it's from the book Imagined Communities, an EXCELLENT book by Benedict Anderson. i am a huge cultural identity geek, so it is all up in my alley. he was talking at my university yesterday and i thought about getting my copy autographed by him, but that sort of thing is Done in academia and i didn't want to come across as a n00b SO I DIDN'T.
it even has a bit about burma! it's about thailand though.
"Boundaries occur where the vertical interfaces between state sovereignties intersect the surface of the earth. As vertical interfaces, boundaries have no horizontal extent." --Richard Muir "Boundary-stones and similar markers did exist, and indeed multiplied along the western fringes of the realm as the British pressed in from Lower Burma. But these stones were set up discontinuously at strategic mountain passes and fords, and were often substantial distances from corresponding stones set up by the adversary. They were understood horizontally, at eye level, as extention points of royal power; not 'from the air'. Only in the 1870s did Thai leaders begin thinking of boundaries as segments of a continuous map-line corresponding to nothing visible on the ground, but demarcating an exclusive sovereignty wedged between other sovereignties." (pg172)
narnian maps don't seem to do the whole invisible boundaries thing. it's more like narnia MOUNTAINS archenland DESERT calormen. i'm not precisely precisely sure how this relates to narnia, except i think to a pevensie riding gryphon-back over the land surveying it, or maybe telmarine conquest, and what are borders during a conquest after all. telmarine maps vs narnian maps, something like that.
college will make you have so many non-fiction books you won't know what to do with them all!
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it even has a bit about burma! it's about thailand though.
"Boundaries occur where the vertical interfaces between state sovereignties intersect the surface of the earth. As vertical interfaces, boundaries have no horizontal extent." --Richard Muir
"Boundary-stones and similar markers did exist, and indeed multiplied along the western fringes of the realm as the British pressed in from Lower Burma. But these stones were set up discontinuously at strategic mountain passes and fords, and were often substantial distances from corresponding stones set up by the adversary. They were understood horizontally, at eye level, as extention points of royal power; not 'from the air'. Only in the 1870s did Thai leaders begin thinking of boundaries as segments of a continuous map-line corresponding to nothing visible on the ground, but demarcating an exclusive sovereignty wedged between other sovereignties." (pg172)
narnian maps don't seem to do the whole invisible boundaries thing. it's more like narnia MOUNTAINS archenland DESERT calormen. i'm not precisely precisely sure how this relates to narnia, except i think to a pevensie riding gryphon-back over the land surveying it, or maybe telmarine conquest, and what are borders during a conquest after all. telmarine maps vs narnian maps, something like that.
college will make you have so many non-fiction books you won't know what to do with them all!