Customer Reviews

Boundaries: The Making of France and Spain in the Pyrenees

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The Pyrenees boundary between France and Spain began in 1659 as a pretty arbitrary line, but over the course of the next two centuries it was worked out as a national border locally. Sahlins studied the Cerdanya, a valley in the Pyrenees split between France and Spain, and shows how localism formed national identities that were necessary for delineating the boundary.

According to Sahlins, the changes that took place to form the France/Spain boundary were not only a formation of national identity, but also a change in the governments' views of sovereignty, moving from an idea of jurisdiction and dominion over subjects, to territorial control. He shows how policy in the Cerdanya reflected this change from jurisdiction to territory, the change from frontier land to a true boundary.

Sahlins' book is a fascinating look at what makes a nation, and a microcosmic study of the formation of the modern nation-state. His study of the Cerdanya gives the book insights, not just into governmental state-building, but also the construction of identity, the necessity of boundaries for people to define themselves in opposition to the other.

This book is pure genious, focusing on the important issue of nations, identity and borders, specifically the Franco-Spanish border as it was deliniated from the 17th century onward. This is a fascinating account. Most would say that the pyrennes offer an ideal border and they would be correct, but how the nations were able to imprint national idenitities on the clannish localities of the mountains is fascinating reading on a subject most of us would never deighn to think important. A fun and important account, fascinating, ingenious and one of a kind in its originality.

Seth J. Frantzman