Update: My favorite online geography teacher, the GeoEcologist just dropped a video that hopefully helps some of us.

When I first started teaching human geography, I quickly realized that there are about 50 vocabulary concepts with synonyms that are NOT in my textbook. One of the most confusing sections (for myself) was the vocab- heavy unit of political-geography; most notably the section about boundaries and border types.

Here is a quick list of words pertaining to border types that you will encounter with any given text: ANTECEDENT, SUBSEQUENT, SUPERIMPOSED, RELICT, CULTURAL-POLITICAL, PHYSICAL-POLITICAL, GEOMETRIC-POLITICAL, MILITARIZED, FORTIFIED, OPEN, NATURAL, PHYSICAL, FRONTIER, GENETIC, & ETHNOGRAPHIC.

And from everything that I’de read up to that point, textbooks discuss another way to look at boundaries, and that is how they evolve over time. The person we credit this to is Richard Hartshorne. His four GENETIC (EVOLUTIONARY) boundaries include:

• ANTECEDENT
  • natural boundaries that existed before human involvement, i.e. mountains, rivers, jungles, valleys.
• SUBSEQUENT
  • boundaries that are created after human settlement and interaction with the landscape, i.e. war or cultural differences between groups.
• SUPERIMPOSED
  • borders that are forced upon the landscape by an outside authority; think European imperialism and Africa circa 1914.
• RELICT
  • physical borders that no longer act at functioning political borders, and yet evidence of the border is still there; think the Great Wall of China or the Berlin Wall.

After that, I go on to explain how all of the world’s borders fall under the standard PHYSICAL/CULTURAL/GEOMETRIC POLITICAL or the GENETIC boundaries. I use a bunch of case studies to beef up their application. To me, the purpose of the two classifications is to differentiate between what the border is vs. how it developed.

The other border terms not yet addressed can be types of borders that fall under both the standard classifications (physical, cultural, or geometric) or under Hartshorn’s. Those terms are:

• OPEN borders
  • borders that are unguarded and can easily be traversed without political intervention; think countries within the European Union.
• MILITARIZED borders
  • borders that are guarded by military forces; i.e. the militarized border between North and South Korea.
• FORTIFIED borders
  • borders that use a constructed barrier to prevent the flow of people or things; the border between North and South Korea would also work here, but any border that includes a wall, fence, net, or wire.

Over 15 years and many sources later, some textbook threw in CONSEQUENT into the list and messed up my whole world order. And where did this word come from anyway!? The new Course Description also picked it up.

 

And I wasn’t the only one with questions…

One Facebook user writes:

“Are subsequent and consequent boundaries the same?”

Another contributor acknowledging the confusion between texts:

New AP teacher here…I’m really confused about the difference between subsequent and consequent borders. The AMSCO only has subsequent and every other book I look in has one or the other and the definitions appear to be almost the same. All the other AP human teachers I work with are also stumped (since they don’t really teach the CED, only Rubenstein). Help please please please!!!

Here goes another frustrated teacher:

How do you all explain the differences between antecedent, subsequent, and consequent boundaries? These just seem unnecessarily confusing. Examples would be helpful. I’ve got the internet, I can look up these definitions.

Another punny teacher writes:

Can someone help me differentiate between consequent and subsequent boundaries? I can’t seem to draw a line between them.

My suggestion to College Board is that we are linked (URL) to the direct academic journal articles where the concepts originate (think Hartshorne, Malthus, von Thunen, and Ravenstein) to cut down on some of these confusions. But since there isn’t, I did some digging on JSTOR.

Hartshorne has books and papers that discusses the matter of borders, namely, Geographic and Political Boundaries in Upper Silesia (not my posting), where he puts these concepts to practice, but doesn’t use all of the terminology (superimposed, relic, and consequent are omitted). It seems to be his largest attempt at showing how borders evolve over time, but it doesn’t include the term explanations I was looking for.

So I put out a call to the AP Human Geography Reader page where I knew there would be some quality people to help me out.

Jennifer M. pointed me towards the book titled, Borderscaping: Imaginations and Practices of Border Making. This one isn’t written by Hartshorne, but the authors Brambilla, Laine, and Bocchi do a nice job of trying to explain Hartshorne’s motives of creating a terminology out of the necessity to describe its “inertia,” and formation over time. This helped give me some validation that I was teaching the whole “evolution” of boundary concept in the right way.

And thankfully, Colleen S. jumped head-on into the rabbit hole and directed me to the Annals of the Association of American Geographers: Titles and Abstracts of Papers: St. Louis, 1935. On page 56, Hartshorne titles his abstract, Suggestions on the Terminology of political Boundaries.

In specific boundary studies one needs more precise terms than are generally available, and it is from such studies that the most useful terms have been evolved, notably by Sieger, Maull, and Solch. In the study of Upper Silesia and subsequent discussion with Professors Whittlesey and Stephen Jones, a number of terms have been developed. An antecedent boundary is a political boundary that preceded the development of most of the features of the cultural landscape. A totally antecedent, or pioneer, boundary is found where the line was drawn before settlement; until such settlement takes place it may be said to be in its virginal form. An antecedent boundary which has been abandoned for political purposes but is still evident in the cultural landscape may be called a relict boundary. Most European boundaries are subsequent and we can discern in each the degree of conformity with major or minor divisions of natural and cultural regions. A subsequent boundary notably lacking in conformity to a particular set of features may be said to have been superimposed on those features. Once accepted by the states and people on either side such a line tends, in time, to become intrenched in the cultural structure of the area.

In this article, this is where Hartshorne goes on to write about the consideration of another type of border, CONSEQUENT.

Sieger, and others since, have shown the confusion engendered by the use of the term “natural boundaries,’’ in itself a fundamentally illogical concept. We may distinguish : naturally marked boundaries, where some natural feature marks a line used for a boundary; natural defense boundaries, natural barriers to trade, and natural communication divides, differentiated further as to degrees of hindrance. Beyond this, everyone recognizes that certain natural features provide more permanent and satisfactory political boundaries than others because population areas tend to separate along those features. Such naturally separating features have a static aspect, due to a zone of relatively unpopulated area between populated regions, and a kinetic, or hindrance, aspect that makes difficult the connections between regions on either side. Where any natural feature has in fact operated in either or both of these ways as a natural divide, we may say that a political boundary along it is consequent upon the dividing feature. The strength of the static aspect varies with the degree of lack of population. The absolutely unpopulated water and ice areas are particularly effective because of the psychological effect of lack of community feeling. The kinetic aspect varies with the degrees of hindrance involved, from absolutely impassable ice sheets to the minor difficulties of hills and rivers. Water bodies require a special classification because while impassable for men in their ordinary occupations, they are all easily crossed by special means.

From what I understand from the above (and please comment if you have a critique), he acknowledges the original 4 genetic boundaries (antecedent, subsequent, superimposed, and relict), but then discusses how natural borders can act as the “natural” barrier between 2+ groups consequently (physical feature runs along the lines of the political border).

• CONSQUENT border
  • A border that is divided by physical features or space, and acts as a natural divide between two or more different cultural groups.

This would be different from subsequent borders in that Hartshorne seemingly suggests that subsequent are purposefully drawn after a series of complex intimate associations (Hartshorne, 222), but that subsequent boundaries don’t necessarily have to be drawn using physical features. Perhaps these complex associations come in the form of current boundary disagreements or the increasing pressure to recognize the shrinking space between two groups. Either way, the subsequent boundary is drawn for the sole purpose of addressing the differing groups.

In turn, consequent borders could potentially be classified under each of Hartshorne’s genetic boundaries;

• Antecedent? Certainly, since the physical boundary existed before human interaction with it in the first place.
• Subsequent? Does it come with a tree-line separation, for example? Then yes.
• Superimposed? If the power that be said, “Use that river as the border.”
• Relict? Why not? If the physical boundary doesn’t act as a political border anymore.

Therefore, I interpret a consequent border as one that evolved into a political border either because it grew out of a “natural” dividing line (antecedent), and/or because a political decision was made to use natural features subsequently. I see the consequent boundary as just another type of boundary that is used to describe a political border that runs along a physical feature. Is he given credit for the term? I’m not sure. But I don’t read it as one of his four genetic boundaries.

Supposedly, Hartshorne didn’t even have a name for this original idea (Genetic & Evolutionary Boundaries), but seemingly was given one when geography textbooks started calling them (Brambilla, Laine, Bocchi, 54).

I also think it is important to make note of the order in which those words are presented in the course description. The first four are Hartshorne’s Genetic Boundaries, the last two oppose themselves are oppositional between themselves. A border is either a GEOMETRIC (lines) boundary, or CONSEQUENT (natural elements or static space) to describe a political boundary.

The moral of the story (at least for me), is that a border can be classified in MANY different ways. Circle them all if you can justify it.

If anyone has any suggestions or comments about my interpretation of this topic, please help add to the conversation. Thank you very much to Colleen and Jennifer who helped me dig for information.