The Birth of Territory

Elden, Stuart

ISBN 10: 0226202577 / ISBN 13: 9780226202570

Published by University of Chicago Press, 2013

About this Item

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Bibliographic Details

• Title: The Birth of Territory
• Publisher: University of Chicago Press
• Publication Date: 2013
• Language: English
• ISBN 10: 0226202577
• ISBN 13: 9780226202570
• Binding: paperback
• Condition: Good

About this title

Synopsis

Territory is one of the central political concepts of the modern world and, indeed, functions as the primary way the world is divided and controlled politically. Yet territory has not received the critical attention afforded to other crucial concepts such as sovereignty, rights, and justice. While territory continues to matter politically, and territorial disputes and arrangements are studied in detail, the concept of territory itself is often neglected today. Where did the idea of exclusive ownership of a portion of the earth’s surface come from, and what kinds of complexities are hidden behind that seemingly straightforward definition?

The Birth of Territory provides a detailed account of the emergence of territory within Western political thought. Looking at ancient, medieval, Renaissance, and early modern thought, Stuart Elden examines the evolution of the concept of territory from ancient Greece to the seventeenth century to determine how we arrived at our contemporary understanding. Elden addresses a range of historical, political, and literary texts and practices, as well as a number of key players—historians, poets, philosophers, theologians, and secular political theorists—and in doing so sheds new light on the way the world came to be ordered and how the earth’s surface is divided, controlled, and administered.

About the Author

Stuart Elden (PhD, University of London, 1999) is professor of political theory and geography at the University of Warwick. He is the author of The Birth of Territory, which we published in 2013, and Shakespearean Territories, which we published in 2018, along with numerous other works including Terror and Territory: The Spatial Extent of Sovereignty (Minnesota, 2009), and a four-volume intellectual history of Michel Foucault’s career.