The Rest Is History - 15. Walls and Borders

Episode Date: January 18, 2021

From the Great Wall of China to the Berlin Wall, history is littered with the building of barriers aimed at keeping people out, and sometimes in. Do they work? Are they ever a good thing? Tom Holland and Dominic Sandbrook climb walls and explore borders as they investigate the history of separation.  Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Thank you for listening to The Rest Is History. For weekly bonus episodes, ad-free listening, early access to series, and membership of our much-loved chat community, go to therestishistory.com and join the club. That is be restrained by the walls of history. We've ranged from ancient Rome to modern Washington, from Pompeii to Troy, and today we have one foot on the Great Wall of China and another on the US-Mexico border, because our subject today is walls and borders. Why do we seek to separate? Do walls work? Are they ever a good thing? Dominic Sandbrook is with me and I want to start with a wonderful, simple question we received on Twitter from the excellently named

Tom. Tom asks, what makes a good wall? Dominic, what do you think? Golly, what makes a good wall? Well, I think golly what makes a good wall well i suppose it depends are you keeping people out or keeping people in so the emblematic wall that you and i grew up with is the berlin wall right that's the wall that we would have thought of for most of our lives when people i'd have thought of hadrian's wall would you yeah a man living in the past yeah i was much more interested in hadrian's Wall than the Berlin Wall. The Berlin Wall, of course, is actually, should probably be known as the anti-fascist protection rampart,

which I think is a great name for a wall. I mean, I think a wall needs a good name. And the Berlin Wall had a great name. And it worked. That's the one thing people forget. I mean, the Berlin Wall was a monstrosity, but it actually did work in its purpose. Because it was set up to stop people from East Berlin fleeing into the Western sectors.

Right. So about three million people had fled from East Germany to West Germany between, say, 1945 and 1961 when the Berlin Wall went up. And after 1961, I think that total fell to about 5,000. About 100 people were shot. So the Berlin Wall, you know, hideous as it was, was very effective, actually. But presumably also dependent on the existence of the Iron Curtain. So the frontier running right the way across Europe, dividing the Water Pact from the native powers. Because if you don't have an Iron Curtain joining up to the Berlin Wall, you could just go round the corner of the Berlin Wall, couldn't you?

And that's always a problem with walls. Well, I mean, they come to an end point and then you can just go round the side. Yes, I suppose so. You're right that there was the Iron Curtain as well. So that, I guess, is going to be a theme of this episode, isn't it? Walls and borders are often the same thing. Not always the same thing, though. So Donald Trump's wall is not actually really a wall. Most of it is a fence. And there was already, you know, a fence along the US-Mexican border. So what's his status now? He's going to, I mean, as we speak, he's going to visit it.'s going to um pay a sort of uh farewell they've

built a tiny bit of it i think and he's going to go and say how beautiful it is and this is his great great kind of legacy but um yeah it's it's a it's not a war obviously i mean it was a ludicrous proposition that it was going to be a wall it's a fence and there were fences on the u.s border anyway but the thing with walls and fences is even the Berlin Wall, some people can get over or under them. That's the nature of borders. People cross them. Unless you're talking about North Korea,

in which case you don't cross that wall. I mean, you get shot. Yes, I mean, that is the kind of, essentially, the iron rule that you can always break through a wall. And judging it by that standard what what would you say has been the most effective wall most effective barrier in history i don't and the only reason i'm asking you that of course is because i've got an excellent answer okay so that would make me look good why do you think okay so so my i would just tell us so i would

say the theodosian walls do you know i've got I've got the Theodosian walls written down in front of me. Of course you have. I don't think they're effective, but they're very... They were very effective. They're built in the 5th century and they hold out till 1204. I reckon that's a pretty phenomenal record. That said, if there's one city in the world that's famous for being sacked twice, it's the city behind the theodosian war but the poor byzantines are surrounded by voracious enemies and basically

this is the great legacy that the the roman empire it's it anyway it's still a great power leaves the byzantines is this incredible fortification system that um obviously the people of ninthth or 12th century Byzantium couldn't possibly have afforded but they have this incredible defensive system of walls that you can still go and see I mean if you know to walk around the walls of Constantinople is still one of the great things that you can do so that would be my nomination but if you've got a better one I'm not sure. That's a choice. So you mentioned Hadrian's Wall earlier on. We might as well get into Hadrian's Wall because I know you're itching to talk about it.

And Hadrian's Wall is, I was there two years ago and I sort of went in that sort of cynical state of mind where you're expecting to be a little bit disappointed because I went as a child and hadn't been for 40 years or something and was expecting you know to be underwhelmed and it is an amazing thing isn't it hey dreams wall well it depends which bit of it you're looking at and i i say this with some feeling because um i've actually walked it three

times so i walked it when i was about 17 i walked it i was um when that just just after i got married i persuaded my beloved to walk with me. And that almost ended our marriage. Because we got lost. We got very badly lost. How did you get lost on Adrian's walk? It was before they'd set up a national path. So I misread a map. And anyway, fortunately, we're still together.

But it was quite close. And then about seven years ago, I made the whole family do it. And the children were quite young. And I showed them it was going to be exciting. And of course, we, you know, we set off from Wall's End and it just bucketed down with rain. You could never possibly have anticipated that, could you? No, I've got some very happy holiday snaps of the children sobbing in the outskirts of Newcastle as the gray rain slices down asking me why we couldn't have gone somewhere warmer but i agree it is hadrian's wall it is is fantastic and i

suppose i you see i think it i think for me it's the the archetype of the wall i was what i always think of and i think it's it's fascinating because it we don't entirely know why why it was built um so the only the only detail we have from from classical sources is it's written a source written about 250 years after the life of hadrian and it says the wall was built to separate the romans from the barbarians which is very kind of you know ambiguous so is it is it built as an expression of strength so you say you know we've we we control you perhaps they whitewashed it to make it stand out perhaps it was um kind of equivalent people had to present their passports to get through it's it's about making a massive statement of roman power or is it built as an expression of weakness in which case it's

about keeping the barbarians at bay and there's a kind of ambivalence there in the way that the walls are built you know that's true of the fortifications in china or wherever that's made even america that that is it is i do feel strong when you build it or are you projecting weakness but that's the ambiguity isn't it so that's the story of the great wall of china that you have to be a very rich and sophisticated society to build it, but you don't build it unless you're worried about steppe nomads, you know, raiding you and sort of pillaging all your towns and stuff. And presumably that's the case with Hadrian's Wall, right? That it's both, isn't it?

That you have to be the Romans to build it, but equally, if you were so powerful, you'd have conquered what is now scotland yeah we see and what's interesting about the great wall of china is that the the the idea that it's um great is is basically a western one right interesting i mean you'll know this because it's nixon it's nixon i was thinking about nixon on the Wall. Because Nixon goes... He says famously, this is a great wall. It's a great wall for a great people or something. Yeah, that's his famous soundbite.

There's a brilliant book, how do you... by Julia Lovell on the Great Wall. Yeah. And apparently that phrase got rewritten by Chinese propaganda. As he was meant to have said, it's a great wall for great people that come from a great past. And it's only a great people that built it. Again, have a great few. And these sort of endless greats kind of multiply.

But I mean, the Great Wall of China, you know, we think of it, it's basically a kind of showpiece. But that's because it's been renovated, hasn't it? So the bit that you go and see is actually just a very small bit but i mean ultimately there was no one great wall of china that has lasted for thousands and thousands of years and it seems to have kind of begun almost as a kind of gulag as a as a kind of you know the first emperor sending people off to to work themselves to death in the remotest corners of China. So that, again, is another kind of dimension of wall building, is that it's an expression of autocracy, an expression of power. And those who do it are, you know, it's built with their bones. Their bones are kind of ground up to become part of the mortar.

Isn't that sort of true of all grand projet, you know, in is in history isn't it the pyramids and yeah you know the people it's not that sort of slightly tedious thing when you um when you're a child and you have a you know your parents have a friend who's a bit left wing like me and uh says who built the pyramids and you say oh ramesses or whoever it might be and he says no it was built by thousands of slaves and don't you forget it. I mean, that's a kind of standard. It wasn't slaves, was it? It was kind of Keynesianism.

It was giving everything something to do during the Fallot period. So let's talk a bit about not just walls but borders. Do you have a favourite border? Oh, come on, what is it? A favourite border? Oh, I think the sea that encloses great britain oh good choice good choice but you see we're on natural borders you see natural borders that's most borders aren't natural that's what's so interesting so there's a fantastic map online

that you can there's a website you can go to and there's a map and it tells you the dates of every major, well, not every major, every modern nation-state border. And by far the sort of plurality are 20th century. And actually when you go back, there are very few that are older than about 1300 or 1400. So I think one of the oldest is Spain and Portugal, which is 1297. Spain and France is very old, but most of the others are pretty new scotland and england scotland and england

i mean kind of century and that but that's sort of shifted a bit hasn't it that's always been a little bit fluid um the scotland english well it's kind of interesting hadrian's wall stands in for the border between scotland and england where it's much it's further south interesting. Hadrian's Wall stands in for the border between Scotland and England. It's further south. And so there is this kind of idea that England is a natural inheritor of the Roman province of Britannia. And Scotland is a natural inheritor of the barbarian lands north of Hadrian's Wall. But that's not true at all. I mean, it's a kind of coincidence that the border tended to lie where it is yeah interesting what about the border between wales and england so that's kind of seen as the same as offers dyke isn't it people yeah that people use offers dyke as a kind of i don't know really i don't know anything about offer does anybody king of mercia well i think i mean i think with

office dyke again you get this kind of um the same ambivalence that you have with Adrian's Wall. Is it a statement of royal power? I mean, it is a statement of royal power, because for an Anglo-Saxon king to have the manpower to construct this enormous earthen dyke, I mean, that's pretty impressive by the standards of the time. But at the same time, it's kind of a mission of defeat that you can't bring the welsh to heal um and you've got to build this to stop them from raiding so again it's this same kind of uncertainty that you get with i suppose with you know in a way that's there with the berlin wall isn't it's there with north korea um yeah is it strength or is it weakness yeah if you're so great you don't need a great wall

but also of course walls stand in for we've just been mentioning this wall stand in for natural borders so for rome you've got the rhine you've got the danube yeah um so they to a degree provide natural frontiers and i suppose the desert as well. I mean, the Roman Empire reaches its limit of natural expansion because southwards there's only the Sahara, eastwards there's only barbarians. You could go east into sort of Mesopotamia, couldn't you? I mean, the Romans didn't have to stop. Yeah.

And was that border kind of fixed, the Roman-Persian border? I mean, it presumably was a little bit. That must have been very fluid. Yes, it is. Because in particularly late antiquity, there is no natural feature there. So essentially you have to construct massive frontier posts. And the story of the relationship between the Romans and the Persians in late antiquity is a constant process of scrapping over key

nodes of defence which constitute the border. But I suppose what you have in modern history that you don't have in earlier periods is the sense of a solid definite border. I mean I think even Hadrian's Wall, Hadrian's Wall is not a line drawn in the sand because Roman power would be expected to project northwards. You know, troops would be expected to control frontiers northwards and also southwards as well. And the history of Roman defences is that to begin with, you have the idea that Roman power power is limitless that that empire is without borders this is the divine dispensation then you get the sense that you're going to kind of slightly build defenses along the line of the ryan and the daniel whatever then you have defense in depth and then you just give up because all things get swept away um so there are many different ways to have

borders and i suppose moving into um into the medieval period in the early modern period i mean borders constantly say poland but i mean talk me through the borders of poland i can't even begin to wrap my head around that no i mean poland is the famous one isn't it because even in the 20th century it changed multiple times um and you know what is poland now what we will accept to be poland would not have been accepted to be poland 1935 or 1900 when Poland didn't even exist on the map. So those things are interesting. I mean, people often say that the borders are a product of the Treaty of Westphalia. So that's 1648, the treaty that ends the 30 years war. And people see that some people see that as the moment that sort of enshrines the nation state. But if you go

back even further, so if you go back to when Spain and Portugal were carving up the New World, I mean, they had to get a, they had a deal brokered by the Pope, the Treaty of Tordesillas and then the Treaty of Zaragoza, which basically said, you can have this bit, we'll have this bit.

There's such and such a parallel as the dividing line. So there was a sort of, I think once you've got maps, you've got borders. You know, once you can write it down and draw it then you've got a sense that this bit is ours it is inalienably part of our realm and that bit is yours but what i don't have any sense of and i've never really seen anybody explain it is what happened if you decided to get on your horse and to ride across you know central europe

or whatever do you just keep going and nothing changes are they posts gates are you conscious of the language changing and all this sort of stuff i mean in the context of the broadest context of eurasia that is the huge issue isn't it that you've got horse horse riding nomads and then you've got everybody else or in the context of of the middle east you've got horse-riding nomads, and then you've got everybody else. Or in the context of the Middle East, you've got people on camels. Because actually, the very oldest wall, I think it's excavated by French archaeologists,

and they just call it the Très Longue Mure. So the T-I-N. Good. They couldn't think of a better title than the Very Long Mure. It's brilliant. I brilliant it's about i think about 170 miles long it's in the desert of syria it's it's a kind of art and it's it's clearly there to keep the bedouin keep the the nomads out and it's the kind of precursor of all those other walls of which the defensive frontiers along the roman, the Rhine and the Danube, the Sasanian empires, the Persians,

they have one from the Black Sea to the Caspian Sea, China, of course, that there is this constant anxiety that if you build a great stable civilization and there are people out there on horses, you can come in and grab it, you've got a problem. The issue is there even with cities, isn't it? That the first cities, in a sense, have to... Walls have to be there, because otherwise people will just come and grab your stuff.

Yeah. No, I think that's... Well, a wall is an intrinsic part of a city, isn't it? And a border is part of... I mean, this is, I think, one reason why people get so hot under the collar about... I mean, it's not obviously the only reason, but it's one reason why people get so hot under the collar about um i mean it's not the obviously the only reason but it's one reason why people get very hot under the collar about migration about the kind of migration stories in the newspapers is that a border is intrinsic to a nation state

um it's a sort of nation state sense of its own inviolability um that you have a sort of well regulated border and that people can't sort of swornan in and out and that clearly is a is a motive for a lot of people i mean that's why trump got that success with the war and it's also i suppose i mean if you're thinking about emotive walls and borders think about ireland or northern ireland specifically so there you've got two different you've got the the irish northern irish border but you've also got the so-called peace walls in Belfast, which are walls to keep people apart, Catholics and Protestants. Have you done that tour in Belfast of all the sort? I haven't, no, I haven't, no.

I mean, it's extraordinary, you know, because, you know, in lots of ways, Belfast looks like, you know, you could be in a city in, people will probably be horrified by me saying this, but you could be in a city in Scotland or Northern England or something and you're driving along and then there's this massive wall this massive barrier that's keeping say the shankle road and the falls road apart and they would have gates well they still have gates which are sometimes locked at night so that people can't get in and out right well that's a i think a sombre note on which to end the first half.

We'll be back in the second half with some of your questions on walls and borders. I'm Marina Hyde. And I'm Richard Osman. And together we host The Rest Is Entertainment. It's your weekly fix of entertainment news, reviews, splash of showbiz gossip. And on our Q&A we pull back the curtain on entertainment and we tell you how it all works we have just launched our members club if you want ad-free listening bonus episodes and early access to live tickets head to the rest of the entertainment.com that's the rest is entertainment.com welcome back to the rest is History. A reminder that we've cranked up production

while Britain remains in lockdown, two podcasts a week till February. So please do get in touch. We will always announce the subject of our next pod on Twitter. And we really do appreciate all your questions. Talking of which, we'll be coming to questions in a minute. But before we do, Dominic, you had a particular theme that you wanted to bring up.

Well, I thought of something that when we're talking about walls and borders, which is something we haven't addressed, which is enclaves. And they are so interesting. So one of the most famous ones is the city of Kaliningrad, which is a Russian enclave surrounded by basically what's now Poland, but what was east prussia and that's the city that was better known for most of history is koenigsberg city of emmanuel kant the the soviet union took it at the end of the second world war they didn't give it back they never will give it

back the population is now russian and there's this sort of outpost of russianness now in what used to be a Prussian city in the middle of the European Union. An extraordinary thing. And of course, there are lots of enclaves all over the world. We just don't really know much about them. I suppose West Berlin was an enclave, wasn't it? West Berlin was an enclave, exactly.

So, I mean, how strange that was. West Berlin surrounded by a very hardcore, you know, communist East Germany for decades, apparently fixed. Yeah, I was tipped off about the peculiarities of the original border between India and what ended up as Bangladesh, which of course was drawn by Sir Cyril Radcliffe originally,

who also did the border between what becomes India and Pakistan. And it turns out there were loads of enclaves there that I think only got sorted out between Bangladesh and India kind of like 20, 30 years ago. But this actually goes to the point that we were talking about earlier about borders, that most borders are quite recent because they've been constructed in the wake of the disintegration of empires. So when people were drawing borders, even in Western Europe,

so Austria's borders, for example, they had to have plebiscites at the end of the Austro-Hungarian empire to decide would Carinthia be Austrian or would it be Yugoslav. So there's always this sort of arbitrariness. You have to have enclaves if you're not going to force people to live in, as it were, the wrong country. And I don't know which is, I mean, probably enclaves are better, but you've just had a war in Armenia and Azerbaijan about the enclaves, about Nagorno-Karabakh and all that.

I mean, one of the issues, I suppose, particularly in areas of the world that haven't had the inheritance of the Treaty of Westphalia, haven't got great accustomed to it, is that actually empires are far more kind of representative of how power has been organised. And one of the advantages, I suppose,

of empires is that you can have enclaves because you're all part of the same imperial structure. And essentially, in the Middle East, empires have been the natural way of things going right the way back to the time of Sargon of Akkad. Yeah, or the Balkans. I mean, the Balkans were Roman, they were Byzantine,

they were Ottoman orantine they were ottoman they or austro-hungarian then that all fell apart and then you know people just started fighting about where they start and end but it's it's also isn't it um it's it's to do with the rise of technology as well and mapping as you mentioned before and essentially the ability to the to have accurate maps to draw lines on them and then to ensure that those lines are upheld so moving on to the question seamlessly we have one from um paradoximoron that's an excellent name that's a great name and he remembers during my master's i had to write an essay on the hardening of the world's borders it turns out that most of the world's borders have become more heavily guarded since the end of the Cold War.

What do you think explains this? Well, this is a question for you, Dominic. But one thing that just hovers on my mind, have you been watching The Serpent? No, the Jenna Coleman serial killing thing. Yes. Charles Sobhraj, who was a serial killer of backpackers in in the 70s um and the absolute tension about that revolves around the fact that um there's no internet there are no mobile phones that he can take backpackers passports and then they've got no way of getting out um and you can kind of you can you can take photographs out of a passport and put another photo in and just use it as your own.

And you realize how, you know, in 40 years, how 50 years, how radically technology has has hardened the ability of states to monitor who comes in and out of their countries. I've got a terrifying passport border story for you, Tom. I once got an overnight train from Estonia to Russia. And as we were pulling into St. Petersburg, I realised that my passport had disappeared and I couldn't find it anywhere. That's not a good point. It's terrible.

You're an undocumented alien entering Vladimir Putin's Russia. What year was this? It was about 2002 2003 but they were in the middle of a huge panic because a lot of bombs were going off in russia they're in the second chechen war as i remember and and dominic be honest he looked like a chechen terrorist exactly exactly and uh you know where it was so basically the sort of the the the woman who took care of our sleeper carriage had come in and done all the laundry. She was desperate to get all this sort of laundry,

get all the bed sheets off and everything. And she'd whipped up my passport and it was at the bottom of this massive laundry bag. So you managed to find it? I did. I made a huge scene. Oh, you must have been... It was that English thing of, I thought, is it worse to make a scene

and embarrass myself in front of all the other passengers, or should I just take the ten years in the Russian prison? I can see that's a difficult one to weigh up. In which I can console myself. At least I showed a stiff upper lip. I hope you took the ten years in prison. No, I didn't. Well, I didn't, clearly.

Did you cry? Fall on your knees and sob? Anyway, we actually haven't answered Paradoxly Morons' question at all. So my answer to his question is as simple as migration. Migration has hugely increased and, you know, borders controls have increased with them. With migrant flows, don't you think? Yeah, but don't you think that the borders have hardened because people can harden them? Yes, I suppose so.

You know, so now you have to give a fingerprint when you think that the borders have hardened because people can harden them? Yes, I suppose so. You know, so now you have to give a fingerprint when you go into the United States or whatever and they take endless photos of you and all that sort of carry on, which I guess they didn't before. You just had a piece of paper and a man glaring at you across the desk. Yeah. You know, you can't go anywhere without the right papers now, whereas... No. That's because we're so sensitive about migration, isn't it? I mean, that wasn't the case in 1992 or something when, you know, the phrase asylum seekers was barely used in the news and immigration into most European countries was pretty low.

Don't you think it's a product of the anxiety about that? Yeah, I suppose so. I suppose so, yeah. But I think it's also about you know if the technology is there to uh enable you to do stuff then then you do it um which brings us very neatly on to another question from um amy matravadi who asked perhaps a discussion of the great firewall of china so this is the future isn't it i suppose yeah so this is the that's a good question so it's I suppose? Yeah. So this is the... That's a good question. So now the issue is not you're keeping people out or in, because that's keeping people out of China is not really something that I imagine the Chinese are

terribly worried about. It's more about keeping ideas out. So am I not right in thinking that there's some issue with Winnie the Pooh in China? Are you aware of this? That's right. Yes, yes. Xi Jinping looking like Winnie the Pooh in the Disney film. And so Winnie the Pooh has been suppressed. He's a non-bear. He's a non-bear. This is going to get a podcast suppressed in China. Oh, my God.

But, yeah, how effective is this? I don't know. I mean, only time will tell how well it's working. Clearly, it doesn't work with Lutheran ideas in the 16th century. It doesn't work with Enlightenment ideas or communism. You can't keep ideas out, I don't think. is kind of interesting because, you know, you're saying how the idea of the Great Wall of China is essentially a European invention. Europeans start going there and having, you know, rhapsodising about this amazing wall, and then the Chinese wake up to the fact that they've got this incredible thing, and you start getting all these stories about how it's the only structure that you can see from the moon, perhaps even from Mars,

I think Joseph needham said um and so the chinese become end up very proud of it and it becomes an emblem of their ability to protect their civilization yeah from the barbarians that that lie out there now whether that was the original purpose of of these kind of various fortifications that collectively have come to be called the Great Wall of China, I don't know. But I think that the idea that China is the great centre of civilisation, it's the Middle Kingdom, and you put a wall around it to keep the barbarians out, that is something that goes with the grain of Chinese national pride as it's evolved over the past century, really.

So maybe that's a part of it. I think it is. And I think actually you're right in that if you talk to Chinese people about it, they don't say, well, this is a sign of weakness and of our insecurity. They see it, as you say, I think they see it as a sign of this is who we are.

We control what comes in and out. It's a sign of our maturity and that we're sensible, that we don't let the internet become this anarchic free-for-all that you have in the West, that we want to have a sense of regulation. And maybe they've got a point. Well, maybe. I mean, who knows? I mean, we're speaking just a couple of days after Donald course and maybe they've got a point well maybe i mean who knows i mean we're speaking this is a couple of days after donald trump's been kicked off twitter no one in china is on twitter are they they've they've kind of banned it they've got their own

they have their own parallel things don't they yeah i guess yeah um yeah they famous in notoriety they haven't got rid of um president of iran so he's still no he's still on twitter yeah he's still on twitter tweeting um well here's here's another modern war from um i hope i'm going to pronounce this right um pepin luka um the israeli war separating israelis from the palestinians how successful is it oh yeah thank you for asking me this very uncontentious question. Well, I suppose you can argue it's ultimately successful only up to a point. I don't really know, and I've never been to Israel or indeed Palestine, so I don't really know.

I don't have any first-hand experience of which to draw. But, I mean, the thing with the wall is you can build a wall, but the other people are still there, right? And the issue is still there. It doesn't go away. So, I mean, an Israeli, you you know if you had an israeli spokesman they would say well it's improved improved security or whatever but of course the the problem the point i suppose for the israelis is at what point does that wall become a greater problem because of the

international pr damage you know what point does it harm your cause rather than help it? I don't have an answer to that. I mean, again, as in China, so in the Near East, there's a lot of history there. So one of the towns in Palestinian territories is Jericho, which possibly has some of the most famous walls in the whole of history um and you know all over the near east you've got these kind of what are called tells so dust mounds that

were once cities and uh you know we've got um the uh the very long wall as well out in out in syria so you do i mean perhaps of more than anywhere else in the world, in that area of the world, walls have an incredibly long history. And I suppose that, you know, the Israelis live in the shadow of that kind of incredibly ancient history. Oh, well, OK, so here's the next one from Ollie O'Brien. And this is something we've already touched on. When did borders become an actual thing?

1648 and the Treaty of Westphalia? Or not until faster transport and more people travelling by train? An example being German unification, I suppose. I mean, I think we've been kind of hovering around that question, really. When you have borders. Our borders, as we understand them now definite lines with border posts um you know satellite absolutely determine where exactly these borders are when did we start getting the idea that they are definite lines on a map rather than just kind of vague areas

control kind of frontier regions i don't actually have an answer to that, Tom. I think it's interesting he mentions train, because obviously trains, some people argue trains invented time. So train timetables invent a kind of national uniformity of clocks. Every station has to have the same time and all the rest of it. At what point, I mean, this is the thing that puzzles me, actually, that genuinely puzzles me. At what point are you on your this is the thing that puzzles me, actually, that genuinely puzzles me. At what point are you on your horse and you're in France,

then you're in Luxembourg, then you're in, you know, one of the states of what becomes Germany? How conscious are you of it? Is there somebody stopping you? And at what point is there somebody stopping you? My guess is we're talking 19th century. But I don't know. And when people did the grand tour they didn't need to take loads of documents with them and they didn't have to stop and have their bags searched i suppose travel was so expensive that if you were traveling you were

automatically assumed to be a a mill lord and that meant money so everyone would welcome you with open arms happy days when british tourists were still welcome on the continent. But one day... We're left with bags of marble. Coming from a very different angle is that perhaps one of the things that constitutes a border, say in antiquity, is the idea that the land is sacred. So in Athens, in Attica, I mean, Athens is unusual in ancient Greece because it controls such a large

quantity of territory. And that territory is seen as being sacred. So the Athenians see themselves as being autochthonous, born from the soil. And you have to be buried in Athenian soil. And unless if you are born from Athenian soil, then you are Athenian. There's no other way you can become an Athenian. So I suppose if you have a sense that the earth itself is sacred, I suppose, again, that's part of Israel as well, the idea of a promised land, a holy land. With the Romans, you have a thing called the pomerium, which is a sacred border that marks the sacral limits of the city um so if you have a sense that land is sacred then i suppose inevitably you probably have a sense of borders as well but i'm not sure about that something to something to i mean there's sort of the sort of trendy thing to say right is that borders are always fluid and they're terribly interesting and they're much more

interesting than non-borders and all the rest of it but borders aren't always that fluid so i mentioned spain and portugal earlier i mean that border has remained pretty much where it is than non-borders and all the rest of it. But borders aren't always that fluid. So I mentioned Spain and Portugal earlier. I mean, that border has remained pretty much where it is for I think 800 years. And the people on either side in all that time have had a pretty clear sense of themselves. We're Portuguese, you're Spanish. I mean, there must have been a degree of fluidity.

But they don't think they're Spanish, do they? Because within that border, there are all kinds of otherity. But they don't think they're Spanish, do they? Because within that border, there are all kinds of other borders. So the borders between what's going to become Al-Andalus and then Valencia and Castile and all these. I mean, that's kind of shifting and changing. So perhaps you have...

Yeah. And the borders in South America, right? The borders in South America follow often the patterns within the Spanish Empire. So the administrative divisions, you know, why is there Argentina and Chile and Uruguay and all these places? Often they follow the administrative divisions of the Spanish Empire. And actually Bolivar, when they, you know, in the great age of sort of independence fighting, he dreamed of a Gran Colombia, this big super state. And it failed because the individual elites wanted to cling on to their borders.

They wanted their little power bases. And the British as well. I mean, almost across the globe, wherever there's some particularly terrifying flashpoint, it turns out that a British mapmaker. Yes. You know, from Northern Ireland through Israel. terrifying flashpoint it turns out that a british map maker yes you know from northern ireland through although tom i always wonder i always i always think this is a great cop-out isn't it for people generations later to say oh it's the fault of those evil and actually i i really need to go and massacre my neighbors and it's not my fault at all well i but i suppose the british and spanish are coming from a continent in which the idea these idea of borders is taken for granted and going to parts of the world where

they're they're kind of rather alien ideas and um because western power was so preponderant over the 20th century yeah this idea was kind of taken for granted and is implicit in the united nations and things but it's actually it's expressive of an age of an age of Western power that is in retreat now. So I don't know whether the notion of a kind of Westphalian border will fade as well. That's a good point. And I guess, actually, one other point. There is a point. Maybe we British are too cavalier about borders precisely because we don't have one.

Yet. We may. If the Scottish independence vote goes what I would think would be the wrong way, but not necessarily. One for the Scottish. OK, here's another question. Again, I hope I pronounce this right. Tim Cieplowski.

Cieplowski. Cieplowski. What was the last functioning walled city and will they ever make a comeback i don't know that do you um so there are lots of walled cities still which function but i mean people don't besiege them i suppose that is that what it's looking for um uh because how do you well maybe it may be a city where the wall is is is an important part of its functioning. People aren't allowed in or out.

I mean, there are walled cities, aren't there? The best walled city, I tell you... The Vatican, perhaps, might be one, I suppose. The Vatican has a wall, doesn't it? So that marks out the limits. I tell you, have you been to... You must have been to Dubrovnik, Tom. That's a very...

No, I've never been to Dubrovnik. You've never been? No. So the wall is a huge element of Dubrovnik's. So Dubrovnik is King been. No. So the wall is a huge element of Dubrovnik's. So Dubrovnik is King's Landing from Game of Thrones. And the wall is a huge element of Dubrovnik's appeal.

And the wall has actually both made and destroyed Dubrovnik in the sense that it's the reason people go and because people go, it has become a sort of Disney-fied resort with colossal cruise ships which has leached it of its of its character but in terms of walled cities i mean that is the best walled city you'll ever go to

okay well it's i it's absolutely on my list and you know dreaming of time where i can go and see it but i would my answer to that last functioning walled city would be the vatican so okay but i may have got that wrong because i'm not an expert in walled city so if you if anyone out there has a better suggestion we'd love to hear from you but i was going to give you another question from aj bremner is a wall only a successful wall if it's guarded good question uh huh yes i suppose it well if you're not guarding a wall what's the point of it i mean there's there's an there's an interesting debate among hadrian's wallologists about whether there was a walkway on the wall i mean you'd assume that there there were on the wall yeah yeah so you know the soldiers can walk up and down the wall

yeah there's it's a topic of massive debate you know archaeologists fall out about this then there must be thousands of books that are utterly erroneous and redundant which soldiers are looking out from the wall i mean yes yes surely i mean i must have read a thousand articles in which african soldiers are looking out over the wall and this is a well they're they're in forts so clearly they are serving a kind of defensive purpose but the the wall is is seen as being more of a kind of you know customs marker or yeah we talked said before expression of power or something yeah that it's it's not a platform for actually uh defending against yeah barbarians so so to use your game of thrones analogy it's not people aren't wildlings aren't hurling themselves at the wall and being beaten back by is there any evidence of that did anybody ever attack the wall hadrian's

wall yeah we've got records of of people attacking it going uh going around it uh breaking through it um so it must have had some kind of defensive purpose but the the question is whether there were soldiers kind of walking up and down it which is is, I guess, the stereotype of it. That's what you imagine happened, but it's much debated. Well, I think we must draw a line. Draw a wall. I've got a wall for you, Tom. Do you know about the Cottesloe Wall?

No, I don't. You know about the Cottesloe Walls in Oxford? So Cheryl Hudson tweeted us about this, and it's one of my favourite walls because this is very surprising to a lot of people. So these are two walls, Oxford. So Cheryl Hudson tweeted us about this and it's one of my favourite walls because this is very surprising to a lot of people. So these are two walls basically that went up in Oxford in the 1930s to separate the middle class and working class areas. So basically what happened was a developer had the right to build a load of houses and he put up a spiked wall to deter people from the local council estate from trying to get in and these walls stayed for about 25 years and they were incredibly

controversial i mean sort of people campaigned against them in 1950 they came down 1959 so if you'd gone to oxford in 1958 you'd have found a street where you'd walk along and there'd be a spiked wall in the middle of the street to keep the council tenants out. And this was legal? Yeah. Well, there were huge legal battles. It went on and on and the developers refused to take it down. And the council, you know, they kept finding loopholes so the council couldn't enforce it. And of course, a lot of people were hugely shocked by it. But the local homeowners were all for it. They didn't want the council to... And is this only something that happened in Oxford?

Yes, I think so. I mean, maybe listeners will know of other such wars, but I think Oxford... That confirms my darker suspicions of Oxford. Of Oxford. You're a Cambridge man, aren't you? Yeah, I'm not surprised. Not surprised.

Well, let's draw a line under this whole sorry business. Build a wall. End this podcast. Dominic and I are going to go off and do some Century Duty. Thanks very much for listening to us. We'll be back on Thursday. See you next time. Thanks for listening to The Rest Is History. For bonus episodes, early access, ad-free listening, and access to our chat community, please sign up at restishistorypod.com. That's restishistorypod.com.