Progressive Geographies

A thoughtful and generous review essay of my 2013 book The Birth of Territory has just been published – “Territory Delimited“, Tulsa Law Review by Bartholomew Sparrow (open access).

I was particularly pleased with these two general paragraphs, which follow a detailed survey of what the book tries to do:

Quite rightly, the piece then goes on to raise some critical questions. I don’t really understand the comment about anthropology and archaeology – while entirely correct that I don’t try to do that work, the intention was never to ‘slight’ them: it was a recognition of the limits of my ability, not a denigration of that work. It would indeed take academics with training in those disciplines to attend to “peoples who left little written record”. I really wouldn’t know where to start to answer the questions Sparrow raises here. In terms of the legacy of colonialism, I say a bit, and recognise some of these criticisms from other exchanges about the book. I’ve done my best to reply before, though I accept this is never going to be adequate to the complexity of this issue. (A full list of reviews and responses is here.)

The last, most extensive criticism is that the story stops with the late 17th and early 18th century, and doesn’t bring the story up-to-date. Well, that was never my intention here, and some of the most contemporary issues that Sparrow raises were addressed in detail in my 2009 book Terror and Territory, and a few related papers – where I discuss terrorism, the end of the Cold War, and globalisation. I don’t agree that territory has become less important in our global world, and I think it’s far too quick a conclusion to draw. But to answer these questions adequately would be another book or two at least; and perhaps most crucially, if attempted here would have prevented this book from doing what it does attempt, as the review goes on to recognise.