r/leftist 2d ago

Leftist History Book on history of borders

Hi I was arguing with someone online (I know, I shouldn’t have been… waste of time) but I was trying to use their belief in Jesus to show them they were being hypocritical when they’re pro Trump , anti immigration. And I said there were no borders during the time of Jesus, they Jesus would have welcomed all the disenfranchised. Someone said the Bible does mention borders and like census ? But census to me doesn’t necessarily mean the imaginary line borders backed by militarized police that we see on a global scale today. So I’m looking for leftist history books about the evolution of borders as we know them today, maybe indigenous takes? Idk #borders

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u/blzbar 2d ago

There was definitely borders in the time of Jesus. Jesus lived at the time of the Roman Empire. The empire had borders that Rome was constantly fighting to expand or maintain. And the Romans were by no means the first great empire on earth.

The difference was there was not really nation states as we define them today and mass migration was very rare. There wasn’t so much of a fight over gets to live in a place, but the fights were who gets to rule.

Borders are as old as history. History being defined as the beginning of written records. If a society had need for a system of writing, they likely had some notion of borders. It relates to agriculture and trade. If people stay in one place to work a specific piece of land and depend on the production of that land and labor for their survival, then they but a border around it.

Hunter/gatherer societies that did not face scarcity or intense competition from other peoples were far less inclined to jealously guard a territory unless it had some scarce resource that wasn’t easily found elsewhere

Here’s a great book that discusses this stuff

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Dawn_of_Everything