Globalization is dying, maybe even dead. Borders are back, baby. That’s the message in Jonn Elledge’s sparkling Brief History of the World in 47 Borders. In this romp around world history , Elledge introduces us to 47 of the world’s oddest borders including particularly weird ones in Detroit, Kaliningrad and Bolivia. So should be celebrating or mourning the rebirth of the border? Elledge is in mourning. A self-described progressive who grew up on Star Trek dreams of planetary unity, he sees nationalism's resurgence since 2016 as "quite a bad thing." He blames economic stagnation—when the pie stops growing, generous approaches to migration and distribution become much harder to sustain. I’m more sanguine. Whatever globalist bureaucrats at the UN or EU promised us, borders were never going away. As a species, we humans are agoraphobic. The Trekkies are wrong. The claustrophobia of the border is what gives us our sense of space.
1. Borders are having a political moment - The "liberal hegemony" that promised borderless globalization has been collapsing since 2016 (Brexit, Trump), making nationalism and territorial division the dominant political force again.
2. Economic stagnation drives border obsession - When economies aren't growing and people aren't getting richer, generous policies on migration and wealth distribution become much harder to sustain politically.
3. Maps shape leaders' minds - Trump's fixation on his Oval Office Ukraine map shows how visual representations of territory directly influence foreign policy decisions and geopolitical thinking.
4. Most "historic" borders are recent inventions - What we assume are natural, ancient boundaries (like the Berlin Wall, Bangladesh, or even Germany's division) are often just decades old, showing how arbitrary our sense of "normal" geography really is.
5. Borders create unexpected consequences - From Bolivia maintaining a navy despite being landlocked to Detroit's expansion bankrupting the city, where you draw lines has profound, often unintended effects on politics, economics, and culture for generations.
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