When, how, and why did the Himalaya become the highest mountains in the world? In 1800, Chimborazo in South America was believed to be the world’s highest mountain, only succeeded by Mount Everest in 1856. Science on the Roof of the World tells the story of this shift, and the scientific, imaginative, and political remaking… Read More Lachlan Fleetwood (2022): Science on the Roof of the World: Empire and the Remaking of the Himalaya. Cambridge University Press: Cambridge.

This book brings together ten empirically rich and theoretically informed contributions that aim to clarify both geo-historical specificities and common transnational and global features of the cultures and practices of boundary making that shaped modern statehood. Written by scholars from Spain, France, Italy, Argentina, Brazil and Mexico, the essays included in this volume provide a… Read More Jacobo García Álvarez and Paloma Puente Lozano (eds.) (2023): Beneath the Lines: Borders and Boundary-Making from the 18th to the 20th Century. Springer: Cham:

Kyle J. Gardner reveals the transformation of the historical Himalayan entrepôt of Ladakh into a modern, disputed borderland through an examination of rare British, Indian, Ladakhi, and Kashmiri archival sources. In so doing, he provides both a history of the rise of geopolitics and the first comprehensive history of Ladakh’s encounter with the British Empire.… Read More Kyle J. Gardner (2021): The Frontier Complex: Geopolitics and the Making of the India–China Border, 1846–1962. Cambridge University Press: Cambridge.

he publication of the National Atlas of Finland in 1899 marks the beginning of the era of the modern national atlas. It is a period that coincides neatly with the twentieth century. The modern national atlas mirrors and embodies some of the important themes of this turbulent century, including the complex connections between nation, state… Read More John Rennie Short (2022): The Rise and Fall of the National Atlas in the Twentieth Century: Power, State and Territory. Anthem: London.

Colonial Geography charts changes in conceptions of the relationship between people and landscapes in mainland Tanzania during the German colonial period. In German minds, colonial development would depend on the relationship between East Africans and the landscape. Colonial Geography argues that the most important element in German imperialism was not its violence but its attempts… Read More Matthew Unangst (2022): Colonial Geography: Race and Space in German East Africa, 1884–1905. University of Toronto Press: Toronto.

Russia’s illegal annexation of Crimea in 2014 and the ongoing war in eastern Ukraine have brought scholarly and public attention to Ukraine’s borders. Making Ukraine aims to investigate the various processes of negotiation, delineation, and contestation that have shaped the country’s borders throughout the past century. Essays by contributors from various historical fields consider how,… Read More Olena Palko and Constantin Ardeleanu (eds.) (2022): Making Ukraine: Negotiating, Contesting, and Drawing the Borders in the Twentieth Century. McGill-Queen’s University Press: Chicago.

Von 1799 bis 1804 reist Alexander von Humboldt nach und durch Amerika, später nach Russland und bis an die Grenze des chinesischen Kaiserreichs. Was seine Reisen begleitet, ist das Schreiben. Aus seinen veröffentlichten, aber auch unveröffentlichten Schriften entsteht in Oliver Lubrichs Untersuchung ein Bild des Reisenden selbst: neugierig und trotz Vorurteilen stets bereit, genau diese… Read More Oliver Lubrich (2022): Humboldt oder Wie das Reisen das Denken verändert. Matthes & Seitz: Berlin.