Introduction

The academic study of borders and borderlands, especially the historical study of the subject, has been a well-tilled field in recent decades, resulting in a plethora of conferences and studies. To a certain degree, of course, anyone studying an empire with the history and geopolitical situation of Byzantium, or one with the expansionist drive and history of the Islamic oecumene, has always of necessity to some degree treated the relevant empire’s borders and their historical significance and influence. But the historical study of borderlands in recent years – and certainly collaborative efforts in volumes such as the one you are now reading – has tended to take one of two forms: either the overly atomised, divorced from a larger historical context and the tradition in which it was embedded, or the overly generalised and amorphous. The study of borderlands today has also seen its task as something different from that of traditional frontier history; this intellectual trend is given voice in the following passage, written in the context of American history: