The Great Great Wall

Along the Borders of History from China to Mexico

Ian Volner

• Editorial: ABRAMS Press
• Año: 2019
• ISBN:
  9781683355304
• Categoría: History
• Categoría: Historical Geography

"Timely and highly readable... provides a valuable backdrop to Donald Trump's insistence on a barrier across America's southern border." —Robert Dallek, presidential historian During his campaign for the presidency, one of Donald Trump's signature promises was that he would build a "great great wall" on the border between the US and Mexico, and Mexico was going to pay for it. Now, with only a few prototype segments erected, the wall is the 2, 000-mile, multibillion-dollar elephant in the room of contemporary American life. In The Great Great Wall, architectural historian and critic Ian Volner takes a fascinating look at the barriers that we have built over millennia. Traveling far afield, to China, the Middle East, Europe, and along the U.S. Mexico border, Volner examines famous, contentious, and illuminating structures, and explores key questions: Why do we build walls? What do they reveal about human history? What happens after they go up? With special attention to Trump's wall and the walls that exist along the US border already, this is an absorbing, smart, and timely book on an incredibly contentious and newsworthy topic. "A work of literary alchemy that transmutes thewall, a simple architectural structure, and of late, political metaphor, into a prism through which to view the panorama of human history... this book will amaze, delight, and enchant even the mostjaded nonfiction aficionado." —William J. Bernstein, award-winning author of The Delusions of Crowds "A global journey to some of history's most significant walls—China, Berlin, and even Jericho—weaving together a fascinating account of theirfoundational myths and current realities." —Carrie Gibson, author of El Norte

NOTES

INTRODUCTION

this page “Life has to do with walls”: Marijke Martin and Judith Smals, Wall House #2: John Hejduk in Groningen (Groningen, Netherlands: Platform Gras, 2001), 41.

this page “7 quarts per day for the men”: Report of the Boundary Commission (Washington, DC: Government Printing Office, 1896), 32.

this page “our associates of the Mexican Commission”: Ibid., 4.

this page “the president expressed a desire”: “In Territories,” Indianapolis Journal, May 7, 1901.

this page “commercial well-being and good understanding”: Quoted in Stephen Kinzer, The True Flag: Theodore Roosevelt, Mark Twain, and the Birth of American Empire (New York: Henry Holt, 2017), 205.

this page “immediate past”: Robert Maxwell, Introduction, The Journal of Architecture 1 (Spring 1996): 3.

I. THE INVENTION OF DIFFERENCE

this page “as the sand of the sea”: Revelation 20:8.

this page “set [his] face”: Ezekiel 38:2.

this page “Now Jericho was straitly”: Joshua 6:1.

this page “ideological reasons”: Ran Barkai and Roy Liran, “Midsummer Sunset at Jericho,” Time and Mind: The Journal of Archaeology, Consciousness and Culture 1, 3 (November 2008): 276, 279.

this page “Our theory would appear less daring”: Gaston Bachelard, The Psychoanalysis of Fire, trans. Alan C. M. Ross (Boston: Beacon Press, 1968), 27–28.

this page “The initial wall of circa 8300 BCE”: For descriptions of the oldest wall and corresponding community see Kathleen Kenyon, Digging Up Jericho (New York: Frederick A. Praeger, 1957), 67–76, 113; Robert Ruby, Jericho: Dreams, Ruins, Phantoms (New York: Henry Holt, 1995), 124–26; Ofer Bar-Yosef, “The Walls of Jericho: An Alternative Interpretation,” Current Anthropology 27, 2 (April 1986): 157.

this page “The Great Sitt”: For a thorough account of Kenyon at Jericho see Miriam C. Davis, Dame Kathleen Kenyon: Digging Up the Holy Land (Walnut Creek, CA: Left Coast Press, 2008), 101–54.

this page “The fog of cultural conflict”: The felicitous phrase is from Dan Kahan’s blog, www.culturlacognition.net/blog; for a more in-depth take, see his article “Vaccine Risk Perceptions and Ad Hoc Risk Communication,” CCP Risk and Economic Studies Report 17 (January 2014). The 1954 study was the Robbers Cave experiment, while the University of Sheffield experiment was published as “Three-month-olds, but not newborns, prefer own-race faces,” Developmental Science 6, 5 (November 2005): F31–36.

this page “All the houses have flat roofs”: Bernal Díaz del Castillo, The True History of the Conquest of New Spain (London: The Hakluyt Society, 1908), 220.

this page “Arrows in a snakeskin quiver”: John S. C. Abbot, Miles Standish the Puritan Captain (New York: Dodd & Mead, 1874), 179–81. For the description of the fence, see Allan Gallay, Colonial Wars of North America, 1512–1763 (New York: Routledge, 1996), 569.

this page “Only a month after the wall’s completion”: Tudor Jencks, Captain Myles Standish (New York: The Century Company, 1905), 178.

this page “to explain the practical operation”: Quoted in J. Fred Rippy, Joel R. Poinsett, Versatile American (Durham, NC: Duke University Press, 1935), 106. Much of the information on Poinsett came from the same source.

this page “ambitious people, always ready”: Quoted in ibid., 106.

this page “to compare [Mexicans]”: Quoted in Gilbert M. Joseph and Timothy J. Henderson, eds., The Mexico Reader: History, Culture, and Politics (Durham, NC: Duke University Press, 2002), 12.

this page “all intercourse with foreigners”: Quoted in ibid., 14.

this page “ordered every one of the Americans”: Quoted in Todd Hansen, The Alamo Reader (Mechanicsburg, PA: Stackpole Books, 2003), 483.

this page “disguised in a blue cottonade”: Quoted in Stephen L. Moore, Eighteen Minutes: The Battle of San Jacinto and the Texas Independence Campaign (Dallas: Republic of Texas Press, 2004), 379.

this page “savage fiend”: “Natchez,” Fayetteville Weekly Observer, April 21, 1836.

this page “tumble headlong”: “General Houston and Santa Anna’s Former Friendship,” Selma Daily Reporter, June 11, 1836.

this page “too lazy to advance”: “Texas,” The Daily Picayune, May 16, 1839.

this page “not the slightest reliance”: “Texas,” Democratic Free Press, July 6, 1836.

this page “wicked barbarians”: Quoted in John S. D. Eisenhower, So Far from God: The U.S. War with Mexico (Norman: University of Oklahoma Press, 2000), 86.

this page “These Mexican savages”: “Dow, Jr., On War,” Louisville Daily Courier, June 6, 1846.

this page “Spartan-like defense of the Alamo”: Quoted in Eisenhower, So Far from God, 87.

this page “young infantrymen waiting in San Antonio”: Letter from Colonel John Hardin, cited in Amy S. Greenberg, A Wicked War: Polk, Clay, Lincoln and the 1846 Invasion of Mexico (New York: Vintage Books, 2012), 137.

this page “the soulless butcheries”: Quoted in Robert W. Merry, A Country of Vast Designs: James Polk, the Mexican War and the Conquest of the American Continent (New York: Simon & Schuster, 2009), 153.

this page “American blood”: Quoted in Spencer Tucker, ed., The Encyclopedia of the Mexican-American War, Vol. 1 (Santa Barbara, CA: ABC-CLIO, 2013), 959.

II. BORDER AS FORGE

this page “the border is in between”: Thomas Nail, Theory of the Border (New York: Oxford University Press, 2016), 2.

this page “Graeculus”: Anthony Everett, Hadrian and the Triumph of Rome (New York: Random House, 2015), 15. The same source furnished much of the background on Nerva, Trajan, and Hadrian’s life in general, as did Mary Beard, “A Very Modern Emperor,” The Guardian, July 18, 2008.

this page “three thousand miles long”: UNESCO World Heritage List, “Frontiers of the Roman Empire,” https://whc.unesco.org/en/list/430.

this page “Son of all the deified emperors”: Roman Inscriptions of Britain, “Rib. 1051. Imperial Dedication,” https://romaninscriptionsofbritain.org/inscriptions/1051.

this page “explorer of all things interesting”: Tertullian, quoted in Marco Rizzi, ed., Hadrian and the Christians (New York: De Gruyter, 2010), 15.

this page “wild”: Jordanes, The Origins and Deeds of the Goths, trans. Charles C. Mierow (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1908), 5.

this page “up to the waist”: This and other descriptions of Britain and Scotland taken from Herodian, Cassius Dios, and Procopius, quoted in “Roman Perceptions of Britain,” http://penelope.uchicago.edu/~grout/encyclopaedia_Romana/britannia/miscellanea/geography.html.

this page “Hadrian can offer anything”: The slogan is that of Hadrian Valeting, of Haltwhistle.

this page “ten thousand Roman auxiliary troops”: Mohammed Chaichian, Empires and Walls: Globalization, Migration, and Colonial Domination (Boston: Brill, 2014), 39.

this page “I mean your magnificent citizenship”: Quoted in Jed W. Atkins, Roman Political Thought (New York: Cambridge University Press, 2018), 65–66. Additional information on Roman citizenship and status of immigrants from Ralph W. Mathisen, “Peregrini, Barbari, and Cives Romani: Concepts of Citizenship and the Legal Identity of Barbarians in the Late Roman Empire,” American Historical Review 111, 4 (October 2006): 1011–40; Ancient History Encyclopedia, “Roman Citizenship,” https://www.ancient.eu/article/859/roman-citizenship/; Cullen Murphy, “Roman Empire: Gold Standard of Immigration,” Los Angeles Times, June 16, 2007.

this page “who have served twenty-five years”: British Museum Online Collection, “Military Diploma,” https://www.britishmuseum.org/research/collection_online/collection_object_details.aspx?objectI...