Hello,
Bit of a niche question but I wasn't sure where else I could go with this...
I'm chasing down a lead on how modern China thinks about and reacts to the concept of 'borders' and border disputes. But I'm missing a bibliography on the history of borders overall, unrelated to specifically China (so the theoretical underpinning? if that makes sense?)
In short, I'd like to know if there are any books out there that talk about the history of borderlands in empires and great powers. How the political center treats them, how politicians from those areas thought and acted versus those toward the capital, etcetera. I just need a survey or maybe one good book whose footnotes I can dig through.
It's a weird subject, I know, but I'm very passionate about it and really want to make sure I'm familiar with the relevant texts.
If there is no specific period to your request, I can recommend Owen Lattimore's paper titled "Origins of the Great Wall of China: A Frontier Concept in Theory and Practice" which is available in JSTOR.
His theory essentially posits that Chinese leaders, then and now, favored rigid frontiers, symbolized by the multiple Great Walls built by successive ethnically Chinese dynasties, since the rigid frontier clearly symbolized the separation of a proper Chinese state and the outsider states that they sought to defend themselves from, which were the various pastoral nomadic tribes who inhabit the areas which constitute modern-day Mongolia.
I'm afraid I may be unhelpful regarding the broader historiography of frontiers, but by 'modern' China how modern do you mean, becuase I may have a recommendation or two about frontier regions under the high Qing period in the 18th century.