Territoriality

“ When it is contiguous with the border of another state or race, the two form a zone in which ascendency from one side or the other is being established. The boundary fluctuates, for equilibrium of the contending forces is established rarely and for only short periods. The more aggressive people throws out across this debatable zone, along the lines of least resistance or greatest attraction, long streamers of occupation; so that the frontier takes on the form of a fringe of settlement, whose interstices are occupied by a corresponding fringe of the displaced people. ”

“ As soon, however, as necessity for increased area leads to the contiguity of nations, the conditions alter. The state that occupies but a small region strives to emulate its larger neighbour. It either gains so much land as is necessary to restore equality, or forces a decrease in the neighbour’s territory. ”

“ Without a yard of territorial property—with no wealth but their ships—no force but their crews—and no hope but from their sword, they swarmed upon the boisterous ocean, and plundered in every district they could approach. ”

“ Since the territorial area of the earth is divided among different States, inter-State relations must occupy much of a State’s time and energy. The natural tendency of a State is to expand its power, and externally such expansion takes place by conquest of a territorial area. ”

“ In the geological structure of this continent, Nature seems to have prepared it for the occupation of a single people. I cannot doubt, then, that continental unity is the great, the supreme law of our public life. ”

“ It is true that these arrangements about the territory allotted to each are determined in some measure by the natural features, as we call them—by mountain ranges and by big rivers—but if it were not for these arrangements there is no reason in nature why the countries should be divided out among mankind as they are, and the divisions are continually being changed all through the story. ”

“ It is precisely when the land is thinly populated, and when therefore the population is in a fluid condition, that collisions will and must occur. Given a continent like Europe at the present day, the geography of which is accurately known, the resources of whose soil in every part have been fully gauged, and whose surface has been for many generations parcelled out in effective occupation, one province to one race, another to another; then, when the peoples are crystallized in their respective moulds, war is not inevitable ”

“ The fighting is thus one link in a chain of events whose end is the attainment of reproduction; it is a relationship in an inter-related process, and to speak of it as being even directly related to the territory is scarcely sufficient, for it is intimately associated with the disposition which is manifested in the isolation of the male from its companions, and forms therewith an imperium in imperio from which our concept of breeding territory is taken. ”

“ The conclusion, therefore, seems to be inevitable, namely that the actual occupation of a territory is the condition under which the pugnacious nature of the male is rendered susceptible to appropriate stimulation. ”

“ They occupied a region surpassed by no other on the continent, for grandeur and beauty united, and inherited from this or some other source, a mental constitution of noble structure, which placed them in the fore-front of their race, and when united, no tribe on this continent could stand before them. ”

“ Within this vast empire there are geographic provinces, separate in physical conditions, into which American colonization has flowed, and in each of which a special society has developed, with an economic, political and social life of its own. ”

“ In a word, federations between small territorial units, as well as among men united by common pursuits within their respective guilds, and federations between cities and groups of cities constituted the very essence of life and thought during that period. ”

“ Such are some of the varied historical associations, past and present, of the region I shall now endeavour to describe in its physical character only—a region which, with the exception of its western portion, has long been a closed country to the European, and a jealously-guarded barrier against the civilisation of the age. The term of its isolation, however, is doomed; the time of its freedom draws nigh. For the force of Western civilisation is irresistible. Through it the enlightenment of the age must soon shed its lustre upon these benighted regions. ”

“ A coalescence of the people into bodies politic in territorial areas now became complete.
The territorial series enters into the plan of government of modern civilized nations. Among ourselves, for example, we have the township, the county, the state, and the United States; the inhabitants of each of which are an organized body politic with powers of local self-government. Each organization is in full vitality and performs its functions within a definite sphere in which it is supreme. ”

“ We have, for the most part, in our history given promptly to the people of the territories a large measure of local government, and have, when the admission of a state was proposed, thought only of boundaries and population. ”

“ We have no frontier now, we are told,—except a broken fragment, it may be, here and there in some barren corner of the western lands, where some inhospitable mountain still shoulders us out, or where men are still lacking to break the baked surface of the plains and occupy them in the very teeth of hostile nature. But at first it was all frontier,—a mere strip of settlements stretched precariously upon the sea-edge of the wilds: an untouched continent in front of them, and behind them an unfrequented sea that almost never showed so much as the momentary gleam of a sail. ”

“ For this reason, clusters of islands, a continent divided by many natural barriers, great rivers, ridges of mountains, and arms of the sea, are best fitted for becoming the nursery of independent and respectable nations. The distinction of states being clearly maintained, a principle of political life is established in every division, and the capital of every district, like the heart of an animal body, communicates with ease the vital blood and the national spirit to its members. ”

“ The location of a frontier may, in a given case, not only be an international question in the sense that it should be settled internationally, but also in the sense that it is justiciable, according to the usual idea of justiciable questions. ”

“ The idea of a country arises only when a nation, either homogeneous or composed of several races, establishes itself in a region the boundaries of which may be defined and defended against aggression from without. Political geography takes account of the partition of the earth amongst organized communities, dealing with the relation of races to regions, and of nations to countries, and considering the conditions of territorial equilibrium and instability. ”

“ TERRITORIAL CONCEPTS European Contests Affecting America, and a Summary of American Expansion The settlers’ task of conquering the wilderness might have been simpler had they not spent so much energy in conquering one another; for side by side with the advance of the frontier goes a process of territorial rivalry of which the end is not yet. ”

“ The civilized state develops specialized frontiers—men, armies, explorers, maritime traders, colonists, and missionaries, who keep a part of the people constantly moving and directing external expansion, while the mass of the population converts the force once expended in the migrant food-quest into internal activity. Here we come upon a paradox. ”

“ It is now the question whether this state of things is a permanent arrangement—whether we of the north side are always to have the advantage of extent of territory, of fertile lands and healthful homes in middle latitudes, in short, of all that makes the rivalry of nations, and civilization a necessity. ”

“ Therefore the important law may be laid down, that the more closely the territorial growth of a state keeps pace with that of its people, and the more nearly the political area coincides with the ethnic, the greater is the strength and stability of the state. ”

“ Geography should assume that frontiers are the lines at which peoples meet rather than part; and history should lay stress upon the forces that have made for human unity rather than for national power. ”

“ Territorial expansion was the foundation of American power and greatness. From the beginning of history to the present time, no country ever exerted a controlling power over the world until it had acquired a wide extent of territory. ”

“ Reduced to their lowest terms, the elements which enter into a national boundary are two, the land and the people; and an ideally perfect frontier would be at the same time geographic and ethnographic. Such coincidences are, however, relatively rare, and the problem varies from age to [Pg 11] age as different geographical considerations change in relative importance and as the human elements of race, language, and nationality develop, shift, and grow more complex. ”

“ Territorial disputes have at all times been found one of the most fertile sources of hostility among nations. Perhaps the greatest proportion of wars that have desolated the earth have sprung from this origin. This cause would exist, among us, in full force. We have a vast tract of unsettled territory within the boundaries of the United States. ”

“ But in those great tropical territories, where autonomy was not yet advisable or possible, we have endeavoured—and with success—to govern by and through and with the sentiments and customs of the inhabitants. ”

“ The Territorial Group.—Before the early tribal groups had settled down to permanent habitations, they had developed many social activities, but when they became permanently settled they passed from the ethnic to the demographic form of social order—that is, they developed a territorial group that performed all of its functions within a given boundary which they called their own. From this time on population increased and occupied territory expanded, and the group became self-sufficient and independent in character. ”

“ Such mountain regions attain independent historical importance when their population increases enough to form the nucleus of a state, and to acquire additional territory about the highland base either by conquest or voluntary union, while they utilize their naturally protected location and their power to grant safe transit to their allies, as means to secure their political autonomy. ”

“ After every important war in South-East Europe in recent times there has been a shrinking of the area of chronically disturbed territory, a stiffening of the area of chronically disturbed territory, a stiffening of frontier lines, an intrusion of civilised monotony. ”

“ We had arrived at Landrecies, near enough the Frontier to excite us.
I wonder if you realise at home what the Frontier meant to us at first? We conceived it as a thing guarded everywhere by intermittent patrols of men staring carefully towards Germany and Belgium in the darkness, a thing to be defended at all costs, at all times, to be crossed with triumph and recrossed with shame. ”

“ In arcifinious lands, where the bounds are formed by nature, any gradual change in the course of the river makes a change also in the boundaries of territory, and whatever accession is given by the river to one side, it will belong to the possessor of the land on that side. Because the respective nations are supposed originally to have taken possession of those lands, with an intention of making the MIDDLE of that river, as a natural boundary, the line of separation between them. ”

“ Among pastoral nomads, among whom a systematic use of their territory begins to appear, and therefore a more definite relation between land and people, we find a more distinct notion than among wandering hunters of territorial ownership, the right of communal use, and the distinct obligation of common defense. Hence the social bond is drawn closer. The nomad identifies himself with a certain district, which belongs to his tribe by tradition or conquest, and has its clearly defined boundaries. ”

“ In the first place it is evident that if a male were not to establish a territory, no opportunity would be afforded for making use of any special post or for acquiring a habit in relation to it, and so without further consideration we may say that the connection between the song and the headquarters, whatever it may be, is primarily dependent upon the establishment of a territory. ”

“ Yet because racial and social geography changes slowly, quietly and imperceptibly, like all those fundamental processes which we call growth, it is not so easy and obvious a task to formulate a natural law for the territorial relations of the various hunter, pastoral nomadic, agricultural, and industrial types of society as for those of the growing state. ”

“ Our territorial growth reveals the hand of destiny, and was made possible only by the coincidence of peculiar conditions in America and Europe, affording opportunities which our ancestors might seize, but could not create. ”

“ One might naturally wish to see the region of such an aggregation of frontiers, where boundaries run like contour-lines on a topographic map—the wavering, imaginary lines upon the earth's Asiatic surface, for which, and to which, literally, millions of lives have been sacrificed—expressions of an "idea" for which many more lives must be given. ”

“ When colonizers or conquerors appropriate the land of a lower race, we find a territory occupied at least for a time by two types of population, constituting an ethnic, social and often economic differentiation. ”

“ The Territorial Force must either be made efficient in all respects, or it will speedily cease to be a Force even in name.
I hope, gentlemen, you will understand that I am thinking and speaking of the Territorial Force as a Force that must be prepared to move and live, to march and fight as an army. I am not thinking of individual men, or companies, or batteries, or squadrons, but of a Force which, if it is ever called upon to take the field, will have to deal as a whole with highly-trained picked troops. ”