Complete the argument.
A ______ is a zone where authority fades; a border is a line, and it arrives with the state that must tax and conscript uniformly. A ______ boundary is imposed across an existing cultural landscape, the colonial signature. And once administered, an arbitrary line becomes ______, because sixty years of separate currencies, schools, and laws create the difference the line claims to describe.
Word bank: frontier · superimposed · real · relict · antecedent
Hints
- The map came before the reality and then produced it.
- That is why the lines are both arbitrary and consequential.
Show the answer
A frontier is a zone where authority fades; a border is a line, and it arrives with the state that must tax and conscript uniformly. A superimposed boundary is imposed across an existing cultural landscape, the colonial signature. And once administered, an arbitrary line becomes real, because sixty years of separate currencies, schools, and laws create the difference the line claims to describe.
Frontier, superimposed, real. The map preceded the reality and then produced it, which is why the lines are both arbitrary in origin and entirely genuine now.
Practise Political Geography and Borders
The app has 5 more questions on this lesson, and keeps your place in the course. History I is free to start.
More questions on Political Geography and Borders
- What is the honest account of Africa’s colonial borders?
- How does a line drawn in ignorance become real?
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- The effects of a border abolished generations ago can still show up in voting and wage data today.