Who Drew the Lines on the Map?

Nobody invented countries, so who drew the lines that divide almost the entire planet? In this video we follow the idea from a 4,500-year-old border dispute in Mesopotamia to the 162 enclaves that were swapped between India and Bangladesh in 2015, and ask why the famous date for the birth of the modern country (1648) is only part of the story. You'll discover: • Why the oldest border dispute we can read about was over a canal, not a flag • How empires, frontiers and "overlapping crowns" worked before modern borders • How treaties, censuses and maps turned territory into something that could be measured • The difference between a state and a nation, and why it explains so much history • How passports, the Berlin Conference, the OAU and the Radcliffe Line shaped the world map Chapters: 0:00 Who invented countries? 0:51 Territory 2:20 Empires 4:12 Lines you can see 5:39 Paper and power 7:32 Belonging 9:15 State or nation? 10:30 The date everyone knows 11:53 Maps 13:30 Belonging on paper 14:52 Lines drawn from far away 16:13 Five weeks 17:53 The latest chapter Sources and further reading: • Lagash–Umma border conflict and the Stele of the Vultures (Louvre) • Hadrian's Wall (English Heritage); Treaty of Tordesillas (1494); Domesday Book (1086); Han census (AD 2) • Benedict Anderson, Imagined Communities (1983); Charles Tilly, Coercion, Capital and European States • Andreas Osiander, "Sovereignty, International Relations, and the Westphalian Myth," International Organization (2001) • Berlin Conference 1884–85; G. Griffiths, The Division of Africa (1986); OAU Cairo Declaration (1964) • Radcliffe Boundary Commission (1947); India–Bangladesh enclaves exchange (31 July 2015) • Schengen Agreement (1985); Antarctic Treaty (1959) Maps: Natural Earth (public domain). Images: Wikimedia Commons (CC BY / CC BY-SA / CC0 / public domain) — full credits in the end roll. Music: public-domain and CC0 performances (Kimiko Ishizaka, Musopen performers, Bach, Chopin, Debussy, Satie, Grieg). Narration: VoiceStudio. Effects: AudioCraft AudioGen. #borders #countries #history #geography #worldhistory