What Are The World's Oldest Borders?

borders the human drawn lines that separate our countries or if you want to get more technical the geographic boundaries of political entities in some places borders are extreme with obstacles guarded by armed forces and unpassable unless you have a specific permission or find some other way across others are natural barriers like rivers mountains or oceans and in other cases they have been effectively abolished like in Europe where with the Schengen space European people can roam freely throughout their continents visiting their European friends without concern in this video I thought we would take a look at a few of the world's oldest borders because I've always found it fascinating how some countries have managed to maintain their territorial limits unchanged throughout history and that's a key detail for this video I'm not listing the oldest established borders I'm listing the oldest unchanged borders which lasts until today I'm sure there were some borders in the years 500 BC for instance or so but they no longer exist so are not relevant for this video now let's jump right into it if you want the quick answer and Dora Portugal England Scotland and Monaco hold the titles for the top oldest borders but if you want to know why and how and the other countries on the list stick around through the video but keep in mind I can't be 100% sure about these or the rest I'm basing them on the research I did but answering the question of what are the world's oldest borders is difficult because one the notion of clearly defined borders is somewhat recent to old maps aren't exactly accurate in some cases and 3 some countries have been occupied and then returned to the original borders some have had minor details that are changes but not major ones we also have to ignore some island nations especially these small ones in the Pacific because their borders are naturally defined and so the merits of maintaining them isn't as much of the country as it is of the sea I guess but still I think this list is as close as we can get so what are the world's oldest Porter's at number 10 the Chinese Korean border in 1712 this one might be actually older than this as a few documents point to the Chinese Korean border being de facto established somewhere in the 15th century we can read about this in the veritable records of the Joseon dynasty a set of almost 2,000 volumes that covered the ruling period of the Korean Joseon dynasty according to it the Yalu and two men rivers were set as the borders in the era of the founder of the joseon dynasty so this was around the 15th century however its formalization took place in 1712 after a joint serving expedition by the two states the Qing Dynasty of China and a Joseon dynasty of Korea which formally demarcate 'add their borders and it seems that the decision of where the border should be placed has to do with the region of Jeanne dau in Chinese or Gondo in Korean this area of Northeast China had been previously ruled by both Chinese and Korean states some Korean examples are the boyo dynasty or the Goguryeo which stretched from that area into Korea itself the demarcation of these borders was an attempt to stop the continuous entry of Korean people into gondol and it remained so until today next we have the Spanish French border in 1659 the formal layout of the franco-spanish border dates back to the signing of the Treaty of the Pyrenees between the kingdoms of Spain and France in 1659 this was a treaty signed to end the franco-spanish war of the 17th century in the following hundred years or so there were a few more treaties that were signed changing some details to the border but nothing major these took place during the time of Napoleon the third and implemented a rule of placing physical stone markers along the border here we can see one of them and despite these small changes the border has remained generally unchanged since the 1600s an interesting fact that I honestly had no idea about is that Spain has an exclave in France a small town named Livia located in the eastern Pyrenees Mountains there's also an island located on the border which the two countries share pheasant island where that first treaty took place in the 1600s to precisely define the border pheasant island is located in the middle of a river on the border and is a condominium whose sovereignty is shared between France and Spain one of them rules it for the first six months of the year and the other during the last semester then we have the Swiss German border in 1648 this one just like the Korean one is actually older than this and 1648 is just the official legal date the Swiss borders with what is now Germany have been essentially the same since the end of the last war of the old Swiss Confederacy which was against the Holy Roman Empire this was the Swabian war at the end of the year of 1499 the Swiss border was defined and this was consolidated and made official with the Peace of Westphalia in the year of 1648 at this conference the old Swiss Confederacy was formally recognized as independent from the Holy Roman Empire their borders were made official and their role as Europe's most neutral country began the border suffered minor changes at most points even only temporary especially during Napoleon's time but have generally remained the same until today at number seven we have the oldest remaining border in the Asian continent the iran-iraq turkey border the boundary dates back to the 1639 zu hob treaty between Armin Turkey and Safavid Iran the agreement stipulated that the boundary would run between the Zagros mountain and the Tigris River changes took place especially during the 20th century when Britain and Russia had colonial interests in the area but nothing really significant and today despite the countries having changed the border remains as the oldest one in Asia and one of the oldest in the world now dividing Iran from Turkey and Iraq next is San Marino San Marino is usually regarded as the world's oldest country and definitely the world's oldest Republic but their borders are not the oldest despite being established in the year 301 which is a long time ago the borders changed about halfway through its current existence in the year of 1463 when the Pope awarded the towns of Fiorentino Montagu Dino and Sarah Val to San Marino a year later the town of fight on O joined the Republic in 1464 defining its present-day borders a fun fact about San Marino is that they have a special border guard although I guess a lot of countries have them but San Marino's has a cool name and uniform they are called guards of the rock this next one is a weird one to believe but bear with me through the explanation at number 5 the Russian Lithuanian border now I know this border was established in 1990 but it is identical or pretty much identical to a border established in the year of 1422 with the Treaty of mell know between the Teutonic Knights Order and the Grand Duchy of Lithuania eventually the territory of the Teutonic order became part of Germany and the grand duchies territory is now divided between Poland and Lithuania so one could argue that the political entities are no longer the same especially in the case of the Teutonic Knights then Germany then Russia but Lithuania is the state heir of the Grand Duchy and it's interesting that the border line is very similar serving today as a dividing line between the Russian exclave of Kaliningrad and the modern Republic of Lithuania at number 4 we have Monaco in 1297 Monaco is a principality and the world's second smallest country behind only the Vatican it's located in southern France near Italy in the Mediterranean coast and is fully surrounded by France in its land borders and from my understanding its limits have remained pretty much unchanged since its establishment the only differences being which countries surrounded it in 1494 it was surrounded by the republic of genoa then during Napoleon's times it was occupied by France and after that it was surrounded by the kingdom of Sardinia which eventually gave the surrounding land back to France an interesting fact is that Monaco has actually changed its borders not with France but with the sea through the techniques of land reclamation Monaco's landmass has expanded by 20% in the last few years smaller countries like these European ones which are almost effectively city-states are more likely to have longer lasting borders because of how small they are and because of the reasoning behind their borders if they define a specific city and the national identity is that city it's unlikely to change lesion steins borders for instance have remained unchanged since 14:34 when the Rhine established the border between the Holy Roman Empire and the Swiss cantons and natural border however in the 19th century they underwent a number of technical changes simply because they verified the borders and the modernization of measuring technologies and tools allowed for more accurate definitions these are technically a change but not a significant one opening up the top three Portugal also in 1297 the portuguese spanish border is not only one of the oldest in the world but the oldest uninterrupted in europe it is known as the stripe and has lasted since 1297 the year when it was established through the Treaty of of Kinesis although for instance the northern borders have been established since each country's birth in 1143 and the southern one in 1267 a curious aspect is that it is precisely in that final treaty in 1297 that the only inconsistency of the portuguese continental borders lies this tree is publish Portugal's borders and specifically annexed the border town of olivenza the town of olivenza was under Portuguese sovereignty between this year and 1801 when it was invaded by the Spanish and eventually in 1815 the Treaty of Vienna claimed that the territory should be returned to the Portuguese but it never was now did I conveniently ignore this exception because I wanted to include my own country in the top three maybe but come on it's a tiny tiny detail and makes no difference whatsoever in the general perception of the border plus the change is still disputed what school does not recognize the Spanish sovereignty over the territory at number two one that I found incredibly interesting the Scottish English border in 1237 during the medieval period the government's control frequently diminished the further people got from the capital and so the final distance between the capital and its surroundings and the border line was known as Borderlands these places were usually lawless and attracted outlaws I'm telling you this because in 1333 during the second war of Scottish independence Scotland was defeated and English King Edward the third occupied much of the Borderlands and these borderlands between England and Scotland were always key in defining their border in the 13th century the English created the region of the Scottish marshes an area where clans switched which country they supported as suited their interest at that time and at some points it was even a specific clan who ruled it without control of either Scotland or England eventually in the 1600s now with Scotland and England under a royal Union the king renamed the region from marshes to middle shires and with heavy crown regulation managed to bring order and law to it my point with all the story is that despite all these issues with claims on one side and the other the only changes that have taken place since the initial Treaty of 1237 were very small and inside the tiny region of the marshes and so I think we can say that the Scottish English border in fact one of the world's oldest unchanged borders lasting since 1237 until today and finally the world's oldest border is Andorra's in 1278 the reason why I put this one at number one and not the Scottish English one is that Andorra has suffered literally no changes to my knowledge and so I feel like it deserves number one the borders of the Principality have been unchanged since that year when a land dispute between the county of foix and the Diocese of Orgel ended with a feudal charter which established their joint sovereignty over the mountain territory of Andorra and so the borders were established the county of fois has been extinct since 1607 but the Charter still holds high in the Pyrenees that separate France from Spain and Ora continues its existence as an independent condominium they have two co-princes the Bishop of Orgel and the legal successor of the counts of fois which is the president of France today it borders Spain and France in this amazing map that I found made by reddit user Pais gory 82 we get summarized information about order ages and a few cool additional details like examples of countries whose borders have also changed very little with small details being changed but the overall delimitation of the state being pretty close to what it originally was like Ethiopia for instance others also have very old borders but have seen them changed a number of times but having their current version very close or even identical to the original form just like we saw with the Kaliningrad case or the Ottoman Safavid line other examples or part of the Dutch German border or part of the Czech German border there's also stretches or portions of borders that are old while the full border isn't as old an example of that is the canadian-us border in the east coast with one stretch being established as early as 1763 but the next one being in 1783 and the other in 1842 or this board of the stern russian-chinese border established in 1689 with the remaining of the border having been defined in 1858 60 and 88 you can also see the average age of borders per continent Europe is the oldest with 1777 with North America coming next at 1861 South America at 81 Asia at 96 and Africa at 1906 with the Middle East being an exception within Asia having 1934 as the average border establishment year another cool detail is that despite these somewhat old border averages 33 percent of the world's borders so 1/3 is younger than 100 years with the two youngest being this one from 2000 in Arabia and the disputed border of North and South Sudan in 2009 and those are from my understanding and research the oldest continuous borders in the world essentially the borders that have remained unchanged in general for the longest period of time like I said this is a hard call to make because we have a lot of cases and a lot of exceptions but I think these ten plus a few more summarize the list well and give us a good idea of what the world's oldest borders truly are thanks so much for watching this video if you enjoyed it make sure to subscribe to catch future ones and leave a comment below with your opinions or thoughts or suggestions for future videos once again thanks for watching and I will see you next time for more general knowledge you

Channel: General Knowledge

Views: 1,889,289

Keywords: generalknowledge, funwithflags, countriesthatdon'texist

Id: PepF2CTa7Tc

Length: 17min 24sec (1044 seconds)

Published: Fri Feb 28 2020

Reddit Comments

[u/chanchanito]

boa pronúncia! só me apercebi que eras português quando o disseste no video 🙂

[u/theEXPERTpt]

Olivença é nossa

[u/Beats29]

Nome do canal do Youtube: General Knowledge.

A falar da fronteira entre China e Coreia do Norte: Põe uma bandeira da Coreia do Sul.

¯\_(ツ)_/¯