From frontiers to borders: how colonial technicians created modern territoriality

In this book launch, Kerry Goettlich will briefly present his new book, From Frontiers to Borders: How Colonial Technicians Created Modern Territoriality (Cambridge University Press, 2025), followed by a panel discussion about the key questions. How did modern territoriality emerge and what are its consequences?

Goettlich argues that linear boundaries are products of particular colonial encounters, rather than being essentially an intra-European practice artificially imposed on colonised regions. He reconceptualises modern territoriality as a phenomenon separate from sovereignty and the state, based on expert practices of delimitation and demarcation. He argues that its history stems from the social production of expertise oriented towards these practices.

Meet our speaker

Kerry Goettlich is Lecturer in International Politics at City St George’s, University of London. Following on from this book, he is currently researching the historical emergence of the prohibition of territorial conquest in international law, with a focus on the ways in which the prohibition was shaped by US informal imperialism in the early twentieth century.

Discussants

Edward Keene is Associate Professor of International Relations in the Department of Politics and International Relations at the University of Oxford. His research interests lie in modern international history, especially with regard to the history of international law and diplomacy; international relations theory; and the history of political thought.

Joanne Yao is Reader (Associate Professor) in International Relations at Queen Mary University of London. Her research interests include environmental history & politics, global historical sociology, the history of empire and imperialism, IR theory, and international organisations.

Ayşe Zarakol is Professor of International Relations at the University of Cambridge. Her research is at the intersection of historical sociology and IR, focusing on East-West relations in the international system, history and future of world order(s), conceptualisations of modernity and sovereignty, rising and declining powers, and Turkish politics in a comparative perspective.

Chair

Martin Bayly is Associate Professor of International Relations Theory in the Department of International Relations at LSE.

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