Technology and Political Boundaries

William Beard

American Political Science Review, 1931, vol. 25, issue 3, 557-572

Abstract: Mankind is sectional in outlook, carving the world into little compartments with mile upon mile of boundary lines. Technology, on the other hand, is inherently universal in outlook; nature's laws operate as infallibly in Spain as in China, in Russia as in Australia. The substances which it uses are scattered widely over the earth without respect for human conventions. In the collection of raw products and the transportation of finished goods, its purposes are economic, not political. The engineer, then, in applying his rational skill to the world's haphazard system of political areas must necessarily cut across artificial regions with a variety of works. The railway needs no introduction as a map-slashing agency. It has pierced the Alps, connecting Switzerland and Italy by way of the famous Simplon tunnel; it has crossed the towering Andes, linking Argentina with Chile; it has stretched out through Siberia, tying China and the Pacific with the countries of western Europe; and it speeds the traveller through a veritable maze of Balkan nations. Electrical designers, creating superpower nets of transmission lines, run wires with utter abandon across national and local frontiers, joining Switzerland and France over the Alps in one net, and North Carolina, South Carolina, Georgia, Alabama, and Tennessee in another. The production manager, turning out automobiles, airplanes, watches, and a flood of other commodities, seeks to distribute his products in every clime and under every flag. The engineer, in short, is a universalist, however intense his patriotism, and cannot function efficiently without traversing human boundary lines.

Date: 1931
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