Whats the Difference?
This concept refers to a states’s full authority to govern itself
What is sovereignty?
This historical process occurred when powerful states expanded control over distant lands to extract resources, spread influence, and establish settlements.
What is colonization?
This geographic concept refers to a group’s attempt to influence, control, or defend a specific area of land for political, economic, or cultural reasons.
What is territoriality?
This type of political border develops after a region has already been settled and reflects ongoing cultural or economic changes over time.
What is a Subsequent Boundary?
This international agreement establishes the rules for maritime boundaries, navigation rights, and the division of ocean resources among sovereign states.
What is UNCLOS?
This group of people shares common cultural traits such as language, history, religion, or ethnicity
What is a nation?
This period of political tension between the United States and the Soviet Union shaped global alliances after World War II without direct large-scale fighting between the two superpowers.
What is the Cold War?
This field of study examines how geography shapes political power, international relationships, strategic interests, and competition between states.
What is Geopolitics?
This political border is drawn to separate groups based on language, religion, or ethnicity—such as the Partition of India, which divided Hindus and Muslims into India and Pakistan.
What is a Cultural Consequent Boundary?
This maritime zone extends 200 nautical miles from a state’s coastline and grants rights to explore, manage, and extract natural resources such as fish, oil, and minerals.
What is the EEZ?
This type of political entity occurs when the borders of a state closely match the territory of a culturally unified group — for example, Portugal.
What is a nation-state?
This 1884–1885 meeting of European powers divided the African continent into colonial boundaries with little regard for cultural or ethnic groups, creating many superimposed borders.
What is the Berlin Conference?
These narrow waterways or passages—such as the Strait of Hormuz—are strategically important because controlling them impacts global trade and military movement.
What are chokepoints?
This type of border no longer functions as an official dividing line but still leaves visible cultural or landscape evidence, such as old walls, roads, or settlement patterns.
What is a Relict Boundary?
This stage of boundary creation physically marks a border on the landscape with structures such as fences, signs, or walls, like sections of the U.S.–Mexico border wall.
What is Demarcation?
This stateless nation lives across parts of Turkey, Iraq, Syria, and Iran and has a strong cultural identity but lacks an internationally recognized independent country.
Who are the Kurds?
This principle argues that cultural groups should have the right to govern themselves and often inspires independence movements, especially in areas where ethnic or linguistic minorities seek political autonomy.
What is self-determination?
This type of region experiences persistent instability because multiple powerful states compete for influence, as seen along the religious divide between Muslim-majority North Africa and Christian-majority Sub-Saharan Africa, including the tensions between Sudan and South Sudan.
What is a shatterbelt?
This stage in the boundary-making process occurs when officials formally describe and map the location of a border to legally define where one state ends and another begins.
What is Delimitation?
This group of islands in the South China Sea has become a major geopolitical flashpoint because whoever controls them can claim surrounding waters as part of their Exclusive Economic Zone and access valuable fisheries and potential oil reserves.
What are the Spratly Islands?
This political movement occurs when a state seeks to reclaim territory inhabited by people who share its cultural or historical identity, even if those areas lie beyond its current borders.
What is Irridentism?
This foreign policy idea argued that if one country fell to communism, neighboring states would follow, leading to proxy wars and the creation of satellite states during the Cold War.
What is Domino Theory?
This modern practice involves powerful states or corporations shaping the economies and politics of developing countries through loans, trade, and resource extraction rather than direct military control.
What is Neocolonialism?
This controversial maritime boundary claimed by China extends across much of the South China Sea and violates international maritime law by overlapping with the Exclusive Economic Zones of neighboring states.
What is the 9-Dash Line?
This contested region on the Black Sea has been the focus of boundary and sovereignty disputes after Russia militarily annexed it from Ukraine, raising issues over international law, national identity, and territorial control.
What is the Crimean Peninsula?