- Table View
- List View
Border Tunnels: A Media Theory of the U.S.-Mexico Underground
by Juan Llamas-RodriguezA comparative media analysis of the representation of the U.S.–Mexico border Border tunnels at the U.S.–Mexico border are ubiquitous in news, movies, and television, yet, because they remain hidden and inaccessible, the public can encounter them only through media. Analyzing the technologies, institutional politics, narrative tropes, and aesthetic decisions that go into showing border tunnels across multiple forms of media, Juan Llamas-Rodriguez argues that we cannot properly address border issues without attending to—and fully understanding—the fraught relationship between their representation and reality. Llamas-Rodriguez reveals that every media text about border tunnels, whether meant for entertainment, cable news, video games, or speculative design, implicitly takes a position on the politics of the border. The examples laid out in Border Tunnels will teach readers how to look differently at the border as it is commonly presented in various forms of media, from ABC&’s Nightline and CNN&’s Anderson Cooper 360º to reality TV, propaganda videos, and even digital effects in Hollywood action films. Llamas-Rodriguez examines how creative decisions in the production, promotion, and distribution of these media texts either emphasize or downplay issues such as border security, racial dynamics of migration, and sustainability of the borderlands. Focusing on tunnels to show how media representations can influence all kinds of audiences—even those physically near the border—Border Tunnels helps us make sense of this pressing social issue, ultimately advancing understanding of the U.S.–Mexico border in all of its complexity and precariousness.
Border Urbanism: Transdisciplinary Perspectives (The Urban Book Series)
by Quazi Mahtab Zaman Greg G. HallBorder Urbanism presents a global array of authors’ research that tackles the perception, interpretation, and nature of borders from a transdisciplinary perspective. The authors examine ways in which borders attempt to define socially, economically, politically, and historically incompatible systems, from micro neighbourhoods to global macro territories, and how this blurs urban order that results in an absence of cohesion. Their analysis of contextual worldwide settings considers the unique issues and the broad scope of forces that shape borders and separate socioeconomic, political, cultural, and historical polarities. The authors consider ways in which the resulting urban border conditions determine the mobility of goods, resources, and people and how these delineations define relationships that influence geopolitical relationships, socioeconomic transactions, and people’s lives at multiple levels. They address the temporal issues defined by a variety of unique urban conditions that result from these lateral thresholds. Each chapter contributes to a critical discourse of the subject of border urbanism and the phenomenon created by separation, demarcation, and segregation as well as by conflict and coexistence. The transdisciplinary approach of Border Urbanism ensures that it will be of interest to individuals across a spectrum of professions and disciplines. Professionals such as urban planners, designers, architects, developers, and civil and environmental engineers and students of these disciplines will be particularly interested as will allied professionals and those not traditionally associated with urbanism; these include artists, sociologists, historians, lawyers, politicians, and civic and government leaders. The authors’ global perspectives, combined with their expertise in environmental, historical, cultural, social, political, and geographic areas, will appeal to anyone interested in border urbanism and its intersection with these areas.
Border Vigils
by Jeremy HardingOurs is an era marked by extraordinary human migrations, with some 200 million people alive today having moved from their country of origin. The political reaction in Europe and the United States has been to raise the drawbridge: immigrant workers are needed, but no longer welcome. So migrants die in trucks or drown en route; they are murdered in smuggling operations or ruthlessly exploited in illegal businesses that make it impossible for the abused to seek police help. More than 15,000 people have died in the last twenty years trying to circumvent European entry restrictions.In this beautifully written book, Jeremy Harding draws haunting portraits of the migrants - and anti-immigrant zealots - he encountered in his investigations in Europe and on the US-Mexico border. Harding's painstaking research and global perspective identify the common characteristics of immigration policy across the rich world and raise pressing questions about the future of national boundaries and universal values.
Border Walls Gone Green: Nature and Anti-immigrant Politics in America
by John HultgrenHow is it that self-identified environmental progressives in America can oppose liberalizing immigration policies? Environmentalism is generally assumed to be a commitment of the political left and restrictionism a commitment of the right. As John Hultgren shows, the reality is significantly more complicated. American environmentalists have supported immigration restrictions since the movement first began in the late 1800s, and anti-immigration arguments continue to attract vocal adherents among contemporary mainstream and radical &“greens.&”Border Walls Gone Green seeks to explain these seemingly paradoxical commitments by examining what is actually going on in American debates over the environmental impacts of immigration. It makes the case that nature is increasingly being deployed as a form of &“walling&”—which enables restrictionists to subtly fortify territorial boundaries and identities without having to revert to cultural and racial logics that are unpalatable to the political left. From an environmental point of view, the location of borders makes little sense; the Mexican landscape near most border crossings looks exactly like the landscape on the American side. And the belief that immigrants are somehow using up the nation&’s natural resources and thereby accelerating the degradation of the environment simply does not hold up to scrutiny. So, Hultgren finds, the well-intentioned efforts of environmentalists to &“sustain&” America are also sustaining the idea of the nation-state and in fact serving to reinforce exclusionary forms of political community.How, then, should socially conscious environmentalists proceed? Hultgren demonstrates that close attention to the realities of transnational migration can lead to a different brand of socio-ecological activism—one that could be our only chance to effectively confront the powerful forces producing ecological devastation and social injustice.
Border War Fighting over Slavery before the Civil War
by Stanley HarroldDuring the 1840s and 1850s, a dangerous ferment afflicted the North-South border region, pitting the slave states of Maryland, Virginia, Kentucky, and Missouri against the free states of New Jersey, Pennsylvania, Ohio, Indiana, and Illinois. Aspects of this struggle--the underground railroad, enforcement of the fugitive slave laws, mob actions, and sectional politics--are well known as parts of other stories. Here, Stanley Harrold explores the border struggle itself, the dramatic incidents that it comprised, and its role in the complex dynamics leading to the Civil War. Border Warexamines the previously neglected cross-border clash of attitudes and traditions dating many generations back. By the mid-nineteenth century, nowhere else were tensions greater between antislavery and proslavery interests. Nowhere else was there more direct conflict between the forces binding North and South together and those driving them apart. There were mass slave escapes, battles between antislavery and proslavery vigilantes, and fierce resistance in the Border North to the kidnapping of free African Americans. There were also fights throughout the borderlands between fugitive slaves and those attempting to apprehend them. Harrold argues that, during the 1850s, warfare on the Kansas-Missouri line and John Brown's raid on Harpers Ferry, Virginia, were manifestations of a more pervasive border conflict that helped push the Lower South into secession and helped persuade most of the Border South to stand by the Union.
Border Wars: Inside Trump's Assault on Immigration
by Julie Hirschfeld Davis Michael ShearTwo New York Times Washington correspondents provide an inside account with never-before-told stories of the defining issue of Donald Trump’s presidency: his steadfast opposition to immigration to the US.As his campaign rhetoric in the 2018 midterms demonstrated, no issue matters more to Donald Trump than immigration. And no issue—with the possible exception of his opposition to Robert Mueller’s investigation of his 2016 campaign—better defines his administration. <P><P>Julie Hirschfeld Davis and Michael D. Shear have covered the Trump administration from its earliest days. In Border Wars, they take readers inside the White House to document how Trump and his allies blocked asylum-seekers and refugees, separated families, threatened deportation and sought to erode the longstanding bipartisan consensus that immigration and immigrants make positive contributions to America. <P><P>As the authors reveal, Trump has used immigration to stoke fears (“the caravan”), attack Democrats and the courts, and distract from negative news and political difficulties. Even as illegal immigration has fallen in recent years, Trump has elevated it in the imaginations of many Americans into a national crisis. Moreover, his comments about legal immigrants—Nigerians in their “huts,” Haitians infected with AIDS, and people from “@#$%hole countries”—have been incendiary. <P><P>Border Wars identifies the players behind Trump’s anti-immigration policies, showing how they planned, stumbled, and fought their way toward major immigration changes that have further polarized the nation. This definitive, behind-the-scenes account is filled with previously unreported stories that reveal how Trump’s decision-making is driven by gut instinct and marked by disorganization, paranoia, and a constantly feuding staff.
The Border Within: Vietnamese Migrants Transforming Ethnic Nationalism in Berlin
by Phi Hong SuWhen the Berlin Wall fell, Germany united in a wave of euphoria and solidarity. Also caught in the current were Vietnamese border crossers who had left their homeland after its reunification in 1975. Unwilling to live under socialism, one group resettled in West Berlin as refugees. In the name of socialist solidarity, a second group arrived in East Berlin as contract workers. The Border Within paints a vivid portrait of these disparate Vietnamese migrants' encounters with each other in the post-socialist city of Berlin. Journalists, scholars, and Vietnamese border crossers themselves consider these groups that left their homes under vastly different conditions to be one people, linked by an unquestionable ethnic nationhood. Phi Hong Su's rigorous ethnography unpacks this intuition. In absorbing prose, Su reveals how these Cold War compatriots enact palpable social boundaries in everyday life. This book uncovers how 20th-century state formation and international migration—together, border crossings—generate enduring migrant classifications. In doing so, border crossings fracture shared ethnic, national, and religious identities in enduring ways.
The Border Within: The Economics of Immigration in an Age of Fear
by Kalee Thompson Tara WatsonAn eye-opening analysis of the costs and effects of immigration and immigration policy, both on American life and on new Americans. For decades, immigration has been one of the most divisive, contentious topics in American politics. And for decades, urgent calls for its policy reform have gone mostly unanswered. As the discord surrounding the modern immigration debate has intensified, border enforcement has tightened. Crossing harsher, less porous borders makes unauthorized entry to the United States a permanent, costly undertaking. And the challenges don’t end on the other side. At once enlightening and devastating, The Border Within examines the costs and ends of America’s interior enforcement—the policies and agencies, including ICE, aimed at removing immigrants already living in the country. Economist Tara Watson and journalist Kalee Thompson pair rigorous analysis with deeply personal stories from immigrants and their families to assess immigration’s effects on every aspect of American life, from the labor force to social welfare programs to tax revenue. What emerges is a critical, utterly complete examination of what non-native Americans bring to the country, including immigration’s tendency to elevate the wages and skills of those who are native-born. News coverage has prompted many to question the humanity of American immigration policies; The Border Within opens a conversation of whether it is effective. The United States spends billions each year on detention and deportation, all without economic gain and at a great human cost. With depth and discipline, the authors dissect the shock-and-awe policies that make up a broken, often cruel system, while illuminating the lives caught in the chaos. It is an essential work with far-reaching implications for immigrants and non-immigrants alike.
Border Witness: Reimagining the US-Mexico Borderlands through Film
by Michael DearWhat a century of border films teaches about the real and imagined worlds of the US-Mexico borderlands—and how this understanding helps build better relations across boundaries. Border Witness is an account of cultural collision and fusion between Mexico and the United States, as seen on the ground and in films from the past hundred years. Blending film studies with political and cultural geography, Michael Dear investigates the making of cross-border identity and community in the territories between two nations. Border Witness introduces a new "border film" genre just now entering its golden age. A geographer and activist, Dear adopts an accessible and engaged perspective, combining the stories told by these films with insights drawn from his own decades-long research and travel. From early silent films to virtual reality, and from revolution to the present global crisis, border films provide fresh evidence for real and imagined politics and for envisioning future transborder architectures carved from in-between spaces. In an era of global geopolitics that favors walls and war over diplomacy, Dear's insights have relevance for borders around the world.
Border Women And The Community Of Maclovio Rojas: Autonomy In The Spaces Of Neoliberal Neglect
by Michelle TéllezNear Tijuana, Baja California, the autonomous community of Maclovio Rojas demonstrates what is possible for urban place-based political movements. More than a community, Maclovio Rojas is a women-led social movement that works for economic and political autonomy to address issues of health, education, housing, nutrition, and security. Border Women and the Community of Maclovio Rojas tells the story of the community’s struggle to carve out space for survival and thriving in the shadows of the U.S.-Mexico geopolitical border. This ethnography by Michelle Téllez demonstrates the state’s neglect in providing social services and local infrastructure. This neglect exacerbates the structural violence endemic to the border region—a continuation of colonial systems of power on the urban, rural, and racialized poor. Téllez shows that in creating the community of Maclovio Rojas, residents have challenged prescriptive notions of nation and belonging. Through women’s active participation and leadership, a women’s political subjectivity has emerged—Maclovianas. These border women both contest and invoke their citizenship as they struggle to have their land rights recognized, and they transform traditional political roles into that of agency and responsibility. This book highlights the U.S.-Mexico borderlands as a space of resistance, conviviality, agency, and creative community building where transformative politics can take place. It shows hope, struggle, and possibility in the context of gendered violences of racial capitalism on the Mexican side of the U.S.-Mexico border.
Border Work
by Madeleine ReevesIn Central Asia s Ferghana Valley, where Kyrgyzstan, Uzbekistan, and Tajikistan meet, state territoriality has taken on new significance in these states second decade of independence, reshaping landscapes and transforming livelihoods in a densely populated, irrigation-dependent region. Through an innovative ethnography of social and spatial practice at the limits of the state, Border Work explores the contested work of producing and policing territorial integrity when significant stretches of new international borders remain to be conclusively demarcated or effectively policed. Drawing on extensive ethnographic fieldwork, Madeleine Reeves follows traders, farmers, water engineers, conflict analysts, and border guards as they negotiate the practical responsibilities and social consequences of producing, policing, and deriving a livelihood across new international borders that are often encountered locally as chessboards rather than lines. She shows how the negotiation of state spatiality is bound up with concerns about legitimate rule and legitimate movement, and explores how new attempts to secure the border, materially and militarily, serve to generate new sources of lived insecurity in a context of enduring social and economic inter-dependence. A significant contribution to Central Asian studies, border studies, and the contemporary anthropology of the state, Border Work moves beyond traditional ethnographies of the borderland community to foreground the effortful and intensely political work of producing state space.
Bordered Cities and Divided Societies: Humanistic Essays of Conflict, Violence, and Healing
by Scott A. BollensBordered Cities and Divided Societies is a provocative, moving, and poetic encounter with the hearts and minds of individuals living in nine cities of conflict, violence, and healing—Jerusalem, Belfast, Johannesburg, Nicosia, Sarajevo, Mostar, Barcelona, Bilbao, and Beirut. Based on research spanning 25 years, including 360 interviews and over two and a half years of in-country field research, this innovative work employs a series of concise reflective narrative essays, grouped into four thematic sections, to provide a humanistic, “on-the-ground” understanding of divided cities, conflict, and peacemaking. Incorporating both scholarly analyses based on empirical research and introspective essays, Bollens digs underneath grand narratives of conflict to illuminate the complexities and paradoxes of living amid nationalistic political strife and the challenges of planning and policymaking in divided societies. Richly illustrated, the book includes informative synopses about the cities that provide access for general readers while extensive connections to recent literature enhance the book’s research value to scholars.
Bordered Lives: Transgender Portraits from Mexico
by Susan Stryker Kike ArnalA richly evocative collection of photographs by internationally renowned photographer Kike Arnal, Bordered Lives seeks to push back against the transphobic caricatures that have perpetuated discrimination against the transgender community in Mexico. Despite some important advances in recognizing and protecting the rights of its transgender community, including legislating against hate crimes targeting transgender people, discrimination still persists, and the majority of the violent attacks against the LGBT community are against transgender women.In the highly personal profiles that make up Bordered Lives, Arnal takes us into the lives of seven individuals in and around Mexico City. He shows them going about their day-to-day lives: getting ready in the morning, interacting with family and friends, and devoting their lives to helping others in the transgender community.Deeply honest, sensitive, and humane, Bordered Lives challenges society's preconceived notions of sexuality, gender, and beauty not only in Mexico but across the globe.Bordered Lives was designed by Emerson, Wajdowicz Studios (EWS).
Bordered Writers: Latinx Identities and Literacy Practices at Hispanic-Serving Institutions
by Isabel BacaWinner of the 2021 Advancement of Knowledge Award presented by the Conference on College Composition and CommunicationBordered Writers explores how writing program administrators and faculty at Hispanic-Serving Institutions (HSIs) are transforming the teaching of writing to be more inclusive and foster Latinx student success. Like its 2007 predecessor, Teaching Writing with Latino/a Students, this collection contributes to ongoing conversations in writing studies about multicultural pedagogy and curriculum, linguistic diversity, and supporting students of color, while focusing further attention on the specific experiences and strategies of students and faculty at HSIs. Although members of Latinx communities comprise the largest underrepresented minority group in the nation, the needs and strengths of Latinx writers in college classrooms are seldom addressed. Bordered Writers thus helps to fill a critical gap, giving voice to past and present Latinx scholars, rhetoricians, and students, both in academic essays and in personal testimonios, in four pivotal areas: developmental English and bridge programs, first-year writing, professional and technical writing, and writing centers and mentored writing. Across contributions, the collection strives to connect all bordered writers and educators, making higher education today not only stronger but also more representative of the nation's population.
Bordering: Identity Processes between the National and Personal
by Anders Linde-LaursenWhat is a border? This seemingly simple question is here answered via a multidisciplinary study of the cultural, geographic and historic existence of borders, and the ways that they have shaped our world. Using the Danish-Swedish border to illustrate the actions of groups and individuals engaged in bordering since the 1600s, this richly theoretical discussion highlights the complexities of political and cultural identity processes. Comparative perspectives are brought together to produce a thoughtful analysis of how such processes function, and of how borders work on both an imagined nationhood and experiential personal level. The author also examines how throughout history people have lived with and influenced or been influenced by borders, why some borders remain uncontested while others repeatedly provoke cross-border conflicts, and how today's bordering processes may be deliberately manipulated.
Bordering and Governmentality Around the Greek Islands (Mobility & Politics)
by Aila SpathopoulouThis book focuses on processes of bordering and governmentality around the Greek border islands from the declaration of a ‘refugee crisis’ in the summer of 2015 up until the emergence of the Covid-19 pandemic in 2020. The chapters trace the implementation of the EU migration hotspot approach across space and time, from the maritime Aegean border to the islands (Lesvos and Samos) and from the islands to the Greek mainland. They do so through the lenses of peoples’ refusal to succumb to categories that get reified as identities through the hotspot approach, such as that of the ‘deserving refugee’, the ‘undeserving economic migrant’, the ‘translator’, the ‘volunteer’, the ‘tourist’ and the ‘researcher’. This book explores how ‘migration management’ in Greece from 2015-2020, along with the reshaping of space and time, reconfigured peoples’ relationships with one another and ultimately with one’s self.
Bordering on Britishness: National Identity in Gibraltar from the Spanish Civil War to Brexit (Palgrave Studies in European Political Sociology)
by Andrew CanessaThis volume explores how Gibraltarian Britishness was constructed over the course of the twentieth century. Today most Gibraltarians are fiercely proud of their Britishness, sometimes even describing themselves as ‘more British than the British’ and Gibraltar’s Chief Minister in 2018 announced in a radio interview that “We see the world through British eyes.” Yet well beyond the mid-twentieth century the inhabitants of the Rock were overwhelmingly Spanish speaking, had a high rate of intermarriage with Spaniards, and had strong class links and shared interests with their neighbours across the border. At the same time, Gibraltarians had a very clear secondary status with respect to UK British people. By the beginning of the twenty-first century, however, Gibraltarians speak more English than Spanish (with increasing English monolingualism), have full British citizenship and are no longer discriminated against based on their ethnicity; they see themselves as profoundly different culturally to Spanish people across the border. Bordering on Britishness explores and interrogates these changes and examines in depth the evolving relationship Gibraltarians have with Britishness. It also reflects on the profound changes Gibraltar is likely to experience because of Brexit when its border with Spain becomes an external EU border and the relative political strengths of Spain and the UK shift accordingly. If Gibraltarian Britishness has evolved in the past it is certain to evolve in the future and this volume raises the question of how this might change if the UK’s political and economic strength – especially with respect to Gibraltar – begins to wane.
Bordering Russia: Theory and Prospects for Europe's Baltic Rim (Routledge Revivals)
by Hans MouritzenFirst published in 1998, this book exsplores the dilemma in Western policy towards Russia in recent years is whether to admit into NATO and the EU all those countries who wish to join, or whether to respect Russian sensitivities and be more selective. The Dilemma is at its peak for those countries bordering Russia; they are the ones who fear Russia the most, but whose integration into the West provokes Russia the most, a situation likely to strengthen Russian non-democratic forces. This is the dilemma that the present volume evolves around. Apart from stressing geopolitical fundamentals and the countries’ historical experiences, the book is also future-orientated. Will Europe’s Baltic rim become an outpost of the West with an iron curtain to its East, will it become an extensive ‘grey zone’, or will the countries become Western bridge-builder’s eastwards?
Bordering Two Unions: Northern Ireland and Brexit
by Sylvia De Mars Colin MurrayAvailable Open Access under CC-BY-NC licence. How does Brexit change Northern Ireland’s system of government? Could it unravel crucial parts of Northern Ireland’s peace process? What are the wider implications of the arrangements for the Irish and UK constitutions? Northern Ireland presents some of the most difficult Brexit dilemmas. Negotiations between the UK and the EU have set out how issues like citizenship, trade, the border, human rights and constitutional questions may be resolved. But the long-term impact of Brexit isn’t clear. This thorough analysis draws upon EU, UK, Irish and international law, setting the scene for a post-Brexit Northern Ireland by showing what the future might hold.
Borderities and the Politics of Contemporary Mobile Borders
by Anne-Laure Amilhat Szary Frédéric GirautThe authors look at transformations affecting border spaces, by using the concept of the 'mobile border' to examine the growing dissociation between border functions and border locations. The book bears witness to the claim that de/rebordering and de/reterritorialization processes are not equivalent. It questions them through the analysis of 'borderities,' a concept built upon a close reading of the writings of Michel Foucault and derived from 'governmentality. ' 'Borderity,' any technology of spatial or socio-spatial division, could be defined as the governmentality of territorial limits. Although initially defined as a technology of power, borderity may also appear as a differentiated social and political quality. The contributors examine the production of mobile borders (section 1: technologies), their incarnation (section 2: biopolitics) and their complex interpretation (section 3: 'dispositifs'). By looking at how political subjects can be disabled and enabled, the proposed 'borderities' approach illuminates the question of how borders can be the site of both power and counter-power.
Borderland: Essays from the US-Canadian Divide (Excelsior Editions)
by Bruce FisherPoor Buffalo—so rusty and abandoned, so sadly persistent in its despair, so abused by comedians, yet so close to serene and orderly Canada, and so blessed with an attractively resilient and rebellious spirit that its expatriates cannot wait to return. In essays that are historical and lyrical, objective yet powerfully emotional, Bruce Fisher offers a unique look at the distinct history and culture of Buffalo and the Canadian border region.The place is a bundle of contradictions. Here, old-growth forests lie just down the road from landscapes despoiled by a century of heavy industry. Here, in a region that has been peaceful for almost two hundred years, monuments of ancient design define both sides of the Niagara River as a zone of conflicts one side refuses to forget. Here, in waters that used to ferry immigrants and the wealth of the North American interior, American children train to row against Canadian children in an event named for the monarchy. Here, in a city that struggles to make sense of an economy that no longer needs its labor, and where politicians are despised yet always returned to office, the very notion of sustainability is tested by an endless sequence of schemes for redemption. And here, in this unique border region, notions of justice rooted in family histories of Civil War veterans persist curiously through the politics that helped wreck Buffalo and frighten Toronto into a more attentive rectitude.In the texts of letters found in a village library, in the geology of a streambed that the seasons disrupt, in the bright snow that smoothes and gentles the landscape but terrifies mayors, Fisher finds the universal in the distinctive, crossing borders not just of geography, but of history, culture, and politics.
Borderland: A Journey Through the History of Ukraine
by Anna ReidBorderland tells the story of Ukraine. A thousand years ago it was the center of the first great Slav civilization, Kievan Rus. In 1240, the Mongols invaded from the east, and for the next seven centureies, Ukraine was split between warring neighbors: Lithuanians, Poles, Russians, Austrians, and Tatars. Again and again, borderland turned into battlefield: during the Cossack risings of the seventeenth century, Russia’s wars with Sweden in the eighteenth, the Civil War of 1918-1920, and under Nazi occupation. Ukraine finally won independence in 1991, with the collapse of the Soviet Union. Bigger than France and a populous as Britain, it has the potential to become one of the most powerful states in Europe. In this finely written and penetrating book, Anna Reid combines research and her own experiences to chart Ukraine’s tragic past. Talking to peasants and politicians, rabbis and racketeers, dissidents and paramilitaries, survivors of Stalin’s famine and of Nazi labor camps, she reveals the layers of myth and propaganda that wrap this divided land. From the Polish churches of Lviv to the coal mines of the Russian-speaking Donbass, from the Galician shtetlech to the Tatar shantytowns of Crimea, the book explores Ukraine’s struggle to build itself a national identity, and identity that faces up to a bloody past, and embraces all the peoples within its borders.
Borderland: A Journey Through the History of Ukraine
by Anna ReidBorderland tells the story of Ukraine. A thousand years ago it was the center of the first great Slav civilization, Kievan Rus. In 1240, the Mongols invaded from the east, and for the next seven centureies, Ukraine was split between warring neighbors: Lithuanians, Poles, Russians, Austrians, and Tatars. Again and again, borderland turned into battlefield: during the Cossack risings of the seventeenth century, Russia’s wars with Sweden in the eighteenth, the Civil War of 1918-1920, and under Nazi occupation. Ukraine finally won independence in 1991, with the collapse of the Soviet Union. Bigger than France and a populous as Britain, it has the potential to become one of the most powerful states in Europe. In this finely written and penetrating book, Anna Reid combines research and her own experiences to chart Ukraine’s tragic past. Talking to peasants and politicians, rabbis and racketeers, dissidents and paramilitaries, survivors of Stalin’s famine and of Nazi labor camps, she reveals the layers of myth and propaganda that wrap this divided land. From the Polish churches of Lviv to the coal mines of the Russian-speaking Donbass, from the Galician shtetlech to the Tatar shantytowns of Crimea, the book explores Ukraine’s struggle to build itself a national identity, and identity that faces up to a bloody past, and embraces all the peoples within its borders.
Borderland: A Journey Through the History of Ukraine
by Anna ReidFULLY UPDATED'A fascinating and often violent odyssey, spanning more than 1,000 years of conflict and culture'INDEPENDENTFlat, fertile, and fatally tempting to invaders, for centuries Ukraine was fought over by more powerful neighbours. Though its modern national movement dates back to the early nineteenth century, it did not win real independence until 1991, with the collapse of the Soviet Union.Since then, Ukrainians have proved themselves one of the world's most remarkable nations. In 2014 mass demonstrations forced out a corrupt pro-Russian president. Russia responded by invading, first seizing Crimea and the eastern Donbass, and then in February 2022 marching on Kyiv. With Western help, Ukraine is fighting back. But in what form it will emerge from the war - the bloodiest in Europe since 1945 - remains to be seen.For this fourth edition of her classic history, Anna Reid returns to the scene. Talking to refugees, politicians and victims of widespread Russian war crimes, she adds a new chapter to the complex biography of a country on the frontline of the conflict between democracy and dictatorship.
Borderland: A Journey Through the History of Ukraine
by Anna ReidFULLY UPDATED'A fascinating and often violent odyssey, spanning more than 1,000 years of conflict and culture'INDEPENDENTFlat, fertile, and fatally tempting to invaders, for centuries Ukraine was fought over by more powerful neighbours. Though its modern national movement dates back to the early nineteenth century, it did not win real independence until 1991, with the collapse of the Soviet Union.Since then, Ukrainians have proved themselves one of the world's most remarkable nations. In 2014 mass demonstrations forced out a corrupt pro-Russian president. Russia responded by invading, first seizing Crimea and the eastern Donbass, and then in February 2022 marching on Kyiv. With Western help, Ukraine is fighting back. But in what form it will emerge from the war - the bloodiest in Europe since 1945 - remains to be seen.For this fourth edition of her classic history, Anna Reid returns to the scene. Talking to refugees, politicians and victims of widespread Russian war crimes, she adds a new chapter to the complex biography of a country on the frontline of the conflict between democracy and dictatorship.