Partitioned Lives: The Irish Borderlands explores everyday life and senses of identity and belonging along a contested border whose official functions and local impacts have shifted across the twentieth century. It does so through the accounts of contemporary borderland residents in Ireland and Northern Ireland who shared with us their reflections on and experiences of the border from the 1950s to the present day. Since the border is the product of the partition of the island and the creation of Northern Ireland, its meaning has been deeply entangled with the radically and often violently opposed perspectives on the legitimacy of Northern Ireland and the political reunification of the island. Yet the intensely political symbolism of the border has meant that relatively little attention has been paid to the lived experience of the border, its material presence in the landscape and in people’s lives, and its materialisation through the practices and policies of the states on either side. Drawing on recent approaches within historical, political and cultural geography and the cross-disciplinary field of border studies, this book redresses this neglect by exploring the Irish border in terms of its meanings (from the political to the personal) but also, and importantly, through the objects (from tables of custom regulations and travel permits to road blocks and military watch towers) and practices (from official efforts to regulate the movement of people and objects across it to the strategies and experiences of those subject to those state policies) through which it was effectively constituted. The focus is on the Irish border as practised, experienced and materially present in the borderlands.

Partitioned Lives: The Irish Borderlands explores everyday life and senses of identity and belonging along a contested border whose official functions and local impacts have shifted across the twentieth century. It does so through the accounts of contemporary borderland residents in Ireland and Northern Ireland who shared with us their reflections on and experiences of the border from the 1950s to the present day. Since the border is the product of the partition of the island and the creation of Northern Ireland, its meaning has been deeply entangled with the radically and often violently opposed perspectives on the legitimacy of Northern Ireland and the political reunification of the island. Yet the intensely political symbolism of the border has meant that relatively little attention has been paid to the lived experience of the border, its material presence in the landscape and in people’s lives, and its materialisation through the practices and policies of the states on either side. Drawing on recent approaches within historical, political and cultural geography and the cross-disciplinary field of border studies, this book redresses this neglect by exploring the Irish border in terms of its meanings (from the political to the personal) but also, and importantly, through the objects (from tables of custom regulations and travel permits to road blocks and military watch towers) and practices (from official efforts to regulate the movement of people and objects across it to the strategies and experiences of those subject to those state policies) through which it was effectively constituted. The focus is on the Irish border as practised, experienced and materially present in the borderlands.

Offers insights into how the new international boundary between India and Pakistan was made, subverted, and transformed.

The delineation and emergence of the Irish border radically reshaped political and social realities across the entire island of Ireland. For those who lived in close quarters with the border, partition was also an intimate and personal occurrence, profoundly implicated in everyday lives. Otherwise mundane activities such as shopping, visiting family, or travelling to church were often complicated by customs restrictions, security policies, and even questions of nationhood and identity. The border became an interface, not just of two jurisdictions, but also between the public, political space of state territory, and the private, familiar spaces of daily life. The effects of political disunity were combined and intertwined with a degree of unity of everyday social life that persisted and in some ways even flourished across, if not always within, the boundaries of both states. On the border, the state was visible to an uncommon degree — as uniformed agents, road blocks, and built environment — at precisely the same point as its limitations were uniquely exposed. For those whose worlds continued to transcend the border, the power and hegemony of either of those states, and the social structures they conditioned, could only ever be incomplete. As a consequence, border residents lived in circumstances that were burdened by inconvenience and imposition, but also endowed with certain choices. Influenced by microhistorical approaches, Unapproved Routes uses a series of discrete 'histories' — of the Irish Boundary Commission, the Foyle Fisheries dispute, cockfighting tournaments regularly held on the border, smuggling, and local conflicts over cross-border roads — to explore how the border was experienced and incorporated into people's lives; emerging, at times, as a powerfully revealing site of popular agency and action.

A NEW STATESMAN BOOK OF THE YEAR 2021 'A model of research and analysis ... Townshend's concise and intelligent book tells a painful story that is probably not yet over' Simon Heffer, Daily Telegraph A compelling history of the turbulent journey to Irish independence, published for the centenary of the Partition In the aftermath of the horrors of the Irish Famine, the grim, distrustful relationship between Ireland and the rest of the United Kingdom deteriorated into a generations-long argument about 'Home Rule'. The unprecedented nature of the Irish problem - with most Irish people wanting to break away from the world's largest Empire - made it extraordinarily difficult for either side to come up with a compromise. For many years actual independence seemed inconceivable. And then, as these bitter disputes continued, it became clear that under no circumstances would the Protestants be party to any of it. The Partition is a remarkable, clear-sighted and thoughtful account of how two unthinkable events - full Irish independence and the creation of the state of Northern Ireland - came to pass. The Irish nationalist claim to leave ran into a loyalist demand to remain, increasingly centred on the north-eastern Protestant community, threatening large-scale violent resistance. Here Charles Townshend lays out what is ultimately a tragic story, as partition became the only answer to an otherwise insoluble problem. The settlement of the Irish question drew in every major politician, conjured up heroes and villains, led to civil war and finally to Ulster's catastrophic Troubles. The hard border has always been seen as a failure of both British and Irish statecraft, but has endured now for a century. The Partition brilliantly brings to life the contingency and uncertainty that created it. 'A timely and important book ... so much of its content remains relevant to understanding contemporary preoccupations and controversies' Diarmaid Ferriter, Irish Times

While many students recognize that Ireland is divided into two jurisdictions, Ireland and Northern Ireland, few know the history behind the split and how it affected the region as a whole, as well as the rest of Europe and the world. With plenty of photographs, maps, fast facts, and sidebars, this book traces the history of conflict in Ireland, the geography of the two jurisdictions, and the cultural divides that existed before the split and that have resulted from it.

Introduction / Tobias Wendl & Michael R(c)œsler -- The internal African frontier : cultural conservatism and ethnic innovation / Igor Kopytoff -- Where is the border now? : the new politics of identity in South Africa / Carolyn Hamilton -- Island as borderland : such as R(c)ơgen and Usedom / Ina-Maria Greverus -- Power versus knowledge : smugglers and the state along Ghana's eastern frontier / Paul Nugent -- Shopping and sectarianism at the Irish border / Hastings Donnan -- Smuggling as a border way of life : a Mediterranean case / Henk Driessen -- Multiple legal construction of socio-economic spaces : resource management and conflict in the Central Moluccas / Franz von Benda-Beckman -- Limits on the access to land, cattle and women among some West African peoples / R(c)ơdiger Schott -- Boundaries between African customary law and the constitution in South Africa / Tom W. Bennett -- Frontier languages, language boundaries / Klaus Schubert -- Separation through unification : changing cultural models in a East German factory / Heike Wieschiolek -- Toward an anthropology of borderlands : the Mexican-US border and the crossing of the 21st century / Robert R. Alvarez.