A History of the World in 47 Borders

by John Elledge

I suspect that I may not be alone amongst the readership of the RSI Journal in having a fascination with both maps and geo-political history.  I got the bug for maps from spending the formative years of my military career studying them intensely to understand the geographical and man-made features across the terrain in which I was about to deploy on exercise or operations.  This in turn fed my quest to understand the nature of my surrounds in terms of society, culture and history.

The author, John Elledge, shares his well-researched and deep knowledge of both subjects in an eloquent and refreshingly humorous style of writing; it is very readable.

It will not come as a surprise that the book is organised into 47 chapters; they are grouped into three parts: Histories, Legacies and Externalities.  Each chapter is about 6-8 pages in length and packs huge volumes of easily-digestible detail and analysis.  I chose to read one chapter a day thereby allowing me the time to absorb the wave upon wave of enlightening insights.

The narrative begins with the unification of Upper and Lower Egypt in around 3,000 BCE before moving swiftly on to the Great Wall of China, Ancient Greece and the rise and fall of the Roman Empire.  The reader is then transported to the eras of Alfred the Great, Charlemagne and Genghis Khan.  Through the eyes of the author we can see that each dynasty and empire teaches us much about what has shaped the world in which we now live.  He carefully explores what unites us and what divides us.

The gallop through to the 13^th Century takes under seventy pages.  Thence onwards to the European expansions into ‘the new worlds’, Napoleon’s legacy, the US invasion of Mexico, ‘the Schleswig-Holstein Business’, the Sudan-Uganda Border Commission, the Anglo-French carve up of the Middle East, Indian partition and finally to the Iron Curtain.

If you haven’t run out of breath by now, the author moves on from ‘Histories’ to ‘Legacies’.  Here we find the quirks of fate that the modern world is still trying to get its mind around – Kaliningrad, the Korean DMZ, China’s Nine-dash Line, Isreal and Palestine to name a few.

Finally, the book turns its attention to ‘Externalities’: such things as the prime meridian, time zones, the International Date Line, maritime boundaries, Antarctica and even space.  If that were not enough, the paperback edition contains a 48^th (‘bonus’) chapter about ‘The Persistence of Poland’.

I highly recommend this book; it is very thought-provoking and educational.  The author is to be commended for delivering exactly what the book’s subtitle proclaims: ‘The Stories Behind the Lines on Our Maps’.

I only wish that I could have read it as I started out on my military career, rather than when my time in the Army was firmly in the rear-view mirror; it has certainly allowed me to see the world in a different light and with an enriched perspective.

Lieutenant Colonel (Retired) Nigel Harrison

Published by: Wildfire, 27 March 2025. 384 pages.

ISBN-13: 978-1472298546