Eurasia

World Boundaries Volume 3

Carl Grundy-Warr

• Publisher: Routledge
• Year: 2002
• Topic: Physical Sciences
• eBook ISBN:
  9781134880560
• Subtopic: Geography
• Index: Geography

Eurasia offers a wide-ranging and original interpretation of territory, boundaries and borderlands in Europe, Asia and the Far East. This forms part of a unique series of books focussing on world boundaries which embrace the theory and practice of boundary delimitation and management, boundary disputes and conflict resolution, and territorial change in the new world order.

Part I

EUROPE

1

BOUNDARIES AND CONFLICT

International relations in ancien régime Europe

Jeremy Black

Our boundaries should be clearly, certainly, and circumstantially defined, so that no future disputes may arise about them.

(‘Valerius Publicola’ in London Evening Post, 11 September 1762)

This chapter addresses the interrelated questions of the part played by frontier disputes in the diplomacy of ancien régime Europe, the changing notions of frontier, as evidenced in the European diplomacy of the period, and the role played by more effective mapping in changing contemporary conceptions of frontiers and in the resolution of frontier disputes.¹

FRONTIERS IN EURASIA

Ancien régime European states faced three related but different problems in defining frontiers. They can be classified as follows, without the implication that this classification should be seen as too rigid. First, there was the delineation of frontiers between European states, more particularly in areas of long-standing settlement or at least control by a Christian polity. Second, there was the delineation of frontiers between European states in areas where there were no historic claims or long-standing European settlements. As the Western hemisphere passed under European control after 1492, this was especially important. Third, there was the delineation of frontiers between European and non-European societies. These non-European societies could appear somewhat unsophisticated. There were differing notions of sovereignty in non-European societies. Maps were of limited use as representations of power in a territorial sense if the basis for the concept of ownership was neither legal nor territorial. Guillaume Delisle’s Carte d’Afrique (Amsterdam, c. 1700) misleadingly divided the whole of Africa into kingdoms with clear frontiers (Freeman-Grenville 1991: 84, 72; Ade Ajayi and Crowder 1985). Maps were more useful if there was a territorial sense of ownership, a notion of fixed frontiers and a use of natural features as boundaries. Natural features were cited in treaties between the British North American colonies and Indian tribes. Treaties such as that of 18 November 1765 with the Lower Creeks in Florida helped to keep the peace (Crane 1929; Cumming 1962; DeVorsey Jr 1966: 149–57; Cockran 1967; Sosin 1967; Cashin 1992: 214–22, 229, 238–47).

Asiatic societies were certainly not politically unsophisticated. The Ottoman Empire had common boundaries with Venice, Austria, Poland and Russia, and the period witnessed the territorial meeting of Russia with both China and Persia, and their negotiation of border treaties: Nerchinsk with China in 1689 and treaties with Persia in 1723, 1729 (Rescht) and 1732 (Rescht again). The problem of defining land frontiers in Eurasia could be considerable. The Austrian and Turkish commissioners who sought to clarify their new frontier after the Peace of Carlowitz of 1699 faced the ambiguous and contradictory wording of the peace treaty on such matters as the ‘straight’ line of one portion of the frontier, the ‘ancient’ frontiers of Transylvania and the future status of islands where the frontier followed rivers. Following the Austro-Turkish war of 1737–9 and the subsequent Treaty of Belgrade there were lengthy negotiations to settle the new border, and a satisfactory settlement was not negotiated until 1744. There were serious Austro-Turkish differences over their Bosnian border in 1784–5.

The value of international frontiers on the Eurasian border was limited. A recent historical atlas of the Ukraine comments on the map of Ukrainian lands after 1569 that ‘the international boundaries between the lower Dnieper and lower Donets’ rivers as marked on this map were really only symbolic, because this whole region was a kind of no-man’s land dominated by nomadic and free-booting communities of Zaprozhian Cossacks and Nogay Tatars’ (Abou-El-Haj 1969; Stoye²; Olson 1975: 152; Magocsi 1985: map 10; Gentleman’s Magazine 1791: 861).

Aside from the problem of defining major land frontiers in Eurasia, there was also the difficulty of determining the relationship between the coastal enclaves of European trading companies or states in southern and eastern Asia and the locally dominant Asiatic powers. Questions of sovereignty and jurisdictional relationship were prominent, but the situation was far from uniform. Aside from differences between the imperial organizations and pretensions of different European societies, it was also the case that some Asiatic polities, such as the Indian Mughal and Persian Safavid empires, provided only loose hegemonies in which it was possible for European interests to establish semi-independent territorial interests, akin to those of some Asiatic regimes (Bayly 1989: 46–7; Bonney 1971: 52–101; Bassett 1971: 73–80).

Natural boundaries were an obvious basis for the Eurasian land frontier between Europe and Asia. There was no jurisdictional definition of territory reflecting long-established political interests. Instead, force operated with scant reference to historical claims. The exact course of this frontier was most important in areas of settlement and, as these were riverine, it was rivers that provided the necessary definition. The Amur had marked the crucial section of the Russo-Chinese border between 1644 and 1689, but Russia lost the Amur region under Nerchinsk. For much of the eighteenth century the frontier between Russia and central Asia east of the Caspian – in so far as one can speak of one – followed the Ural and Irtysh rivers. The Terek and the Kuban defined much of Russia’s frontier in the Caucasus in the late eighteenth century. Further west, the Dnieper, Bug, Dniester and Pruth marked successive stages of Russia’s advance across transpontine Europe and towards the Balkans. Similarly, the Oltul, Muresul, Tisza, Danube and Sava played an important role in defining the Austro-Turkish border between 1699 and 1878. These frontiers became better mapped in the eighteenth century. Reviewing Lewis Evans’s Analysis of a General Map of the Middle British Colonies in America, Dr Johnson wrote in 1756 that ‘the last war between the Russians and the Turks [1736–9] made geographers acquainted with the situation and extent of many countries little known before’ (Literary Magazine, 15 October 1756). This con-tinued to be the case. Conflict encouraged military mapping and the commercial production of maps. The Journal Politique de Bruxelles of 2 February 1788 advertised a map of the northern and north-western littoral of the Black Sea that would help those interested in the recently commenced Russo-Turkish war to follow its course.

This chapter concentrates on the European frontiers of European powers, but it is worth dwelling on the Eurasian frontier because it poses in some respect a contrast, or, from another viewpoint, a different point on a continuum, from which inter-European disputes can be assessed. Power and pragmatism divorced from the feudal legacy of jurisdictional issues and non-linear frontiers were dominant on the Eurasian frontier. This was certainly the case with the Russian impact in the Balkans, the Caucasus and further east. It has been argued by Atkin that an obsessive craving to make original lines invulnerable by creating new ones further forward impelled the Russians forward in an atmosphere of mistrust, insecurity and sensitivity to their frontiers. In turn, this exacerbated the attitudes of others, accentuating the vortex of opportunity, distrust, opportunism and conflict (Lang 1957; Fisher 1970; Jewsbury 1976; Atkin 1980).

Although it was not part of the Eurasian frontier, there had been a similar uncertainty about the frontier between Russia and Sweden-Finland. It was not until a conflict ended by the Treaty of Teusina (1595) that a frontier was drawn for the first time between Finland and Karelia from the isthmus to the White Sea, Russian control of the Kola peninsula and Swedish control over most of Lapland being acknowl-edged. Nevertheless, Norwegian-Russian ‘common districts’ – areas of mixed taxation – remained, until partitioned in 1826. There were serious disputes over the frontier between Sweden and Denmark-Norway north of the Arctic Circle (Somme 1968: 15–17; Kirby 1990: 20).

FRONTIERS AND SETTLEMENTS

Power and pragmatism were also dominant in the case of transoceanic relations between the European powers. Territorial disputes outside Europe had played a role from the outset, but they became more acute as the frontier of European power increasingly disappeared in terms of territorial claims, although obviously not of settlements. Such disputes were most apparent in coastal regions – generally the only well-mapped areas and the ones that were most subject to exploitation. European knowledge of the interior of other continents was limited and they were thus poorly mapped. This also reflected the navigational rationale of many maps. For example, the Venetian Coronelli’s Route maritime de Brest à Siam et de Siam à Brest (Paris, 1687) was essentially a map of coastal regions. Etienne de Flacourt’s map of Madagascar (1666) was accurate largely for the south-east of the island, where the French had established Fort Dauphin in 1642. In D’Anville’s Carte de l’Inde of 1752 most of east-central India was labelled ‘Grand espace de pays dont on n’a point de connoissance particulière’. Desnos’ map L’Asie (Paris, 1789) included all of Asia, although the mapping of Tibet was very vague.

Coastal regions were obviously not always well mapped. In Robert’s map of the Archipel des Indes Orientates (1750) a caption ‘Le fond de ce Golphe n’est pas bien connu’ appears for the coastline of the Teluk Tomini in the Celebes (Sulawesi). The Carte plate qui comprend l’Isle de Ceylon (1775) includes the captions ‘Isles Laquedives dont le détail n’est pas éxactement connu’ and ‘on ne connoit, ni le nombre, ni la grandeur, ni la situation respéctive des Isles Maldives … ce qu’on en à tracé ici conformement à quelques cartes manuscrits, ne mérite aucune confiance des navigateurs’. The Australian coast was not fully charted until the Flinders and Baudin expeditions of the 1800s.

The course of transoceanic disputes between European powers was often related to tension in Europe. Colonial borders were usually of secondary importance to the European powers, becoming significant issues only because of other interests and disputes. France and Portugal reached agreement in their 1697–1700 dispute over the area of Maranhao – Brazil north of the Amazon – only after the problem of the Spanish succession came to the fore, and it is possible that French territorial claims for an Amazon frontier for their colony at Cayenne were designed to make Portugal more pliable over the issue. In 1749 the French foreign minister hinted to the British envoy that ‘marine’ – that is, colonial – disputes could be determined amicably and in Britain’s favour in return for her co-operation in European affairs (Shirley 1984; Griffin and McCaskill 1986: 6; Cole Harris 1987: 96–7, 150–1, 168–9; Szarka 1975: 125; Yorke 1749a: 34; Pelletiev 1984: 23–30; J.D. Black 1970–5; Penfold 1974).

The Anglo-Spanish treaty of 1670 had limited Spanish claims to hegemony, permitting the ruler of Britain ‘all the lands, countries, etc. he is now possessed of in America’. The foundation in 1732 of a new colony in Georgia, between the Carolinas and the Spanish colony of Florida, led to disputes over whether the new colony was thus legally British (Jenkinson 1785: 197; Lanning 1936). Yet conflict came over competing commercial pretensions in the Caribbean, not over the contested Georgia frontier. Conversely, conflict was avoided in the Anglo-Spanish Nootka Sound crisis of 1790, a dispute arising from competing claims over the western coastline of North America, and specifically the Spanish seizure of British warships trading on Vancouver Island, because the weaker power, Spain, was intimidated successfully. Both Britain and Spain had been concerned to chart the Pacific coast in order to establish their claims more clearly. In late 1662 when an English force arrived at Bombay to take over from the Portuguese, it was unclear whether it was simply Bombay island that they had been ceded, as the Viceroy contended, or, as the English insisted, the entire archi-pelago. When in 1665 the English force finally negotiated landing rights at Bombay, making heavy concessions in terms of Bombay’s territorial extent, these were repudiated by Charles II. Political alliances between Britain and Portugal and Britain and the United Provinces helped to blunt the edge of their colonial disputes, in the Dutch case for the century after the Treaty of Westminster of 1674. British plans to send warships on a voyage of discovery to the ‘South Seas’ in 1749, a period of hope for better Anglo-Spanish relations, led to Spanish complaints about British interest in the Falkland Islands, which the Spaniards declared they had already discovered and settled:

he [Spanish minister Carvajal] hoped we would consider what air it would have in the world to see us planted directly against the mouth of the Straits of Magellan, ready upon all occasions to enter into the South Seas, where the next step would be to endeavour to discover and settle some other islands, in order to remedy the inconveniency of being obliged to make so long a voyage as that to China, to refit our naval force upon any dis-appointment we might meet with in our future attacks upon the Spanish coasts … I [British envoy Keene] told him it would be difficult to take any step for the improvement of navigation, and procuring a more perfect knowledge of the world in general, that might not be subject to twisted interpretations, and imaginary inconveniencies.

Spain was trying to impose an oceanic frontier to keep the Pacific closed to outsiders and mysterious. The British ministry could not accept this principle, but, as they were seeking improved relations in order to counteract the franc...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Half Title
• WORLD BOUNDARIES SERIES
• Full Title
• Copyright
• Contents
• List of illustrations
• Notes on contributors
• Series preface
• Acknowledgements
• Introduction
• Part I Europe
• Part II Asia-Pacific
• Index