I am in Baarle-Hertog, which is in a bit of Belgium, inside the Netherlands. And if I
cross this road, without being run over, I am now in Baarle-Nassau, which is in a bit
of the Netherlands, inside a bit of Belgium, inside the Netherlands. This is the most complicated
border in Europe. So: how did we get here?
I don't mean, how did we get to this border, that's a series of land swaps and treaties
over a few centuries. But how did we get to the fact where a row of studs in the ground
-- elsewhere it's marked for tourists but here, just a series of studs going down the
centre of this road can determine the country you're in, the laws you follow, you r seat
on the United Nations, whether you go to war. How did we get to that??
Well, I'm about to gloss through several centuries of history in a few minutes, so apologies
if I smudge some of the details, but most historians would say it goes back to the Peace
of Westphalia, a series of treaties that were drawn up at the end of the Thirty Years' War,
a devastating conflict. Soldiers and mercenaries were paid by looting the towns they went through.
But what came out of it, at the end, among the many peace treaties, was the idea that
your country can have one set of laws and one religion, and our country can have another
set of laws and another religion, and that's OK. We're going to respect what is called
your sovereignty, Westphalian sovereignty, the idea of nations came out of that.
But it could have been different. I mean, surely it's just as sensible to say that the
locals should say what laws they follow, not national governments. That if the state of
New York suddenly wanted to become part of Canada instead of the United States, if they
voted, if they had a referendum, if it was democratically decided, then they should be
able to just go and become part of Canada. Why not?
That towns like this should be able to say – I mean, they wouldn’t they’ve got
a good tourist attraction thing going on, but – they should be able to say, actually,
we’re just going to be part of Belgium now. It’s going to make it easier.
Why don’t we have that instead of it being drawn up by bureaucrats somewhere in central
government?
Well, we settled on the European system around the world because, well, Europe colonised
the world. And along with railroads and colonial atrocities, we exported the idea of Westphalian
sovereignty. Even now, the borders in Africa are drawn up based on European old colonies,
not the innumerable different cultures and million-strong trading ports that came beforehand.
We have this system because of a fluke of history. It could very easily have been something
else, but as a result: we have this. We have a road where one side is in Belgium, in the
Netherlands, and the other side is in the Netherlands, in Belgium, in the Netherlands.
Netherlands.
Belgium.
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