I took this picture last week. It was taken from the harbour in Lower Town, Fishguard, in Pembrokeshire. I was looking towards the new port built around 1900, nearly two miles across the water. That new port is still the location from which the ferries for Ireland depart. What I was looking at, as a result, was a border, even if that is not immediately apparent from the photo.
I think that lack of obviousness is a part of the relevance of this photo. Borders matter, and yet very often we need to be told that they exist. Their location is otherwise very far from obvious.
This is most especially the case with land borders. I have crossed many of these in my time. Frequently the only way you know you have crossed a border is because a sign informs you of the fact.
In the case of Fishguard, the situation is more complicated because the nature of the border here has changed considerably over time.
When the port I was looking towards was built, the Irish destination that the port serves at Rosslare, County Wexford, in Ireland was part of the UK.
In 1922, that ceased to be the case. The port became an international border with Ireland.
During World War II Ireland was neutral. The boundary took on a different meaning.
The border changed again in 1973. In that year, both the UK and Ireland joined the EU. Under the Single Market and Customs Union, this border virtually ceased to exist.
Brexit changed the nature of the border, yet again. It now has much more significance again.
Borders are, then, to some degree human creations.
And yet, they also are not. There is a very obvious physical border at Fishguard. It is the Irish Sea.
There is also another dimension to this. The Irish are not Welsh, any more than the Welsh are English. Some borders are definitely defined by the subtle, and yet simultaneously glaringly obvious, distinctions that such distinctions create.
In that sense, Fishguard is a natural border, but despite that, it is still one whose nature has changed massively in little over 120 years. Unless we bother to understand these things, we cannot appreciate just what borders, and so defining and then defending them, really means. We get such things wrong at our peril.
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Borders are fascinating. The first time I croosed a “real” land border on a road trip to Europe in the late 1970’s I couldn’t get over the idea of the border between the Netherlands and Germany being so invisible.
I’m also fascinated by land borders on maps, all those ones drawn by colonizing imperial civil servants (from all cultures and uncivilisations) using rulers. Look at almost any dead straight land border and you will see a historic injustice and an ongoing problem. Mind you plenty of the wiggly ones tell a story of injustice, arrogance, cruelty and injustice too.
In the 70’s I spent a year working in Breda in the Netherlands, near the Belgian ‘border’. A colleague lived in the Netherlands, but his shortest route to work was through Belgium.
But those borders are very real.
I was in a car driving from Germany to the Netherlands in 1977. There was a huge traffic jam on the motorway and no way to get out of it. After about 2 hours we, and a car in the lane next to us, reached the border to be faced, in each lane, by a young man in uniform pointing some kind of machine gun straight at the car driver, with his finger on the trigger.
A group of uniformed men told us all to get out of the vehicle, which was then carefully searched, while we (3 young adults in their early 20’s and a 14 year old child – my brothers and my elder brother’s girlfriend) were carefully looked over. We were then allowed to get back in the car and drive into the Netherlands, with no word of explanation.
We later discovered that Hans Martin Schleyer had been abducted earlier that day. I have never forgotten the look of terror on the face of the young man facing us with his finger on the trigger.
Even invisible borders can be used.
Thank you for an unobtrusively important article.
Might it be worth keeping in mind the need to question the extent to which a border may or may not be a barrier?
“Human borders mean nothing to air, water, windblown soil, seeds, migrating creatures and global warming.” (From David Suzuki)
Accepted
A few years ago we drove from Dublin to Belfast and back, crossing from an EU country to a non-EU country. There is no border between Northern Ireland and Ireland. No physical border, no checks, nothing. Totally seamless, with just signs to say you are entering a different country. An example of a border with huge political significance having no significance at all.
I promise you, that border still matters.
This was a major part of the Good Friday Agreement .There would no longer be marking of the border. No checkpoints. No armies. No passport control.
And this was the problem after Brexit.
How could you define when something passed from UK to EU when that line was unmarked.
Hence the creation of the “border in the sea”.
Still a border. Still with checks as you arrive at/leave either side.
But if you believe in leprechauns “not a marked border”.
If you drive from Cuneo to Menton, which I have done numerous times, you go from Italy into France, back into Italy, then once more into France. Nowadays it’s largely invisible apart from the change in the road signs, which say “Ventimiglia” in Italy and “Menton” in France. I often wondered what it might have been like before the EU. Presumably they would have had customs posts at every changeover point.
What has the EU ever done for anyone, eh?
Thank you, Nigel. Me, too. In my case, from Turin.
The border posts from the pre-war boundaries were still there some years ago.
Ah, Torino. I used to go there every six weeks. My favourite place in the world. It’s almost a home from home. Sadly, never again.
BTW, there ‘s an “exclave” of Italy on the shore of Lake Lugano which is entirely surrounded by Switzerland. There used to be a huge casino there but I believe it is now shut down. In Switzerland they used to accept euro without turning a hair, and just give you change in Swiss francs.
I’d like to recommend a fascinating and entertaining book by Jonn Elledge, “A History of the World in 47 Borders”, which examines the whole idea of borders and why they exist. No surprise – many of them don’t make any sense at all.
There’s also “ The Atlas of Unusual Borders: Discover Intriguing Boundaries, Territories and Geographical Curiosities.” by Zoran Nikolic
For example a town on the Belgium /Netherlands border where, “In cases where the boundary cuts through a house, its citizenship is determined on the basis of whose territory the front door is facing. “ and goes on to explain how the position of front doors has changed with tax rates.
The number of enclaves within enclaves and other quirks is fascinating.
I like those curiosities.
Spike Milligan made cross-border properties a key factor in his book ‘Puckoon’, where the village pub sat astride the N Ireland/Irish Republic border with the inevitable result of drink being cheaper at one end of the bar due to tax differences, likewise closing times with the N Ireland constabulary dropping in to ensure that drink was not being serveed and no customers were present in the N Ireland end.
I recall that….
Also recommend political historian Lewis Baston’s recent book Borderlines: A History of Europe, Told From The Edges, in which he journeys along twenty-nine key borders, from west to east Europe, examining how the map of the continent has been redrawn over the last century, with varying degrees of success.
That sounds interesting…
Fascinating article Richard, thanks.
I’ve always been interested in borders and the history behind them, if you look on Google maps at the Mexico USA border, there are roads that suddenly stop or change direction to run alongside the border – I find it so intriguing.
The border that I’ve seen that is far from seamless is the one between India and Pakistan, namely Wagha border – there are two giant gates on either side each with the respective national flags welded on. There is a ceremony that takes place each day where the military from each side display their disaffection to the “other side” – while nowadays it is seen as entertainment, being of Indian origin, deep down this really disappoints me as it wasn’t too long ago in history that both sides of this border were one nation.
Thanks
In the European ski resorts it is easy to ski into a neighbouring country without being aware of it, including Switzerland which of course is not in the EU. No one bothers carrying passports and most people pay in cafes with cards or phone so the currency does not matter either.
I remember once seeing in a BBC TV film a man who said he had lived in seven different countries but always in the same house. His location was at the eastern tip of what was Czechoslovakia. On a personal note. The most infamous border was the iron curtain. Many people have crashed into the wall trying to get out. So far as I know only one person crashed into the wall trying to get in — Me. I was driving a left handed bus and misjudged and knocked a bit of the wall down at the side of the gate. Luckily the bus was empty. I got fined £50.
🙂
When I was 17 in 1971, I crossed the border by train from Italy into Switzerland. I was travelling with two older friends who said it wouldn’t matter that I had forgotten my British passport. I don’t know on what basis they came to this conclusion. When the Swiss Customs official came into our carriage after we’d crossed the border, he said what I had one was illegal and he’d have to arrest me. I remember very clearly thinking to myself, “this is the time to turn on the tears”, which I promptly did, and a very successful move it was. Instead of arresting me, he accompanied me on a train back into Italy. I think this a good description of feminine wiles. I doubt any such latitude would be permitted today, feminine wiles or no, and certainly not if you are a young male of colour.
I remember crossing the border from what was then Czechoslovakia to Austria not long after the Berlin Wall had come down – 1992 perhaps? I was doing it by train and in those days there were ‘on train’ passport checks and little interest in ‘Customs’ so it wasnt that obvious exactly where the border was. There were some rather bored soldiers in a sentry position in the middle of the bridge but the real difference was that once in Austria there wasnt a blade of grass out of place.
Later I crossed the border from Austria into Germany on the DDSG Motor Paddler ‘Stadt Passau’ on the Vienna to Passau service, a ship with an interesting history to say the least
http://www.paddlesteamers.info/StadtPassau.htm
Most of the ‘ship stations’ on the Danube fly a flag if there were passengers to pick up but the last one before Passau is the last one in Austria so a single German Border Official boarded in shirt sleeves with his briefcase and checked us off the ship in Passau with minimal fuss
Tangentially related to borders, Fishguard is also the location of “the most recent landing on British soil by a hostile foreign force” (Wikipedia), when a French force briefly invaded in 1797.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Battle_of_Fishguard
There was a board on the beach to commemorate the fact.