From frontiers to borders: how colonial technicians created modern territoriality

• Department of Political and Social Sciences

This International Relations Working Group session features a book talk by Dr. Kerry Goettlich (University of Reading) who will discuss his forthcoming book to be published by Cambridge University Press in June 2025.

How did modern territoriality emerge and what are its consequences? This book examines these key questions with a unique global perspective. Kerry Goettlich argues that linear boundaries are products of particular colonial encounters, rather than being essentially an intra-European practice artificially imposed on colonised regions. He reconceptualises modern territoriality as a phenomenon separate from sovereignty and the state, based on expert practices of delimitation and demarcation. Its history stems from the social production of expertise oriented towards these practices. Employing both primary and secondary sources, From Frontiers to Borders examines how this expertise emerged in settler colonies in North America and in British India – cases which illuminate a range of different types of colonial rule and influence. It also explores some of the consequences of the globalisation of modern territoriality, exposing the colonial origins of Boundary Studies, and the impact of boundary experts on the Paris Peace Conference of 1919–20.

Speaker: Kerry Goettlich is a Lecturer in International Security at the University of Reading. His research examines long-term change in international practices of territory and boundaries. His research has appeared in journals such as the American Political Science Review and the European Journal of International Relations, and his book, From frontiers to borders: how colonial technicians created modern territoriality, will be published by Cambridge University Press in 2025. 

The Zoom link will be sent upon registration.