Geographies of Power on Land and Water: Space, People, and Borders

许多不同且通常独立的学术研究途径研究早期现代边界空间，有时以线条为特征，有时以区域为特征，包括大西洋历史、海洋历史、北美“边疆”或大陆历史、美洲半球历史和美洲原住民历史。每一种方法都有其独特的地理视角和一系列问题。该网络的创新之处在于挑战参与者跨越空间和方法论的桥梁，重新定位观点，促进对早期现代起源和边界和边界空间竞赛的比较分析，为今天的移民辩论提供信息。从15世纪到19世纪，人们发现了通往非洲和美洲及其周围的路线，世界地图似乎被重新绘制了，在这个过程中，人们开始争论哪些边界线将继续存在。各种各样的人——政治官员、商人和普通男女——划定、辩论和谴责边界，遵守或忽视边界，为边界而战，并建立超越边界的网络。边界的目的是划定主权和政治控制，宣示对自然资源和居民忠诚的要求，建立封闭的经济活动区域，并以各种方式决定谁能进入谁不能进入。今天的一些边界很容易看到：混凝土墙，高速公路路障，机场移民官员。近代早期的疆界更加模糊，原因有三：首先，在一个新的“大西洋”世界中，跨洋帝国的定义和实践必须重新配置，包括土著和外来者之间、中心和边缘地区之间以及帝国对手之间的永久竞争。例如，在18世纪，美洲原住民、英国、西班牙和美国都声称拥有西佛罗里达。其次，与此同时，新兴的民族国家概念引发了关于谁有权要求领土主权以及什么决定国家共同体成员资格的内部辩论；从18世纪70年代到19世纪60年代，美国一直在努力解决这些问题。第三，在实际层面上，这些边界往往无法定义或捍卫，因为它们存在于人们无法看到或执行它们的地方，比如美洲印第安人（如奇卡索人）划定的大陆内部边界，欧洲人不承认。这些问题意味着，无论如何划定，边界线都是不永久的，特别是在欧洲帝国直接军事和行政监督之外的地方。我们的网络将汇集多个学术对话，询问早期现代帝国，地面居民和航海家如何定义，挑战和利用大西洋世界的边界，无论是在陆地上还是在水上。我们建议建立一个随着时间的推移而扩大的网络，通过三个相互联系的研讨会将学者聚集在一起。第一次将在坦普尔大学（美国费城）举行，并将选出一组参与者，他们每个人都将承诺参加剩下的两个讲习班中的一个。本次研讨会将提出更多的问题，帮助学者们思考在这些不同领域工作的最佳实践。下一届研讨会将在南安普顿大学（英国南安普顿）举行，将有第一届研讨会的参与者和通过论文征集选出的其他与会者。最后一个研讨会将在历史研究所（伦敦，英国）举行，重点是早期现代地图和制图。在与《国际卫生条例》档案保管员协商后，每位与会者——包括第一次讲习班的发言者和通过征文选出的与会者——将把他们的论文集中在《国际卫生条例》馆藏的历史地图上。他们将使用地图作为工具来思考和分析早期现代边界。

A number of distinct and usually separate avenues of scholarship examine early modern border spaces, sometimes characterized as lines and sometimes as zones, including Atlantic history, maritime history, the 'frontier' or continental history of North America, hemispheric histories of the Americas, and Native American history. Each of these approaches is defined by a distinctive geographic perspective and set of questions. This network is innovative in challenging participants to bridge across space and methodology, reorienting perspectives and facilitating a comparative analysis of the early modern origins of and contests over the borders and bordered spaces that inform immigration debates today.With the discovery of routes to and around Africa and the Americas from the fifteenth through nineteenth centuries, the map of the world seemed to be redrawn, in the process casting up for debate which borderlines would persist. A range of people--political officials, merchants, and ordinary women and men--drew, debated, and denounced boundaries, observed or ignored them, fought over them, and forged networks that transcended them. Boundaries were meant to demarcate sovereignty and political control, assert claims to natural resources and inhabitants' loyalty, establish closed zones of economic activity, and in myriad ways determine who was in and who out. Some borders today are readily visible: a concrete wall, a motorway barricade, an airport immigration officer. Early modern boundaries were more amorphous for three reasons: first, in a newly 'Atlantic' world, the definition and practice of trans-oceanic empires had to be reconfigured, involving perpetual contest between Natives and newcomers, centres and peripheries, and among imperial rivals. Native Americans, Britain, Spain, and the United States all claimed West Florida, for instance, during the eighteenth century. Second, and simultaneously, newly emerging notions of the nation-state provoked internal debate about who had the right to claim territory and what determined membership in a national community; the United States struggled with these questions from the 1770s to the 1860s. Third, on a practical level, such boundaries were often impossible to define or defend because they existed in places where people couldn't see or enforce them, like the interior of a continent where Native Americans such as the Chickasaws marked out borders that Europeans did not recognise. These problems meant that however they were drawn, boundary lines were impermanent, particularly in places beyond the direct military and administrative oversight of European empires.Our network will bring together multiple scholarly conversations, to ask how early modern empires, on-the-ground inhabitants, and voyagers defined, defied, and took advantage of Atlantic World borders, be they on land or on water. We propose a network that will expand over time, bringing together scholars through three linked workshops. The first will take place at Temple University (Philadelphia, USA), and will feature a select group of participants, each of whom will commit to attending one of the two remaining workshops. This workshop will delineate additional questions that will help scholars think through best practices for working in these often disparate fields. The next workshop will take place at the University of Southampton (Southampton, UK), and will feature participants from the first workshop and additional attendees chosen through a call for papers. The last workshop will take place at the Institute of Historical Research (London, UK), and will focus upon early modern maps and mapping. In consultation with the IHR's archivists, each participant--including speakers from the first workshop and participants selected through a call for papers--will centre their paper on a historical map in the IHR collections. They will use the maps as tools to think through and ground their analysis about early modern borders.