences between forms of knowledge production.
In the areas you study, what role do such ways of thinking from the outside that use alternative knowledge traditions play? Or: do other forms of knowledge take on special importance in border regions, possibly more so than in (or possibly in opposition to) more metropolitan/central regions?
How do I have to imagine the "Wild Fields" of Ukraine and the Cossak colonization? How was it possible that the Nogai, Crimean, Golden Horde Khanates could mount raids into Russia & the Ottoman Empire, depopulating the borderlands or making them dangerous, yet somehow the Cossak colonization happened and they organized enough to eventually take on power themselves?
I have three questions:
What was society like on the borders of Eastern Europe from the 14th to the 18th centuries? As in the size and prosperity of towns, the nature of class relations - how prevalent was serfdom?
Did any European power actually succeed in establishing a substantial and durable system of control over the tiny islands of Micronesia and Polynesia? Was this economically beneficient in the long term?
What factors influenced the drawing of borders during the dissolution of the British empire? I am particularly interested in India and Israel-Palestine.
This question is on the Pacific boundaries.
When modern colonial came to being among the Pacific island chains, were these boundaries based more off of historical, practical, arbitrary, cultural or linguistic boundaries? Did different powers try different means, and how much did the people on the islands have a say on these colonial boundaries? After independence, was it expected that there might be some serioua internal or external issues with the modern borders?
It seems like there is kind of a big tension between Chinese borderland studies with the larger field of global history. Global historians traditionally have described the Ming and Qing as closed, introspective states, yet this older interpretation seems to ignore the substantial state building efforts carried out in many liminal spaces and the opportunities this afforded many individuals to use these policies for their own gain. Additionally, locals seem to have been able to win substantial autonomy and local power by working with government officials. Can anyone help me understand this tension better? Why were the Ming and Qing so interested in expanding into borderland spaces when there was not a lot of money (compared to lucrative Southeast Asian and Indian Ocean trade) to be made nor power to be had away from rice producing areas and cities? Was it about creating order out of chaos? Was it about establishing trade relationships? Or perhaps expanding the reach of the state to the historical "high water marks" of past dynasties? Or maybe some combination of all of these that fluctuated over time?
A couple for /u/keyilan about Yunnan and the Panthay Rebellion (apologies if I've been too specific):
What was the aim of the Pingnan Guo? Was it to create a separate Hui state, or did it aim, like the Taiping, to overthrow the Qing? Did it manage to establish diplomatic relations with neighbouring countries like Burma or the Vietnamese states?
Hey all, thanks for the AMA. I have more of a historiographic question. How have borderland historians of the American Southwest or colonial Spanish America reacted to Pekka Hämäläinen's The Comanche Empire? I don't know if any of you all have read this book, but I believe it made a fairly big splash recently. What I am more interested in is how works such as this (which have attempted to "face east from Indian country" to borrow from Richter) have reshaped our understanding of what borderlands are/were historically? How has "centering" borderland peoples who rarely wrote textual sources changed the interpretation of borderlands and/or methods used by borderland historians? Big questions, I know, but hopefully, there is plenty of space for musings or your own perspective that goes off in whatever direction you'd like. Thanks again!
Hey /u/Elphinstone1842, I have a couple of questions for you:
Your blurb mentions "natives allying with or against the Spanish as it suited them." I am curious about this. Are you mentioning indigenous peoples of the Caribbean islands? Were there still indigenous groups who were taking advantage of the fractured nature of the Caribbean "borderwater" to find greater opportunities for autonomy on the islands? Or are you referring to indigenous peoples of the mainland in places like Colombia, Yucatan, Mosquito Coast, Gulf coast of Mexico, or Florida? Either way, I'm interested. How did indigenous peoples use maritime borderlands to their advantage?
Another probably unrelated question: How did the expansion of sugar production in the Caribbean change (or not change) the "constant state of war" you mention?
Thanks everyone for the AMA. /u/khosikulu: I imagine when colonists began to settle frontier areas there were rich stories of things like cannibalism and violence, and generally the 'savagery' of Natives which would have created an environment of fear and paranoia among settlers. How well do we see this fear of Africans and threats of attack reflect in settler journals and letters, if this was the case? And in other media? It's difficult to measure an emotion, but are there any resources you'd recommend that focus on fear in the African frontier?
The Teutonic Order was able to create its own State in Prussia and Livonia, building from scratch (mostly) it’s roads, towns, infrastructure, and Frontier Castle-Lines.
Was these castle-lines of the Ordenstaat of Prussia and Terra Marina more secure than other realms or about equal?
What was the immediate reaction of the Arab peoples when the British and French carved out their own zones of control in the middle east instead of allowing it all to be a unified Arab state?
Hi u/depanneur, I don't know very much about liminal spaces, could you share something about the shift into modern liminal spaces from their medieval counterparts?
To what degree can we consider France (not just the non-French speaking regions, but Paris, the peasantry etc.) to have been colonized by the French nobility, before expanding out to Africa etc.? The same with England (Manchester as a colonized area etc.)
So an ever expanding frontier of some sort?