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I am in Baarle-Hertog, which is in a bit of
Belgium, inside the Netherlands. And if I

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cross this road, without being run over, I
am now in Baarle-Nassau, which is in a bit

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of the Netherlands, inside a bit of Belgium,
inside the Netherlands. This is the most complicated

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border in Europe. So: how did we get here?

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I don't mean, how did we get to this border,
that's a series of land swaps and treaties

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over a few centuries. But how did we get to
the fact where a row of studs in the ground

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-- elsewhere it's marked for tourists but
here, just a series of studs going down the

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centre of this road can determine the country
you're in, the laws you follow, you r seat

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on the United Nations, whether you go to war.
How did we get to that??

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Well, I'm about to gloss through several centuries
of history in a few minutes, so apologies

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if I smudge some of the details, but most
historians would say it goes back to the Peace

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of Westphalia, a series of treaties that were
drawn up at the end of the Thirty Years' War,

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a devastating conflict. Soldiers and mercenaries
were paid by looting the towns they went through.

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But what came out of it, at the end, among
the many peace treaties, was the idea that

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your country can have one set of laws and
one religion, and our country can have another

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set of laws and another religion, and that's
OK. We're going to respect what is called

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your sovereignty, Westphalian sovereignty,
the idea of nations came out of that.

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But it could have been different. I mean,
surely it's just as sensible to say that the

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locals should say what laws they follow, not
national governments. That if the state of

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New York suddenly wanted to become part of
Canada instead of the United States, if they

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voted, if they had a referendum, if it was
democratically decided, then they should be

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able to just go and become part of Canada.
Why not?

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That towns like this should be able to say
– I mean, they wouldn’t they’ve got

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a good tourist attraction thing going on,
but – they should be able to say, actually,

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we’re just going to be part of Belgium now.
It’s going to make it easier.

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Why don’t we have that instead of it being
drawn up by bureaucrats somewhere in central

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government?

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Well, we settled on the European system around
the world because, well, Europe colonised

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the world. And along with railroads and colonial
atrocities, we exported the idea of Westphalian

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sovereignty. Even now, the borders in Africa
are drawn up based on European old colonies,

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not the innumerable different cultures and
million-strong trading ports that came beforehand.

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We have this system because of a fluke of
history. It could very easily have been something

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else, but as a result: we have this. We have
a road where one side is in Belgium, in the

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Netherlands, and the other side is in the
Netherlands, in Belgium, in the Netherlands.

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Netherlands.

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Belgium.

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