Keep Out! (This does not mean you.)

When Robert Frost wrote, “Something there is that doesn’t love a wall,” he was thinking of the difficulty of maintaining barriers. Nature builds much more successful ones, in the form of mountain ranges, oceans, and deserts, which need very little maintenance. Nevertheless, humanity sees every barrier as a challenge.

Still, we need borders, to separate “them” from “us.” Troublesome offenders we can’t kill can only be punished by exile or confinement. Prisons represent our society’s admission of failure to control certain persons other than by separating them from the rest of us. And walls alone don’t do the job. There must be guards, who, like policemen, firemen, and soldiers, are paid to face danger. In California, prison guards, who are euphemistically known as “Correctional Peace Officers,” constitute one of the most powerful political lobbies, because they, in effect, are the wall which keeps us safe from people we can’t handle in any other way. They are strongly unionized, and, though forbidden to go on strike, can exert great pressure on political leaders.

But the problem of keeping some things out and others in has a very long history. It may indeed explain why caves, often with only one relatively small aperture, were so popular as early human dwellings. However, when it comes to delineating the territory claimed by an entire nation, the complications multiply exponentially. The U.S.A., as currently constituted, is fortunate in having land borders – albeit extensive ones – with only two other countries, both now considered “friendly.” In contrast, China today borders more countries than any other nation on earth – fourteen in fact – giving rise, over the centuries, to innumerable tensions, and frequent wars.

Big rivers make good lines of demarcation – although they can sometimes suddenly change their channels, causing people in the affected area to discover that they have become foreigners, living on the “wrong” side of the river.

The Danube, the longest river in Western Europe flows through several countries, but also separates some. One of these separations I was able to experience first-hand, while on a river cruise from Budapest to Bucharest. I was astonished to find that, as far as Romania and its trans-Danube neighbor, Bulgaria, are concerned, the river separates not only two countries but two languages – and two different alphabets! In Bucharest, where the language is akin to French and Spanish, I was at least able to make out a word or two in the newspaper headlines. But just across the river, the language is Slavic and the alphabet Cyrillic – and I couldn’t even read the street-signs!

Some borders remain in dispute long after the original contenders are gone. A good example is the border between Turkey and what is now the Republic of Armenia. To give you an idea of the complexity of this situation: the mountain called Ararat, on which, according to the Bible, Noah’s Ark came to rest, was once considered to be at the center of Armenia, but is now in Turkey, though it is clearly visible from Yerevan, the capital of Armenia. Travel across the border has for long been virtually impossible – and the whole impasse goes back more than a century to a terrible episode, usually called the Armenian Genocide, which took place during World War I. (If you visit eastern Turkey you will see many architectural vestiges of what used to be Armenia.)

Some countries which are, or were, privileged to control suitable areas extremely remote from their centers of population, had the option of establishing “Penal Colonies” (another euphemism) which inevitably acquired fear-inducing reputations (possibly in themselves serving as a deterrent to potential criminals.)

For Russia, there was the vast, terribly inhospitable, and (especially before railroads) almost impossibly distant province known as Siberia – a region which no doubt still houses active prisons to this day.

France had (and still has, considering it to be an integral part of its European domain) a huge territory on the north coast of South America, called Cayenne or French Guiana, where it established the fearful penal institution known as Devil’s Island (which was finally closed down in 1953).

For Britain there was the whole island-continent of Australia, many of whose current inhabitants can still (not always proudly) trace their ancestry to “transported” convicts.

All these places, in their time, served their function of keeping “undesirables” out.

Just what proportion of those thus exiled ever got back in again I don’t know – but it must have been a miserably small minority.