as a Belgian, I expected a stereotype waffle or chocolat bar to pop-up next to the dutch windmill...I nearly died when he said "easy acces for german armoured divisions" :P
Fun fact: During certain periods in history all three empires around the Baltic sea, Sweden (including modern-day Finland), Denmark (including modern-day Norway) and Russia, claimed their country stretched all the way up to the Barents sea (in other words the area that today belong to Norway). The natives of the area (the Sami) were forced to pay taxes to all three of them. I imagine that must have been fun...
So what happened next? I am assuming there must have been a conflict then, right? Because it’s like if a shop owner had to pay “protection money” to multiple different mobs. Eventually, the shop owner isn’t going to have enough money to give to the last gang no matter how badly the shop gets treated. So then there’s inevitably going to be a dispute between the factions over the ego/greed of who truly controls what.
Srithor It was a special kind of tax collectors called ”birkarlar” in swedish who collected the tax from the sami. I think fur was what they mostly got in tax from the samis.
@Srithor Don't know about scandinavia specifically, but most nomadic peoples have routine get togethers for celebrations, and exchanging people via marriage (to prevent too much inbreeding). So it would just be a question of the tax collectors showing up to one of those to get the taxes. Nomadic peoples also usually engage in tons of trade so again, taxes can be collected whenever they come to a permanent settlement to trade.
Woah finally, I'm in a comment battle with a bunch of kids, but RU-vid wouldn't let me post my comment, it would get deleted automatically, I decided to emit certain words and try again till RU-vid won't bother.
"The Romans believed that the Blemmyae were a people who didn't have heads" "The Romans had a good trading relationship with the Blemmyae" I mean I know it's probably just that only the Romans living in the interior who believed that, and those few on the border didn't, but the juxtaposition of those two lines makes me feel like that myth would quickly be disproven.
I think these beliefs were from 2 ages apart. It’s like an Ancient Greek myth that came to Rome. In a time where information didn’t exist as it does today, only a few Roman scholars would have known of the myth, while other people just didn’t knew or care about it. Today, since a simple google search can give 1000 information, it’s easy to be confused.
Would you really believe the word of some poorly educated trader on the furthest southern reaches of the empire? I mean they'd be from the Equestrian class at best, they're probably not even an Italian. What training do they have in anatomy, rhetoric and the liberal arts to often any real insight into the nature of the world. Whereas a well educated scholar like Pliny writing his thoroughly researched encyclopedia, that's an authoritative source. He's from a good family, well respected in the scholarly community and he's friends with the Emperor himself.
@@Valorince Then once you "evolve" again, you realize life is not really anything; it just is. And you can spot spiritual pseudo-intellectuals claiming to have figured life out, thinking everyone else is the stupid one.
@@nathanielmohr9622 Ain't nothing wrong with using your spirituality for the worship of God. Problem is people like to worship the buttholes of twinks instead.
I remember being quite shocked reading Stefan Zweig's memoirs (he was Austrian) of him travelling all over Europe and to the US and India in basically 1910 without needing a passport ever. We are so used to the idea of strict bureaucratic enforcement of states and its borders that we forget that it's a really recent phenomenon.
It was deemed unenforceable and therefore controls where relaxed. That ended with WWI. Interesting in the context that today travelling without a passport in the EU seems like a new concept.
"strict bureaucratic enforcement of states and its borders" Clearly you have never heard of the invention of "Democrats". With this new invention, a nation's borders not only are non-existent, but they will go out of their way to fly people across the border in the middle of the night under secrecy sanctioned by the president.
Man, as an American myself I can hardly imagine that. 9/11 really upped our security, but imagining European folks randomly walking in on our soil even in say the 1950s would have been unthinkable. The world changed so much from the two world wars. It's kind of sad TBH.
"...both sides sought to bring the other into a permanent state of non-existence." The entirety of the anglo-scottish history and relationship summed up perfectly in one sentence. Well done.
"...in Belgium, with its convenient access for German armoured divisions." *Shots fired! (quite literally if you lived in Belgium circa 1940-1944)* "Many didn't see themselves as being Roman.... looking at you Britannia!" _Was that a quip at modern politics?_
There is a good (VERY) old Finnish saying that "Language cuts the land" and it is very true even nowadays. You can have whatever states inside states, but always still the language is what unites people and people feel home around to.
It's interesting, because before Italy was unified, everyone spoke dialects as varied as Spanish and Portuguese - they couldn't understand each other. The new rulers forced schools to teach one dialect, and eventually it became the "single" language. They said "Now we've created Italy, we must create Italians". So sometimes, the land cuts the language!
I'm just going to assume the Romans actually interacting with the Blemmyae didn't think they lacked heads. Either that or Roman era Egypt had serious vision problems.
@@thebenis3157 Sudanic and Ethiopian people during the Roman era were wrathful and had been known the fend off Roman expansion up the Nile Valley. It is likely the term was used to make them seem more monstrous.
@@SamBrockmann Rome did better, because even though Legions could end up under the control of houses for the most part they were a truly centralized, professional military force. Whereas as in medieval times it was essentially a crapshoot with most armies being levy based from the general citizenry, and most "kingdom" armies actually belonging to feudal lords. Though this was not always a terribly huge issue for actual warfare versus policing, i.e. English longbowman coming from skilled peasant archers or crossbowman that require little training.
In medieval Germany, so-called „Grenzsteine“ (border stones) were used along roads with a lord’s coat of arms on it to mark where one lord‘s territory begins and ends.
You still had some of that into the 20th century in German border areas, plus at least spots in the Spanish-French boundaries. The US and Canada erected cairns when first surveying their boundary in the 19th century, and there have been various similar markers used elsewhere, today often just signs.
Actually, those I found in the forests are pretty much modern - of 17th to 19th century. I don't remember ever seeing a medieval Grenzstein (of before 1500) in Germany.
We still use them for property borders. So you know where your owned land starts and ends. Very much a good excuse to stop your lawnmowing EXACTLY at that line even though mowing your neighbors part of the lawn would take only 5 seconds.
Some borders that were routinely overseen and protected were those of cities, since in those cases it's quite practical to find people who would do this. This is why stuff like tariffs were often taken by cities instead of nations.
Fun fact: the polish-lithuanian Commonwealth that everybody seems to ignore, including this channel sadly, saved Europe or should we say Christendom twice. They repulsed the Turks at the siege of Vienna and they also stopped the Mongols. Both times they asked for help and received none. Today nobody seems to believe it was once a great nation and we can't even get a good video cartoon on it. This is as close as I come to whining and begging. I try to maintain some sense of dignity. But I seriously want the episode as well.
@@ErikHare Who is this everyone you are talking about? There are plenty of videos about the PLC on youtube, although most of them of dubious quality. With this same stupid stuff like we saved the Christendom and Europe as it was one united place/area... And we helped Austrians at Vienna, we weren't alone there and Mongols defeated us, event though we were together with the Bohemians and the Hungarians in that conflict.... jak bardzo kocham cudzoziemców rozmawiających o naszej historii...
@@kamco1233 You are right, people outside of Poland are starting to recognize the incredibly valuable contributions to European history. I apologize for being too negative and general.
@@samclukey9802 during ww1 the Germans were slown down, then they found the right speed to hit the bumb and keep going. So yeah they are a speed bump, one that you have to hit just right or not get very far past it.
Borders absolutely existed in theory and practice in ancient and medieval times. The Roman borders were far too large to patrol and stop individuals. However, city states and small kingdoms did have the resources and clearly defined physical barriers and they did stop and check individuals before they entered fortified trade centers.
@@TheBooban they were only checked for weapons. Almost always families were allowed in. Also these borders are extremely atypical. Not to mention that it was actually the Europeans who sought Asian countries
Not true. They were very much fuzzier. The problem is that today imperial frontiers get called borders in a way that obscures how different they are to historical political boundaries
Not necessarily You see in the past, France wasn’t centralised at all! And in fact all provinces used to speak their own dialect if not their own languages. You can’t think about France 🇫🇷 or any other country back then as a centralised country where all the people speak the same language. Back then in France, each region used its own dialect or language such as Breton in Brittany, Occitan in the south, Basque in the Basque Country, Catalan etc. Besides if we take the example of Occitan, it was spread between Italy and France. So say you crossed the Italo-French borders, the people on the two sides would speak Occitan, not French nor Italian. That is OBVIOUSLY before the French Revolution that lead France to be more unified and centralised. And in the case of Italy then, they created the Italian language. But beware that language isn’t always necessarily a good indicator! Another example: take Germany and Austria. How can you distinguish them? And if you tell me thanks to their dialects, in that case you need to be an excellent German speaker if not a native to be able to understand the differences between Both. Besides the Bavarian dialect in Germany is extremely similar to the Austrian dialect if not the same. So it would be tricky to know if you are outside of Germany or not.
Trajan was the emperor that ruled Rome in its '' greatest territorial extent'' Hadrian actually pulled out of the mesopotamia which Trajan conquered due to over expansion
Trajan never really controlled Mesopotamia and the closest he got was when he became ill in 117. Hadrian did not abandon Mesopotamia until 118 (the year following his ascent to emperor). Technically, the greatest extent was the same at the death of Trajan as it was when Hadrian became emperor. Hadrian solidified rule throughout the conquered territories besides Mesopotamia (which the video even showed as "plus this bit temporarily") during his reign. The video did not go in depth with this, but it was still accurate. The video is more relevant to Hadrian than Trojan, too, because Hadrian established better border "control" than Trajan had.
I love how the first thing you say, is the place where I live hahah. Yep, I’m from that small chaotic place called Baarle-Nassau. Its actually Belgium and the Netherlands mixed, quite a few borders here. And in case you’re wondering, laws are actually different!
0:53. Despite going to Europe several times, I didn’t realize it was so small. Probably due to low speed limits. That’s the distance from Boston to chicago.
Boston to chicago is 980 miles but yea i get what you’re saying, look at europe on a globe its tiny, maybe that’s why it was always fighting for resources throughout its history
My grandma's village is situated in the small wall of Trajan.The big one is where the border was oficially,the small one is where the romans had an influence.If you went north of the small one,you were in Barbaric lands,between the two you techincally weren't in the roman empire but still be able to trade easily with romans and probably spoke Latin.
I would say this is largely true of modern borders too. Korean DMZ aside, the odds of getting across a border without documents if you follow basic logic of not going on a major road and such is probably well over 50%. Illegal migration is not especially difficult to do. It's blending in after you are there and succeeding in a new society with no proof you're supposed to be there that is difficult.
For the sake of simplicity, let's just agree that OP meant the Western Roman Empire, given the rediculous number of empires that have claimed to be the "true successors of Rome."
Some like city-states could be way way more strict about who came and went. Not only smaller with less distance involved, but nestled in places where the geography made enforcing those borders easier. Sometimes the message was pretty clear if outsiders weren't welcome. Like that one Vlad guy that ruled his kingdom in an area that is now part of Romania.
Many medieval German dominions were very small though, I think they were more capable to mark their entire boundary with, well, boundary markers, than say, the Roman Empire. When you duchy consists only of a few square kilometers, you'll probably be more observant about the neighbors not trying to take little bits of it.
Herodotus, in his book 'the Histories', described them like that. He got that description from the Libyans, and it was likely a mistranslation between ancient Greek and Libyan, as were many of the things he described. For example, he described ants as large as foxes living in the Himayalas, that dug up gold dust-- likely because the word for 'marmot' in Persian and the word for 'ant' in ancient Greek are quite similar.
@@ben8557 romans north of the Mediterranean wouldn't know much of what they looked like. Only those in or around the province of Ægyptus would have seen them in person
Fun fact: the Blemmyae still exist, their descendants, called the Beja, still live in the same northeastern region of Sudan, between the Nile and the Red Sea. Amazing how cultures can survive through thousands of years of history and change.
Also trading across the borders or migration wasn't a problem. On the contrary, it was welcomed since it meant customs and taxes had to be paid and young males had to join the military if they were living within the Roman Empire. Later in Germany there were so many borders where you had to pay to do trading that it caused a lot of problems and would ultimately lead to the unification.
0:07 it's incredible how, in the rare occasions in which History Matters made a video that goes far beyond the last 200 years, not only he managed to still shoehorn a World Wars reference, but did so in the first 10 seconds of the video
3:24 I am rather sure Portugal and Castille and Leon (later Spain) had a rather well defined border for most of their existance and everyone knew on which side they were... As it is a border that stands to this day. (Except Couto Mixto and Olivenç/za
Custom tolls were sometimes set up on roads as a kind of border control as well as a form of revenue. Before German unity in 1871 Germany consisted of many states, large, medium and small. A cartoon satirised the small ones by showing a farmer with a large cart at a tollbooth on a road, and the farmer says he does not have to pay a toll because his cart's rear was in one small state, the middle in another and the front in a third.
Might be worth covering the difference in culture and language b3tween townfolk and the people outside, how people didn't travel much due to inherent danger and expense, and how most serfs strictly weren't allowed to leave their county often without special permission, that the duchies etc were far more like countries often. So many different systems really.
In Erbil's (ancient Arbela) archaeological museum, i saw a border stone warning in Latin and Greek, that you were leaving the Roman Empire to enter the Persian (Parthian) territory. Kinda "Check-point Charlie" vibe...
You're incorrect about Hadrian. Trajan ruled at Rome's greatest extent. Some of the eastern territory is missing from your "greatest" extent borders ;)
But Hadrian didn't pull out of Mesopotamia until 118, 1 year after he ascended as emperor. So theoretically, he and Trajan both had the empire at its greatest extent.
@@octavianblaga8144 I mean, if you wanna get super technical about it, sure. Hadrian's first acts was to pull out immediately however. I'd argue that trajan expanded the empire to its greatest length and Hadrian went back to securable borders.
It says something that there was a very important noble title that basically meant "border protector". Margraves, marquises, markgraf, marchese, marquess, etc. had the explicit job of defending and protecting the nebulous borders of a kingdom. Some of the most important lords in various kingdoms were those powerful lords whom the king trusted with defense of large border regions.
Great video, I’ve always been curious about this. I’d love to see a video about the transition to the modern idea of borders, which I imagine came with the development of the modern state.
Even today there are un-demarcated and unpatrolled borders; but these are areas where there are no permanent settlements and travel is very difficult. Think of deserts, swamps, mountains, jungles, taiga and tundra.
@@mrbalz5404 that's a big simplification - this region was problematic before ww2 too, the majority was ukrainian and they were trying to get the independence in 1939. I'm not trying to indulge the USSR on that one, but it was logical of them to use that liberation situation in their favour
Kingdoms and empires did have borders, some more permanent and feasible than others. You use the Roman Empire as a point of reference, but what about Egypt, Achaemenid Persia, the Assyrian empire or the Hittites? The list goes on and on, the deeper you dig; hell, just think of Han China or the Mongols.
Fun fact: since Baarle-Nassau is in both The Netherlands and Belgium, it has two names. Its Dutch name is Baarle-Nassau, its Flemish name is Baarle-Hertog.
Even though borders were not formally defined, I always wonder how, especially large empires could define their state with such little knowledge of geography and it taking so long to travel from one side to another in that time. I mean, back in the day some states were so unstable and by the time borders changed I can hardly believe they actually measured the actual land. How could they precisely define state borders or even “transition frontiers” when their map scaling was far from being on point. Who knows they were like 300 km away from their state without even knowing. What puzzles me even more is how historians can redraw borders from states where you barely find any sources from especially short-lived or wartime states
I think it was more like: "Give me this city, these villages and forest around them", or later "This counties or duchies" since they were defined pretty well
1:24 Romans came to unclear border of Kvenland. I think that Kvenland had their borders between lakes ans Swedish people or Romans didn't go there. Italians have influence modern Finland many times, for example they bring us knife and fork but that happened 1000 years later. Some people think that there was anarchy in Italia after Rome fall, maybe so but at some point they got city governments bac up running and later the country
My point is that, if you have never heard, the Kvenland was ancient Finland, people used to live close to lakes and they worship their version of Zeus, it was called Ukko Ylijumala. The Father of Gods, people used to be very clean and they gave birth in steamroom, so the baby doesn't get infections from the dirty house. Peoples houses were very uncomfortable before the year 0 and still to 1700. Finland have always had borders from big lakes, rivers and coasts, swedish people didn't have borders, they just go everywhere with boats, their only borders were mountains or open land were enemies like mongols could outrun them with horses. I think every nation used to have borders like this, mountains, swamps, coast or even different trees and vegetation what you couldn't feel like home
Things have changed somewhat since the 2nd century. And even the Romans fought to stop mass migrations, several of which were the major cause of Rome's final fall
@@Archris17 Economic migrants today are nothing like the Visigoth armies, and the western Roman empire was already declining beforehand. The eastern empire had the same invasions and lasted 1000 years longer
