In her latest work Tamar Herzog takes on the ambitious project of demonstrating the complexity of establishing territorial borders in the New and Old World between Spain and Portugal. She argues this process has been overly simplified by histories that assume such borders were settled by armies or treaties rather than a plethora of local and often individual agents on the ground. Herzog highlights the cacophony of voices that resulted in actual border formation, providing concrete evidence that this process was significantly less controlled and less planned than typically understood. Communal spaces were often at the crux of these disputes and claim-making was the most frequently used method to delineate boundaries. The complex and multifaceted process of border formation was the end product of daily interactions among hundreds of individuals living in these contested zones.
The work is divided into two distinct parts on Europe and the Americas. Herzog challenges traditional imperial histories by discussing the Americas first. Reminding the reader that the claim-making found in documents about borders was not synonymous with truth but rather a legal requirement, the author moves toward a discussion of how individuals and communities understood what they could claim in regard to both land and indigenous peoples based on European traditions. Though formal documentation was important, legal doctrines harking back to Roman law dictated that possession was, in fact, the key to title. Ultimately, efforts to create documents demarcating boundaries only resulted in more questions about “how a theoretical, imaginary line described in a European document would become a concrete, material reality in the Americas” (32). Encountering indigenous populations forced the Iberian empires to contemplate the ramifications of these lives as religious conversion increasingly implied civic conversion and thus also the justification for territorial claims. Questions arose about the meaning of occupation and how it could be defined, but the indigenous population became the “true terra nullius” to be possessed with the help of missionaries who also became part of the process of territorial expansion and border delineation.
Part II of the work takes up the same question of border delineation in Iberia with a handful of case studies. Whereas disputes in the Americas were limited in their ability to make historical claims about land because of its recent acquisition, in Iberia similar disputes regularly involved historical claims dating back centuries, making them even more convoluted and difficult to interpret, decipher and resolve. Supposedly immemorial customs were remembered or forgotten as needed to support claims to land by individuals and local communities. Herzog’s examples demonstrate that not only were local and individual agents the prime actors in border disputes, which would only later be portrayed as national issues, but also how even the basic question of what land was contested could change over time. Chapter 3 highlights the six and a half century conflict over the border between modern day Andalusia and Portugal as argued amongst neighboring communities. On the ground, this was a community and local conflict pitting individuals with strong ties of both kinship and friends against each other while alliances and allegiances could shift as personal interests changed. Chapter 4 discusses communal border disputes about largely insignificant parcels of land along natural borders such as mountains and rivers. The changing course of the River Miño (Minho) and the resulting appearance and disappearance of islands in its flow engendered a local conflict over territories that were not only insignificant in size but often impermanent. Nonetheless, it became an international affair serious enough to be included in the Treaty of Utrecht. The disputes over the Magdalena/Lindoso Mountains in northern Portugal and southern Galicia were only worthy of royal concern when royal intervention was required to ensure peace. Particularly interesting was the effort to create mixed territories, where inhabitants could declare their allegiance by a simple wedding toast to one monarch or the other and houses could be divided into Spanish and Portuguese halves by the residents. This effort at a hybrid compromise complicated rather than simplified territorial disputes because of the ease with which individuals could shift their identity depending on what best suited their needs at the moment.
Herzog aptly demonstrates that the borders of Spain and Portugal in the New and Old Worlds were determined by a chaotic confusion of local agents and interests. Extensively researched, including documents from archives in ten countries on both sides of the Atlantic, and deeply documented, with just over one hundred pages of notes, Herzog’s work provides a rare glimpse into the complexity of boundary disputes on the ground. While the strength of Part I lies in its breadth as it tackles thematic questions of occupation regarding both land and indigenous peoples, Part II stands out for its depth as the author delves into a number of case studies in detail. The work demonstrates how categories such as history, law, status quo and natural frontiers could all be brought into dispute in the process of making claims about borders. Calling for historians to read more broadly, embrace the importance of law and land rights and reconsider the interdependence of Spain and Portugal, as well as Europe and the Americas, in the early modern period, Herzog excels in her effort to do all of the above. Though appreciated and admirable, her own attempt to destabilize traditional imperial narratives by privileging the New World feels forced considering it necessarily must open with a discussion of European precedents. However, this lapse is more than forgivable considering the larger project she is undertaking to write a more comprehensive and inclusive history of Iberia and its colonies across the Atlantic. Herzog’s contribution details and embraces the complexity of frontier formation by demonstrating the role of individuals and local communities that “did not necessarily represent a state but that nevertheless ended up constructing and defining one” (248).
