About this book:

A Border as a Historical Artifact

The Making of Borders argues that the continent’s frontiers are not natural facts but constructed lines, forged in the interplay of empire, law, cartography, and modern state-building. In Asia, where ancient polities layered over complex social geographies, the conversion of fluid frontiers into sharp lines has been especially consequential. Colonial surveyors, armed with theodolites and legal concepts, translated landscapes into coordinates, turning rivers into borders and ridgelines into doctrine. Census takers and ethnographers then hardened social difference into territorial claims, aligning people with place. When empires receded, successor states inherited these maps and the political myths that came with them, leading to enduring disputes. Yet borders are not only lines; they are zones of livelihood, where competition over hydrocarbons, copper, timber, and water incentivizes states to press claims and defend access. The making of borders is therefore a process of contest and compromise that shapes national identities, regional security, and the everyday lives of those who live in the shadow of the line.

The book’s comparative framework applies these dynamics to a range of emblematic cases, illustrating how the politics of control plays out in diverse settings. In the subcontinent, the 1947 Partition converted the Radcliffe Line from an administrative boundary into a site of mass migration and conflict, creating afterlives that continue to shape India–Pakistan relations, most visibly in Kashmir, where mountains, militarization, and the politics of plebiscites intersect. In the high Himalaya, the China–India boundary—from the McMahon Line to Aksai Chin—is a product of competing cartographic inheritances and strategic imperatives, where new infrastructure and surveillance technologies amplify the stakes of control. Central Asia’s borders, a legacy of Soviet national delimitation, carved ethnic territories into administrative lines that became international frontiers, producing the Fergana Knot of enclaves, interdependence, and periodic violence. Meanwhile, the Durand Line between Afghanistan and Pakistan shows how an imperial boundary can divide Pashtun geographies and fuel cross-border insurgency, while the Korean Peninsula’s DMZ demonstrates how a temporary armistice line can become a permanent, highly militarized frontier with unique mechanisms of management.

Beyond terrestrial lines, the book explores how borders extend into the maritime domain, where law, geography, and power collide. The South China Sea epitomizes this entanglement: islands, rocks, and reefs serve as anchors for competing Exclusive Economic Zone claims, turning UNCLOS into a battlefield of “lawfare.” China’s “nine-dash line,” the 2016 arbitral award, and island-building campaigns illustrate how maritime boundaries are drawn not only by treaties but also by concrete and dredged sand. In this arena, resource frontiers—fisheries and potential hydrocarbons—intensify competition and shape strategies of control. Across Asia, infrastructure functions as a primary instrument of strategy. Pipelines, ports, and chokepoints do more than connect; they create dependencies, project power, and turn remote borderlands into strategic corridors. Whether it is the China–Pakistan Economic Corridor or maritime ports on the Indian Ocean, infrastructure redraws the political map in steel and asphalt.

The book also attends to the human and technological dimensions of borders. Populations move across, through, and against the lines drawn by states, generating diasporas, refugees, and informal trade economies that complicate sovereignty. Border policing—from fences and drones to biometric systems—turns frontiers into sites of high-tech surveillance and routine exclusion. At the same time, states and communities develop repertoires for managing disputes: ceasefires, confidence-building measures, joint patrols, and track-two dialogues. International and regional institutions, from UNCLOS to the Shanghai Cooperation Organisation and ASEAN, provide frameworks for cooperation and law, even as they encounter the limits of enforcement. Finally, borders are cognitive as much as they are physical. Cartographic nationalism—maps in school textbooks, symbols on passports—cements territorial claims in the public imagination, making the line on the map a matter of identity and memory.

The book’s overarching argument is that borders in Asia are not static lines but evolving institutions. They are produced by historical decisions, reworked by environmental change, and reshaped by technology and strategic competition. The future of the frontier will be shaped by climate change—glacial retreat, shifting river courses, and rising seas that will force states to adapt or renegotiate lines. The politics of control will continue to revolve around resource extraction, connectivity, and security, but it will increasingly require cooperative governance and innovative legal tools. By treating borders as products of history and practice, The Making of Borders clarifies why certain disputes persist, how others have been managed, and what possibilities exist for building more stable and inclusive frontiers.

What You'll Find Inside:

• Examines how colonial cartography and ethnographic surveys imposed rigid lines on fluid frontiers, inventing many of Asia's modern boundaries and hardening ethnic identities into territorial claims.
• Analyzes specific, enduring boundary conflicts—from the Kashmir frontier and the China–India Line of Actual Control to the Durand Line and the Korean DMZ—showing how historical agreements and terrain shape today's disputes.
• Explores how natural features like rivers and ridges are used to 'naturalize' borders, while also highlighting how resources such as water, minerals, and hydrocarbons turn frontiers into zones of strategic competition and cooperation.
• Shows that borders are not only lines on maps but social and economic spaces, where informal trade, cross-border kinship, smuggling, and daily negotiations between communities and guards create a lived reality that often diverges from official maps.
• Addresses the evolving nature of borders through technology and future pressures, discussing how satellite mapping and surveillance create new forms of control, while climate change, glacial melt, and rising sea levels introduce unprecedented challenges to fixed boundaries.

Who's It For:

This book is essential for students and scholars of Asian studies, international relations, and political geography, who will find a comprehensive framework for analyzing border-making and its consequences. It is also highly relevant for policymakers, diplomats, and military strategists concerned with regional security, resource competition, and conflict management. Furthermore, journalists and global citizens interested in understanding the historical roots and contemporary dynamics of Asia's most pressing geopolitical disputes will find the book an accessible and informative guide.