How did Ancient/Medieval Borders Work? (Short Animated Documentary)
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- เผยแพร่เมื่อ 8 พ.ค. 2019
- Shout-out to my Patron Joshua for coming up with the series name.
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How on earth did Ancient or Medieval Borders work? Find out here and learn all about headless tribes and the concept of a frontier whilst doing so.
Sources:
Historical Ecosystem: Roman Frontier and Economic Hinterlands in North Africa by Orietta Dora Cordonova (2012).
Frontiers and Borderlands in Imperial Perspectives: Exploring Rome's Egyptian Frontier by Anne Lucille Boozer (2013).
England, Scotland and Europe: The Problem of the Frontier by D. Hay (1974).
Scottish Influences on the Medieval Laws of the Anglo-Scottish Marches by Cynthia Neville (2002).
Romans: *believe the Blemmyes don't have heads*
Also Romans: *sell helmets to Blemmyes*
Not stonks
ah yes, the masters of comedic irony
really had to laugh about that
Wait this worked
Woah finally, I'm in a comment battle with a bunch of kids, but TH-cam wouldn't let me post my comment, it would get deleted automatically, I decided to emit certain words and try again till TH-cam won't bother.
Belgium can't help it that it's so flat and perfect for tanks.
Ever been to the Ardennes?
The tanks probably have.
NoHaxMeh they have been twice actually
1452?
German tanks just can' t help it. Belgium is so flat und pefekt!
as a Belgian, I expected a stereotype waffle or chocolat bar to pop-up next to the dutch windmill...I nearly died when he said "easy acces for german armoured divisions" :P
What about dutch stropwafle?
@@jorgepeterbarton it would be about spices or something.
gonna guess your near-mortem experience was caused by a german armoured division with easy access to your homeland?
@@jorgepeterbarton Both wafels (waffles) and stroopwafels are Dutch as much as Belgian. They predate the Belgian secession.
@@ixlnxs Belgium is just South Brabant
Fun fact: During certain periods in history all three empires around the Baltic sea, Sweden (including modern-day Finland), Denmark (including modern-day Norway) and Russia, claimed their country stretched all the way up to the Barents sea (in other words the area that today belong to Norway). The natives of the area (the Sami) were forced to pay taxes to all three of them. I imagine that must have been fun...
So what happened next? I am assuming there must have been a conflict then, right?
Because it’s like if a shop owner had to pay “protection money” to multiple different mobs. Eventually, the shop owner isn’t going to have enough money to give to the last gang no matter how badly the shop gets treated. So then there’s inevitably going to be a dispute between the factions over the ego/greed of who truly controls what.
@Srithor to each of the tax collectors they simply said "we've already paid taxes to the other one, go deal with them"
Srithor It was a special kind of tax collectors called ”birkarlar” in swedish who collected the tax from the sami. I think fur was what they mostly got in tax from the samis.
@@MrJH101 Yeah, the Same are shipowners, sure.
@Srithor Don't know about scandinavia specifically, but most nomadic peoples have routine get togethers for celebrations, and exchanging people via marriage (to prevent too much inbreeding). So it would just be a question of the tax collectors showing up to one of those to get the taxes. Nomadic peoples also usually engage in tons of trade so again, taxes can be collected whenever they come to a permanent settlement to trade.
At 1:46, that image of a Blemmyae caught me off guard with how funny it is
Just wait till you realise there is a guy trying to sell them helmets
@@danielvanderriet4452 I wanted to point out the same. Thats pretty hilarious.
Or scarfs
Ive been watching youtube videos for like a decade and i just found out if i click on the time you posted it actually goes to that point😂
@@danielvanderriet4452
You can see his reaction if you progress a second past.
"Try not to die" is basically all life is about.
Once you evolve, you realize life is so much more than simply survival. Sadly, most humans have not reach this level of intelligence yet.
@@Valorince Then once you "evolve" again, you realize life is not really anything; it just is. And you can spot spiritual pseudo-intellectuals claiming to have figured life out, thinking everyone else is the stupid one.
I read his comment as meaning that mere survival is still an issue for many people worldwide.
@@nathanielmohr9622 Ain't nothing wrong with using your spirituality for the worship of God. Problem is people like to worship the buttholes of twinks instead.
Srithor fuck Maslow. Try not to die is what it is. Everything else is rationalization.
"The Romans believed that the Blemmyae were a people who didn't have heads"
"The Romans had a good trading relationship with the Blemmyae"
I mean I know it's probably just that only the Romans living in the interior who believed that, and those few on the border didn't, but the juxtaposition of those two lines makes me feel like that myth would quickly be disproven.
I think these beliefs were from 2 ages apart. It’s like an Ancient Greek myth that came to Rome. In a time where information didn’t exist as it does today, only a few Roman scholars would have known of the myth, while other people just didn’t knew or care about it.
Today, since a simple google search can give 1000 information, it’s easy to be confused.
Would you really believe the word of some poorly educated trader on the furthest southern reaches of the empire? I mean they'd be from the Equestrian class at best, they're probably not even an Italian. What training do they have in anatomy, rhetoric and the liberal arts to often any real insight into the nature of the world.
Whereas a well educated scholar like Pliny writing his thoroughly researched encyclopedia, that's an authoritative source. He's from a good family, well respected in the scholarly community and he's friends with the Emperor himself.
The Romans probably did not sold them too many hats.
They ment they are very stupid, aka no heads
In Latin that would be "quod non capitibus" but they shouldn't expect a response...
I remember being quite shocked reading Stefan Zweig's memoirs (he was Austrian) of him travelling all over Europe and to the US and India in basically 1910 without needing a passport ever. We are so used to the idea of strict bureaucratic enforcement of states and its borders that we forget that it's a really recent phenomenon.
It was deemed unenforceable and therefore controls where relaxed. That ended with WWI. Interesting in the context that today travelling without a passport in the EU seems like a new concept.
"strict bureaucratic enforcement of states and its borders" Clearly you have never heard of the invention of "Democrats". With this new invention, a nation's borders not only are non-existent, but they will go out of their way to fly people across the border in the middle of the night under secrecy sanctioned by the president.
Bureaucracy is a cancer.
Man, as an American myself I can hardly imagine that. 9/11 really upped our security, but imagining European folks randomly walking in on our soil even in say the 1950s would have been unthinkable. The world changed so much from the two world wars. It's kind of sad TBH.
@@BoopSnoot Good.
0:08
^ This
This is why I love this channel
Hahahaha funny stuff
I C
Best opening 10 seconds of a youtube vid ever
… and frolicking in the daisies!! … of which there were none today :(
Ruthless.
"...in Belgium, with its convenient access for German armoured divisions."
*Shots fired! (quite literally if you lived in Belgium circa 1940-1944)*
"Many didn't see themselves as being Roman.... looking at you Britannia!"
_Was that a quip at modern politics?_
They never wanted to be part of anything
ree
"Resist and bite!"
Ironic considering back then Britain was Welsh and Picts and now it mainly is populated by foreign invaders (the English)
@@dylanimatio We learned form there example look where it got them , we should do the opposite.
"...both sides sought to bring the other into a permanent state of non-existence."
The entirety of the anglo-scottish history and relationship summed up perfectly in one sentence. Well done.
0:33 “see” *physical letter C on the sea*
I like how Rome did a better job at policing thousands of kilometres of borders than both Scotland and England did of a mere hundreds.
Yep
"Rome did it better" pretty much describes the whole of medieval europe
Did Rome do better though? Or is the perception merely that?
@@SamBrockmann Rome did better, because even though Legions could end up under the control of houses for the most part they were a truly centralized, professional military force. Whereas as in medieval times it was essentially a crapshoot with most armies being levy based from the general citizenry, and most "kingdom" armies actually belonging to feudal lords. Though this was not always a terribly huge issue for actual warfare versus policing, i.e. English longbowman coming from skilled peasant archers or crossbowman that require little training.
@@archaean2331 but at the end these „kingdoms“ conquered the world not the Roman’s they died out.
I'm just going to assume the Romans actually interacting with the Blemmyae didn't think they lacked heads. Either that or Roman era Egypt had serious vision problems.
Maybe "headless" was a metaphor for being stupid?
@@thebenis3157 Sudanic and Ethiopian people during the Roman era were wrathful and had been known the fend off Roman expansion up the Nile Valley. It is likely the term was used to make them seem more monstrous.
Alessandro Pedretti that’s a pretty retarded way to call someone stupid
@@captain_swaggin4065 Eh, maybe that was a normal way to insult people in Coptic...
@@captain_swaggin4065 I personally don't see how you can call that metaphor "pretty retarded".
There is a good (VERY) old Finnish saying that "Language cuts the land" and it is very true even nowadays. You can have whatever states inside states, but always still the language is what unites people and people feel home around to.
It's interesting, because before Italy was unified, everyone spoke dialects as varied as Spanish and Portuguese - they couldn't understand each other.
The new rulers forced schools to teach one dialect, and eventually it became the "single" language. They said "Now we've created Italy, we must create Italians".
So sometimes, the land cuts the language!
@@LowestofheDead That's very interesting! :)
Canada and the US and all of hispanic America wants a word with you.
@@francogiobbimontesanti3826 I can imagine the Austrians and Swiss also have thoughts.
As a Hungarian I agree 100%
The 1237 Anglo-Scottish borderlands sound like a good setting/inspiration for a video game or other kind of fiction.
@Srithor kek
It would be if you weren’t robbing sheep farmers the whole time.
Or a song, about ice ... and maybe fire ?
In medieval Germany, so-called „Grenzsteine“ (border stones) were used along roads with a lord’s coat of arms on it to mark where one lord‘s territory begins and ends.
Calvert (M) and Penn (P) used them, too.
…in North America, for their respective colonies of Maryland and Delaware/Pennsylvania
You still had some of that into the 20th century in German border areas, plus at least spots in the Spanish-French boundaries. The US and Canada erected cairns when first surveying their boundary in the 19th century, and there have been various similar markers used elsewhere, today often just signs.
Actually, those I found in the forests are pretty much modern - of 17th to 19th century. I don't remember ever seeing a medieval Grenzstein (of before 1500) in Germany.
We still use them for property borders. So you know where your owned land starts and ends. Very much a good excuse to stop your lawnmowing EXACTLY at that line even though mowing your neighbors part of the lawn would take only 5 seconds.
The Blemmyae without heads is genuinely what made my day today!
Damn they must have been short.
The only people you couldn't execute
@@angrytedtalks Sudan probably have short people
Still waiting for promised episode "The Early Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth"
Nosfer I know right
Fun fact: the polish-lithuanian Commonwealth that everybody seems to ignore, including this channel sadly, saved Europe or should we say Christendom twice.
They repulsed the Turks at the siege of Vienna and they also stopped the Mongols. Both times they asked for help and received none.
Today nobody seems to believe it was once a great nation and we can't even get a good video cartoon on it.
This is as close as I come to whining and begging. I try to maintain some sense of dignity. But I seriously want the episode as well.
@@ErikHare Who is this everyone you are talking about? There are plenty of videos about the PLC on youtube, although most of them of dubious quality. With this same stupid stuff like we saved the Christendom and Europe as it was one united place/area... And we helped Austrians at Vienna, we weren't alone there and Mongols defeated us, event though we were together with the Bohemians and the Hungarians in that conflict.... jak bardzo kocham cudzoziemców rozmawiających o naszej historii...
@@kamco1233 You are right, people outside of Poland are starting to recognize the incredibly valuable contributions to European history. I apologize for being too negative and general.
Livto też bzdury gadasz.
Belgium *The German speed bump into France*
More like a German speed _boost_ into France
Who won the 1940 Tour de France?
The 7th German Panzer Division.
Speed bump is quite accurate if you consider the quality of their roads.
@@qwertyuiopzxcfgh thats because half of Europe is driving through Belgium and our politicians are too daft to ask for toll
@@samclukey9802 during ww1 the Germans were slown down, then they found the right speed to hit the bumb and keep going. So yeah they are a speed bump, one that you have to hit just right or not get very far past it.
Old Borders: Meh, you can pass by to trade
Modern borders: *Your 1cm in my country! You shall be arrested!*
"Let's say you're a roman peasant, Congratulations *Party streamer*"
Best line
2:38 permanent state of non existance. LOL
PERMANENT*
EXISTENCE*
NON*
POTATOE*
H*
We're not an army, just 25000 individuals who just like to shop for clothes in the same place.
Some borders that were routinely overseen and protected were those of cities, since in those cases it's quite practical to find people who would do this. This is why stuff like tariffs were often taken by cities instead of nations.
"Oh shit they're speaking french now" I think could explain how borders worked
Not necessarily
You see in the past, France wasn’t centralised at all! And in fact all provinces used to speak their own dialect if not their own languages.
You can’t think about France 🇫🇷 or any other country back then as a centralised country where all the people speak the same language.
Back then in France, each region used its own dialect or language such as Breton in Brittany, Occitan in the south, Basque in the Basque Country, Catalan etc.
Besides if we take the example of Occitan, it was spread between Italy and France.
So say you crossed the Italo-French borders, the people on the two sides would speak Occitan, not French nor Italian.
That is OBVIOUSLY before the French Revolution that lead France to be more unified and centralised.
And in the case of Italy then, they created the Italian language.
But beware that language isn’t always necessarily a good indicator!
Another example: take Germany and Austria. How can you distinguish them? And if you tell me thanks to their dialects, in that case you need to be an excellent German speaker if not a native to be able to understand the differences between Both.
Besides the Bavarian dialect in Germany is extremely similar to the Austrian dialect if not the same. So it would be tricky to know if you are outside of Germany or not.
who would give a sheep a black-eye :(
Borders absolutely existed in theory and practice in ancient and medieval times. The Roman borders were far too large to patrol and stop individuals. However, city states and small kingdoms did have the resources and clearly defined physical barriers and they did stop and check individuals before they entered fortified trade centers.
Did they need visas? Pay a fee? How long could they stay? Doesn’t look like immigrants or refugees were allowed in.
@@TheBooban they were only checked for weapons. Almost always families were allowed in.
Also these borders are extremely atypical. Not to mention that it was actually the Europeans who sought Asian countries
Tolls were far more common than anything we would recognize as a border crossing
Not true. They were very much fuzzier. The problem is that today imperial frontiers get called borders in a way that obscures how different they are to historical political boundaries
0:07 it's incredible how, in the rare occasions in which History Matters made a video that goes far beyond the last 200 years, not only he managed to still shoehorn a World Wars reference, but did so in the first 10 seconds of the video
Trajan was the emperor that ruled Rome in its '' greatest territorial extent'' Hadrian actually pulled out of the mesopotamia which Trajan conquered due to over expansion
yea i saw he said it and it hurt my ears
Trajan never really controlled Mesopotamia and the closest he got was when he became ill in 117. Hadrian did not abandon Mesopotamia until 118 (the year following his ascent to emperor). Technically, the greatest extent was the same at the death of Trajan as it was when Hadrian became emperor. Hadrian solidified rule throughout the conquered territories besides Mesopotamia (which the video even showed as "plus this bit temporarily") during his reign.
The video did not go in depth with this, but it was still accurate. The video is more relevant to Hadrian than Trojan, too, because Hadrian established better border "control" than Trajan had.
Julius Caesar
Rome made a mistake in letting that region go. They could have developed that region better!
@@fili0938
First: He wasnt even an emperor.
Second: No.
1:42 What the hell!? Where’d they get that idea from!?
They cut them all down so quick they didn't realise they had heads.
Herodotus, in his book 'the Histories', described them like that. He got that description from the Libyans, and it was likely a mistranslation between ancient Greek and Libyan, as were many of the things he described. For example, he described ants as large as foxes living in the Himayalas, that dug up gold dust-- likely because the word for 'marmot' in Persian and the word for 'ant' in ancient Greek are quite similar.
@@yojasmagic ohh
@@yojasmagic How did they have a trading relationship and still believe this?
@@ben8557 romans north of the Mediterranean wouldn't know much of what they looked like. Only those in or around the province of Ægyptus would have seen them in person
0:07 best thing i’ve heard in a while
Who waits at the end for “James Bissonette”
Laughed way too hard at the jobby sign at 2:30 hahahah
Thank you very much for the episode! It is quite better when not so widely known topics are covered.
'a permanent state of non-existence' that's my favorite sentence now
I love how the first thing you say, is the place where I live hahah. Yep, I’m from that small chaotic place called Baarle-Nassau. Its actually Belgium and the Netherlands mixed, quite a few borders here. And in case you’re wondering, laws are actually different!
Do you actually have hotels where one half closes earlier than the other half, or is that just an urban myth?
0:53. Despite going to Europe several times, I didn’t realize it was so small. Probably due to low speed limits. That’s the distance from Boston to chicago.
Boston to chicago is 980 miles but yea i get what you’re saying, look at europe on a globe its tiny, maybe that’s why it was always fighting for resources throughout its history
Such a small space, but still, they managed to conquer a world.
@@Godslayer5656 and to have the best documented/ most generally interesting (with the exception of maybe Asia) history in the world
@@benc.3128 thats subjective
@@Godslayer5656 you know, it doesn't look good when you guys go into self flattery mode every time someone mentions Europe is small.
1:50 just that image made me chuckle for unusual amount of time
3:10 - "Try not to die", yeah sounds about right
Very informative indeed. Thank you for you quality content.
Rome’s egypt border was not just flanked by the blymmes if the eastern desert but also the kushite kingdom.
0:34 I C what you did there.
I also C what u did there
Probably the first new video I've watched on the channel so thank you for that
2:18 Brace yourselves! Spit out my beer at that one!
Last time I was this early, the Roman Empire was still around
Vladimir Kichev,1204?
No
For the sake of simplicity, let's just agree that OP meant the Western Roman Empire, given the rediculous number of empires that have claimed to be the "true successors of Rome."
Feste the Phule, Western Empire at its death and reunited into the East was no more Roman then the Eastern Roman Empire.
@@tylerellis9097
Define "Roman" for this situation.
The town is called Baarle as a hole and Baarle Nassau in the Netherlands and Baarle Hertog in belgium
I was not ready for that intro..
Amazing stuff.
This might be my favorite video of yours. I wish I could put it in my bookshelf.. I think I'll youtube-dl it. Thank you so much for doing subjects like this. It's fascinating and so underlooked.
"Permanent state of non-existence."
Love it.
I would say this is largely true of modern borders too. Korean DMZ aside, the odds of getting across a border without documents if you follow basic logic of not going on a major road and such is probably well over 50%. Illegal migration is not especially difficult to do. It's blending in after you are there and succeeding in a new society with no proof you're supposed to be there that is difficult.
A good example of this is afghanistan Pakistan border
Blemyae: Have heads.
Romans: Imma pretend I didn't see that.
Always excited for new content...and the shout out at the end lol
0:09 Stealthy tank, the German tank is a ninja
A ghost, to be more correct :)
ree
@@090giver090 GHOST DIVISION
@@mr.j2040 Living or dead, always ahead...
"Convenient access for german armored divisions" I subscribed
Terrific video bro, still wish it was longer tho. The animations crack me up.
Nice! Learned a lot! Very cool and unique animation style too.
Thank goodness this channel exists to answer all the obvious questions I never thought to ask in school but sure wonder about years later.
"No groups over X". Yeah, that took me a minute or two to realize. Nicely played.
I always wondered about this! Thank you
This is actually interesting. I hadn't thought about it much, but what you describe makes a lot of sense.
Great video, I’ve always been curious about this. I’d love to see a video about the transition to the modern idea of borders, which I imagine came with the development of the modern state.
Belgian Tourism Slogan: "Now with convenient access to German armor divisions!"
I love your channel keep up the great stuff!
Thank you History Matters for the Panzer joke, I've been having a rough time lately and that had me laughing for a solid minute. Much appreciated.
This is the quality and style I subscribed for.
Scotland and Wales: **exists**
England: *How about no*
😂
Still here today 💪😁
Scottish word for Scotland: Alba. Roman word for England: Albion.
Modern word for Scotland: Northern UK (since 1707). Still here.
Scotland is not a place, thats a part of great britain which is a state of Europe!
@@chuckbizzert9098 Scotland is a country in great Britain. Its the second largest country in the United Kingdom
I love your videos! Keep it up!
This was very informative. Thank you.
I cannot stop laughing at the Blemmyae image
This channel is fucking golden😂
Some like city-states could be way way more strict about who came and went. Not only smaller with less distance involved, but nestled in places where the geography made enforcing those borders easier. Sometimes the message was pretty clear if outsiders weren't welcome. Like that one Vlad guy that ruled his kingdom in an area that is now part of Romania.
Great information! Thanks!
Thanks, always happy to learn more things i can use in my D&D game
Many medieval German dominions were very small though, I think they were more capable to mark their entire boundary with, well, boundary markers, than say, the Roman Empire. When you duchy consists only of a few square kilometers, you'll probably be more observant about the neighbors not trying to take little bits of it.
"This may come as a shock to you..."
And ROFL.
Great content!
My grandma's village is situated in the small wall of Trajan.The big one is where the border was oficially,the small one is where the romans had an influence.If you went north of the small one,you were in Barbaric lands,between the two you techincally weren't in the roman empire but still be able to trade easily with romans and probably spoke Latin.
@@Tealdragon204 Thank you
"Who the hell are borders and what does that even supposed to mean"
-Hitler justifying war goals 1933-1939 colorized.
Jews and Anglos at Paris peace conference, 1919 colorized
we just wanted to defend our spanish Border
Excellent video. I've always been interested in geoography, history and politics, especially when they overlap. I remember asking about how borders were defined in medieval and ancient times in my 10th grade world history class. Didn't get as good an answer then as I did with this great video. Thanks for posting this! Definitely subscribing.
That was a hilarious start to a video
This was so educational
2:52 Keanu
How citizenship worked in ancient/medieval times?
What was before the passport and id card?
Unicornul Sarvy there was simply no concept of formalised citizenship
Locality, Language, Allegiance. That's how it worked.
Varun Pathak the roman were VERY big on the whole citizen thing.…
Roman hierarchy of subjects, socii, liberti, citizens and senators was actually pretty complex and formalized.
yo mama
Finally answers to the questions i didnt know i had
That explained a lot, thanks
"And Belgium, with its convenient access for German armoured divisions"
xD
0:15
history matters: "we can easily determine who its people are"
austria-hungary: *yeah about that...*
Nowadays*
Love this try at a concept rather than an event video.
I’ve been watching your vids since you started. Your videos and topics keep getting better and better. Keep up the good work 👍!
Borders: exists
Humans: *but what does this really mean???*
3:02 Even the sheep has a black eye, lol.
I was the sheep
It's a great video.... I always wanted to know about ancient border situation.
That Belgium joke got me so good. Had to pause for a few minutes.
Fun fact: the Blemmyae still exist, their descendants, called the Beja, still live in the same northeastern region of Sudan, between the Nile and the Red Sea. Amazing how cultures can survive through thousands of years of history and change.
They're not headless right 😂😂
@@genekendrick679 lets change that
@@marusdod3685 👀
Very interesting. I learned about natural borders you know rivers and mountains but I never wondered how they would settle territory in like an open plains
This guy's humor...priceless!
The dude (without a head) looking so done with the helmet salesman absolutely slayed me
3:24 somebody finaly choose Slovakia, Thank you very much 🙂
3:24 I am rather sure Portugal and Castille and Leon (later Spain) had a rather well defined border for most of their existance and everyone knew on which side they were... As it is a border that stands to this day.
(Except Couto Mixto and Olivenç/za
Your short but brief storytelling of history and animations are S-Tier, AAA quality!
Wow, good job 👏👏