Borderlands contain certain physical geographic characteristics. Generally in organically produced borderlands, which demarcate the crossing of two or more national projects, as opposed to boundaries or frontiers , this physical geography is likely to be a river or a mountain. The interest of a consideration of borderlands within the social sciences, and in particular within a security, and conflict-studies led paradigm, is that these are often the most politically volatile regions seen throughout the world.
The reason for the political volatility of borderlands, of course, is largely self-explanatory; these are the regions whereby opposing, or otherwise incompatible, ideas as to a collective belonging collide. Since the upsurge of romanticism, in the early to mid-stage of the 19th Century, this collective belonging has expanded from being locally centred, inter-communitarian, phenomena towards being a nationalist phenomenon, wherein the new technologies of the period, such as locomotion and the proliferation of print, consolidated a cohesive national unit. This was based around commonality and a “mémoire collectif”. This creation of differing national units created the conditions whereby they would inevitably collide with one another, opposing groups of people would encounter who believe in differing national projects. This is the process which has the created the conditions for modern political volatility centred on borderlands.
A dramatic historical example of the political volatility of borderland regions is that of the Rhine borderland between Germany and France, during this first era of romanticism, and after the German Unification. The Rhineland is a borderland around the River Rhine, which was the point of collision between French and German nationalisms. The Rhineland was of symbolic importance to both nations, seen as a heartland in both ‘mémoire collectif’. This caused the conditions for nationalist driven conflict on this borderland, initially in the border skirmish between an emasculated France and Resurgent Germany in 1871, and then, most tragically, with the march to and outbreak of World War One in 1914. With the re-awakening of nationalist fervour since the collapse in communism from 1989-1994, with the independence of the Central Asian Republics and the 1st Chechen conflict, borderlands have once again borne the brunt of collision and conflict between resurgent national groupings; in the sense of neo-romanticism and considerations of periphery instability, they have once again become relevant and imperative.