Making the Rapallo boundary

Demarcation and the production of territorial fixity, 1920–1925

Bibliographic Data

ID24237010
AuthorsPeter Mikša (0000-0001-8336-0957)
Year2026
Volume94
Pages86-99
Publication date2026-12-01
Open AccessNo
TypeARTICLE
VenueJournal of Historical Geography (JOURNAL)
Journal identifiersISSN: 0305-7488 • E-ISSN: 1095-8614
PublisherElsevier BV (PUBLISHER)
DOI10.1016/j.jhg.2026.10.003
OpenAlexW7222967303
LanguageEN
References cited17

Treaties define borders in principle but do not produce lines on the ground. This article examines how the 1920 Treaty of Rapallo was translated into a material boundary between Italy and the Kingdom of Serbs, Croats and Slovenes by a joint demarcation commission working between 1921 and 1925. Drawing on the records of the Yugoslav demarcation bureau (Archives of Yugoslavia, fond 334), it asks how the sequence and institutional organisation of demarcation practices shaped the boundary that emerged. Three mechanisms are identified. Spatial calibration set the resolution at which the line could be fixed, as terrain, weather, and instruments determined attainable precision. Institutional filtration determined which forms of local knowledge could become operative, as petitions shaped agendas and proposals but altered the line only when translated into the commission’s technical mandate or raised to interstate negotiation. Bilateral certification bound stones to protocols and maps, so that alteration ceased to be a routine administrative act and required renewed interstate agreement. Demarcation is analysed as a cumulative process of closure through which a spatially underdetermined treaty formula became a boundary whose location and legitimate procedures of alteration were progressively restricted.

1920s · boundary-making · Italian-French border · territorial demarcation · Historical Geography and Geographical Thought · Migration, Health, Geopolitics, Historical Geography · World Wars: History, Literature, and Impact

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