2

BORDERS

On “Chinese” Territory

Some years ago I accepted an invitation to take part in a small forum to discuss a number of issues, including China’s borders, the environment on China’s periphery, and China’s diplomatic difficulties. The newspaper that organized the discussion sent me an e-mail that very deliberately used the phrase “China’s borders / territories” (Zhongguo jing / yu), distinguishing between “borders” (jing) and “territory” (yu); it also made an interesting comment that “the borders are over there, while China is here,” which implied what would really be discussed at the forum: as a modern state, China must deal with a certain tension between its borders as they are understood in political terms and its territory as it is understood in cultural terms. It did not take long, then, for me to understand the topic of the forum as follows: the differences between borders (the domain of lands, as defined by politics) and China (the space of cultural identity).

I was interested in this perspective, because I had previously written a few pieces that addressed this question. When I saw the invitation, two writings came to mind: first, the famous poem by Du Fu (712–770) that begins with the line, “The country is in ruins, but the hills and rivers remain”;¹ and, second, the essay by the late Ming-dynasty writer Gu Yanwu that analyzed the differences between “losing the state” (wang guo) and “losing All-under-Heaven” (wang Tianxia).² It seemed to me that “hills and rivers,” the state, and All-under-Heaven all have slight differences between them in the traditional Chinese world of ideas. It also occurred to me that debates about the borders, territories, and histories of China and the world on its periphery that have been going on since the early modern period all involved these questions of China’s borders and “China,” and that they are also questions of historical territories, cultural spaces, and political mappings.

With these questions in mind, then, I’ll begin my discussion.

The Problem of Borders and the State: More Than Just the Diaoyu Islands, the Spratly Islands, and the Liancourt Rocks (or Dokdo)

Borders and states make for an enormous problem, one that involves far more than ongoing disagreements such as China’s disputes with Japan over the Diaoyu (or Senkaku) Islands; the disputes between China and Vietnam, the Philippines, and Indonesia over the South China Sea Islands; China’s dispute with India over the McMahon Line; and South Korea’s dispute with Japan over the Liancourt Rocks (Dokdo). Moreover, for China, these questions may be traced back across history and may involve such questions as why “China” can have such an enormous territory, why “China” is not necessarily just a China made up of the Han ethnicity but in fact is a huge country made up of many nationalities, characterized by so-called diversity in unity (duo yuan yi ti).³

It would not hurt to begin by discussing history textbooks in South Korea. In recent years, history textbooks have often come under scrutiny, because materials used for teaching history nurture and forge young citizens’ ideas about history and cultural identity. They cannot avoid discussing such questions as the origins of cultures and nations, religious faiths, as well as various aspects of the cultural mainstream, historical territories, and space of the nation. It is extremely easy, therefore, for history textbooks to draw out nationalist undercurrents and even much stronger forces between citizens of different countries who have different understandings of history. In recent years, a number of provocative statements have appeared in middle school history textbooks in South Korea (especially those that contain historical maps of Korea). These statements point to intense nationalist sentiments in the intellectual field in South Korea and also show that, among educated people in South Korea, some conflicts exist between knowledge about Korean history and knowledge about Chinese history. Several examples of this phenomenon exist, as in the argument that Korean history is longer than Chinese history; or the story of Dangun, which is often taken as the origin of the Korean nation; or exaggerations about the size of the territory of Goguryeo during the Tang and Song dynasties. In fact, people noticed long ago that ever since China began the Research Project on the History and Current State of the Northeast Borderland (also called the Northeast Project) and its application to designate the Goguryeo Ruins within its borders as a UNESCO World Heritage Site, South Korea began to take a number of positions on historical questions. For example, conferences and publications sponsored by the Northeast Asian History Foundation demonstrate that the question of borders and states continue to be overshadowed by historical conflicts,⁴ even when they seem to have been determined in the modern era. As a result, the modern exists within history, just as history exists within the modern.

Compared with Korea, Japan’s questioning of the legitimacy of “Chinese” territory began earlier and was undertaken with greater rigor. Beginning in the Meiji period, during which time Japan was influenced by early modern Western ideas of the nation-state, European Orientalism, and, more important, the rise of Japanese militarism and so-called Asianism, Japanese scholars of Asia developed a particular interest in the “Four Barbarians” (si Yi) of traditional China, such as Korea, Mongolia, Manchuria, Tibet, and Xinjiang, no longer accepting the idea that the various historical Chinese dynasties constituted unified entities that spread across multiple borders and different nations. They gradually developed what had originally been a purely scholarly area of research into a conceptual justification for undermining the legitimacy of China as a modern state, making this issue into a hot topic of discussion in Japanese scholarship on history before, during, and after World War II.⁵ I mentioned earlier that in 1923, Yano Jin’ichi published a book titled History of Modern China (Kindai Shina ron), which began with essays titled “China Does Not Have Borders” and “China Is Not a State.” Yano argued that borders were a fundamental condition for the successful organization of states, and, among early modern national states, borders were essential. China, however, “not only does not have borders, but also does not have the result of borders, and may not even be a national state at all.” For these reasons, he argued, China could not be called a nation-state, and places such as Manchuria, Mongolia, and Tibet were not a part of Chinese territory.⁶ In 1943, a key point in World War II, Yano gave a series of lectures at Hiroshima University in which he argued for a theory of historical narrative that went beyond China and focused on Asia as a single unit; these lectures were published as a book titled Imagining the History of Greater East Asia (Dai Tōa shi no kōsō).⁷ Although these ideas were suppressed after World War II, they still rise to the surface from time to time, leaving traces in scholarship on history and geography even today.

Of course, among modern Chinese intellectuals, we also see a number of not very good ideas put forward about the relationship between the territories of ancient dynasties and modern political territory. For example, some people argue that scholarship on Chinese history should not be based on “the territorial domains of historical dynasties,” but rather should “trace backward through history based on the territory of today’s People’s Republic of China.” These people also argue that this method has three advantages. First, it allows us to “free ourselves from old points of view,” by which they mean the dominant role of previous dynasties’ views of history. Second, such an approach is free of the biases of Han ethnic chauvinism. And third, this approach would allow us to “research history so as to understand contemporary social life.”⁸ As I pointed out in the Introduction, however, “China” is a particular kind of state. The scholars who speak from the ideological position of the state attempt to establish the legitimacy of the current political territory of this “China” first. They then turn back to retrace and narrate the various histories held within this space in the belief that that their methods can protect the legitimacy of state territory as it exists today.⁹ These ideas, however, do not accord with historical thinking. As early as 1960, Sun Zhamin pointed out that historians should “consider the question of historical territory within the scope of the historical territories of Chinese dynasties, because the scope of the lands controlled by each dynasty was different, expanding and contracting across time.” Sun offered even more direct criticism in the 1980s, arguing that methods of historical research that traced backward in time according to the current territory of the People’s Republic of China “were very clearly in error. The most misleading aspect of this method is that it blots out the historical process by which China became a ‘unified, multi-national state’ and confuses the ‘back then’ of history with the ‘today’ of contemporary times, which are two concepts of time that are utterly different from one another.”¹⁰ Sun’s arguments are undoubtedly correct. We should both say that the historical space of China possesses strong continuity and recognize that the “domains” of ancient times and the “territory” of modern times are not one and the same; they often changed. Recognizing these changes in territory across history does not amount to denying the legitimacy of state territory as it exists today.

We cannot use the borders of modern states to trace our way back to a narrative of the domains of dynasties of the past; just as we cannot use the territorial domains of dynasties in the past to make assertions about the borders of modern states. Of course, history and politics have many deep connections, but historical scholarship and political action have definite, rational differences. There is no question that problems related to Chinese territory and Chinese borders not only appear repeatedly in the form of “history,” but also that, when these questions are not handled well, they appear in many different places, as in problems related to Xinjiang, Tibet, Mongolia, and, of course, the Taiwan question. Clearly, these “borders” come under all kinds of suspicion, just as “China” is facing various kinds of challenges. As I noted in the Introduction, these challenges come not only from territorial conflicts that arise between actual states but also from various theories and methods for understanding history, such as East Asian history, regional history, histories of conquest dynasties, concentric circle theory, and postmodernist historiography. These questions deserve serious discussion.

Borders, States, and Early Modern Nation-States: Is China Exceptional or Universal?

To discuss these issues, we must begin with the so-called nation-state and how it came into being. The concept of so-called borders that surround politically legitimate territory is said to be related to the formation of the modern nation-state, because traditional empires did not concern themselves with the legitimacy of their domains, because traditional empires imagined that the space they occupied was “vast and all-encompassing.” In his famous study, Inner Asian Frontiers of China, Owen Lattimore was keen to point out that any discussion of the borders of China must distinguish between the “frontier” and “boundaries.”¹¹ I can understand what he means by this distinction, because during the imperial era sometimes frontiers were just vague, transitional areas that historically had been determined according to nationality, custom, and culture. Under the circumstances, they were quite unlike what is found in the more recent era of the nation-state, in which borders were determined through political power (that is, through mutual recognition of neighboring states). Although sometimes aspects of history, ethnic groups, and culture are taken into consideration when making borders in the modern era, what is more important is that they are drawn by the treaty and mutual agreement between legitimate states. According to this theory, strictly speaking, ancient China had only frontiers and did not have borders, and it is only modern China that has “territory” and official borders. However, according to the way that this issue is treated by most theorists, the formation of the modern nation-state began in early modern Europe. But do these ideas apply to China?¹²

In the Introduction I argued that Chinese history does not necessarily need to be measured according to the history of Europe. The prototype for the early modern Chinese-style nation-state, what may be called a sense of a limited state, began to take shape during the Song dynasty, probably earlier than what had occurred and Europe. Morris Rossabi edited a volume of essays that discussed the international relations of the Song dynasty titled China among Equals, whose title points to the argument that, beginning in the Song dynasty, a China that was positioned among states with equal powers and capabilities had already encountered the problem of borders. As the subtitle of the book, “The Middle Kingdom and Its Neighbors, 10th–14th Centuries,” indicates, great changes occurred between China and its neighbors in the period from the tenth century to the fourteenth century. During the Song dynasty, China was no longer like the Tang dynasty, which encompassed All-under-Heaven, and the Song emperor could no longer be called the “Heavenly Khan” in the same way that the Taizong emperor (r. 626–649) of the Tang dynasty held that title. The Liao dynasty to the north, the Xixia in the northwest, the Jurchens, and, later, the Mongolians, gradually forced the Song into its role as one state among many. The Song Taizu emperor (r. 960–976), then, lamented, “Beyond the four posts of my bed, the rest of the house belongs to other people.”¹³ By the time of the Chanyuan Treaty, which was agreed to during the reign of the Zhenzong emperor (r. 997–1022), the Song and Liao dynasties had already begun to refer to each other as the “Northern and Southern Dynasties” and to speak of the “Emperor of the Great Song composing a letter to the Emperor of the Great Khitan [Liao].” These statements show that there was no longer just one ruler of All-under-Heaven—there were at least two.¹⁴

The Fragments of Collected Documents of the Song Dynasty (Song huiyao jigao) records that in 1052 the Renzong emperor (r. 1022–1063) issued an edict to instruct the Institute of Academicians to discuss state letters (guoshu) that were exchanged between the Northern Song and the Liao dynasty. Generally speaking, the phrase “state letters” should refer to documents that represent the intent of the state. At that time, documents from the Liao dynasty referred to the Liao as the “Northern dynasty” (Bei chao) and referred to the Song dynasty as the “Southern dynasty” (Nan chao). After extensive discussion, however, Song-dynasty officials concluded that “ever since the previous [that is, Renzong] Emperor made peace [with the Liao], state letters have had a set format, and variation from them cannot permitted freely. All subsequent letters, then, should refer to the ‘Khitan,’ as had been done in the past.” This statement indicates that, at that time, and on that particular land (which could claim continuity with the Han and Tang dynasties), the policy of “one China with different interpretations” (yige Zhongguo, ge zi biaoshu, that is, referring to each other as the Northern and Southern dynasties) had given way to “one country on each side” (yi bian yi guo, that is, requiring that each side referred to the “Great Song” and the “Great Khitan”).¹⁵ Tao Jinsheng has concluded, then, that people during the Song dynasty already had achieved two important aspects of a “multipolar international system.” First, he argued, people of the Song dynasty “understood that the central plains (zhongyuan) region was a ‘state,’ and that the Liao, too, was a ‘state.’ Second, they recognized that boundaries between states existed.” The former is demonstrated by the fact that documents from this time often referred to “neighboring states” (lin guo) and “brother states” (xiongdi zhi guo), while the latter is demonstrated by the fact that “surveying boundaries” (kan jie) became an important activity in foreign policy and politics. Tao concludes, “The importance placed on borders by people during the Song dynasty is sufficient to refute arguments made in recent years that ‘clear laws and regulations and limits on power’ did not exist between traditional China and foreign powers.”¹⁶

These events gave China clear borders for the first time and also gave it an awareness of equal foreign relations between states.¹⁷ In historical documents from the Song dynasty, we see a number of terms that begin to tell people about the existence of “others,” some of which had very rarely been seen in China before the Tang dynasty; these terms include “surveying boundaries” (kan jie), which refers to drawing borders; “exchange markets” (hu shi), which refers to trading sites established on the borders; and “ceremonial ritual” (pin li), which refers to diplomatic rituals between states with reciprocal status.¹⁸ A direct result of the formation of this awareness of differences between nations and of borders between states was that China (mainly Han scholar elites) from this time on had to take other states and foreign lands seriously. Two results of this can be seen: first, China began to place limitations on crossing borders. In addition to surveying and setting borders, Chinese officials also wanted to limit the areas in which so-called foreigners could reside and the extent to which “Chinese people” could leave the country. Such regulations even touched on books containing technical knowledge and people who were familiar with the type of knowledge they held, forbidding both books and people from going to foreign regions so as to prevent the outflow of valuable knowledge and technology. From extant documents we can see that these strict measures were closely enforced throughout the Northern and Southern Song dynasties. Just as with the modern nation-state, strict boundaries existed for knowledge, people, and state lands.¹⁹

The second result was the determination of the meaning of the “proper way of handling state affairs” (guo shi), which referred to a consensus between the ruler and officials and a common effort to create a sense of identification with one’s own country, people, and culture. Elites during the Song dynasty, and especially the Southern Song dynasty, exhibited a particular caution, which was rooted in nationalism, toward foreign religions, customs, and other civilizations. Whereas many elites of the Tang dynasty gladly welcomed new and interesting things, Song-era elites were vigilant, fearful, and critical, adopting a relatively severe attitude toward foreign religions, faiths, customs, and practices. Their resistance to and suppression of foreign religions included almost anything that might be considered a part of foreign civilizations (such as cremation of the dead or the wearing of foreign-style “northern” clothing [Hu fu]). Clearly, these attitudes are related to the fact that the Song dynasty was always under the threat of foreign groups. Its most obvious efforts at resisting foreign civilizations can be found in its attempts to promote its own native culture and traditions. Ideas such as the discussions of orthodoxy (zhengtong lun) in the historiographical writings of the Northern Song, debates about casting out foreigners (rang Yi lun) in Confucian thought, and prominent discussions of Heavenly Principle (tianli) and Confucian orthodoxy (daotong) in neo-Confucianism (lixue) all worked from various perspectives to reassert the boundaries of Han-centered civilization and to drive out elements of foreign civilizations that had begun to permeate Han culture.²⁰

For these reasons, we should say that if we do not take early modern Europe as the only standard by which to measure the formation of the nation-state, then we see that the limited early modern nation-state, or at least the rise of a consciousness of the early modern nation-state, occurred in China earlier than it did in Europe; just as the Japanese historians Naitō Konan (1866–1934) and Miyazaki Ichisada (1901–1995) argued that the Song dynasty represented China’s “modern age.” My view on this matter might seem to differ from commonly held views that Europe’s “early modern period,” including the “early modern nation-state,” was prior to that of China. However, although the nation-state in Europe has only gradually taken shape since the early modern period, the various territories, ethnic groups, faiths, languages, and histories do not necessarily fully overlap. The boundaries between early modern European nation-states, then, were still just the spaces controlled by particular political powers, yet as borders of political power, they were only lines on a map.²¹ The Chinese nation-state, however, is different in many ways from that of Europe, such that many of the key elements of the early modern European nation-state do not find an exact match in China. Why, then, is Europe the “universal” and China the “particular”?

Perhaps the history of the formation of the Chinese nation-state was an equally rational and natural process.²²

What Is the Early Modern Nation-State? Theories from Europe

Most theoretical approaches now argue that five major differences exist between nation-states and empires.

The first concerns the existence of clear borders: nation-states use borders to divide political, economic, and cultural spaces. Although ancient and medieval states did have centralized powers and political institutions, they did not have clear borders. The second difference concerns the consciousness of state sovereignty: the political space of the nation-state is the scope of state sovereignty, which has political sovereignty and the power of national self-determination that does not allow interference by other states. The third difference concerns the formation of the concept of the citizen and the dominant role of ideology that organizes the citizenry, that is, nationalism, which understands the state as a spatial unit. This concept includes not only citizens who are defined by a constitution, civil law, or laws of citizenship, but also ideologies such as patriotism, culture, history, and myth. The fourth difference concerns institutions of the state and systems that control politics, the economy, and cultural spaces (all of which go beyond the power of an emperor or king). The fifth difference concerns international relations that form between individual states: the existence of international relations affirms the independent sovereignty of the nation-state as well as the limitations placed on its space.²³

All of these definitions are based on early modern Europe, however. The European definition of the nation-state comes from European history, especially early modern European history, and does not necessarily apply well to the various countries of the East, especially China. Unlike Europe, China’s political domain and cultural space moved out slowly from the center. If not during the Three Dynasties of Antiquity, then certainly during the Qin and Han eras, we see the beginning of a generally unified language, sense of ethics, customs, and politics, which began to bring stability to a “(Han) nation” in this place that is called “China” (Zhongguo). This is markedly different from the European situation, in which the nation is regarded as “a very recent newcomer in human history.”²⁴ For these reasons, theories that divide empires and nation-states into two separate eras or time periods do not accord with Chinese history in general or with the history of how ideas about the consciousness of the state (guojia yishi) formed in China, or with the history of the formation of the state itself in China. As I noted in Here in “China” I Dwell, China did not simply change from a traditional empire into a nation-state. While the idea of a limited state was contained within the notion of the empire without borders, this limited state also continued to imagine an empire without borders. The modern nation-state is the product of the traditional centralized empire, preserving remnants of the ideology of empire, from which we can see that the histories of both were intertwined.

Many people might think that ideas from ancient China such as All-under-Heaven and the tribute system show that, in the world as imagined by China under the tribute system, there was no clear consciousness of boundaries between “states.” From very early on, however, a Han civilization had become the mainstream in China, one centered around the regions in which Han people resided. The civilization used such means as tribute, “bridling” of vassal states (ji mi), conferring of titles, and conquest to maintain distinctions between other peoples and regions, thereby forming a vast empire in which “the center is clear, but the margins are shifting.”²⁵ By the time of the Song dynasty, in response to the rising power and pressure generated by foreign peoples on the periphery, officially organized border surveys had already begun to show that a consciousness of a limited “nation / state” was taking shape, just as clear borders / boundaries were in fact appearing. As Zhang Guangda has said about awareness of the state among the Jurchen and the Song, “the Song dynasty from this time on chose to give up Yunnan outside of the Dadu River, and also parted ways with the western frontier area (Xi yu). The western border withdrew to Taizhou, and the western frontier area underwent a process of Islamization. From this we can see that Zhao Kuangyin (Emperor Taizu of Song, r. 960–976) sought to create a dynasty with self-defined borders and limits.”²⁶

In a certain sense, “self-defined borders and limits” refers to the gradual formation of a limited “state,” and not seeing oneself as an “Empire” or All-under-Heaven. Therefore, if you examine history closely, you will discover that, in the traditional world of ideas, although All-under-Heaven was talked about at different times in history, it often was a vaguely imagined notion, and not necessarily an actual system or set of standards by which to manage “China” as a state or to address problems in international relations.²⁷

Conclusion: Complex, Difficult Problems

I undoubtedly agree with the argument made by Gu Jiegang (1893–1980) that we should not believe that “the eighteen provinces where the Han people live have been as unified as they are now since ancient times. To do so would be to apply the perspective that arose after the Qin and Han dynasties to understand [Chinese] domains from before the Qin and Han.”²⁸ I would also like to say, however, that the era for the type of great empire that did not require clear borders had probably come to an end by no later than the Song dynasty. If it had not been for certain reasons—such as the great empires such as the Mongol Yuan dynasty and the Manchu Qing—then China indeed would have made the transition from All-under-Heaven to the myriad states. If we can paint with such broad strokes, then, we might say that from the time that the Song and Liao dynasties designated the territories held by each side during the Jingde reign in the Song (1004–1007), down to the time of the Treaty of Nerchinsk, which was executed by the Qing empire and Russia during the Kangxi reign (1661–1722), aside from the period of the Mongol Yuan dynasty, China was gradually moving away from an expansive vision of the world based on All-under-Heaven and distinctions between “Chinese and foreign” (Hua-Yi) and entering a practical world of “myriad states” and beginning to establish borders and differences between you and me, self and other. For its relations with both its enormous neighbor, Russia, and with a tributary state like Korea, the Great Qing Empire ultimately had no choice but to draw clear borders. Beginning in 1712, the Qing official Mu Kedeng (1664–1735) began his border surveys, finally establishing the borders between the Qing and Korea along Paektu Mountain (Mount Changbai), the Tuman River, and the Yalu River.²⁹ After 1895, as it faced external pressure from both Eastern and Western powers, the Great Qing simply could no longer exist as a borderless empire. It had to move into the role of a limited “state,” using written agreements (conventions or treaties) to set its borders. As a result, for early modern China, which had been drawn into the larger world, those borders that had begun to take on modern significance still retained aspects of a relatively stubborn and traditional worldview, because they came from a time when the prosperous Great Qing Empire was expanding its borders out in all directions. China, then, still stubbornly held to a vision of All-under-Heaven that stretched out over limitless domains.³⁰

Of course, this is a complicated historical issue.³¹ Allow me to offer a simple summary of the preceding historical analysis, which, I believe, can be divided into three main points. First, if China is centered around the Han people, then its nation and state overlap in terms of geographical space. As a result, clear “borders” of the nation and state of Han China can be established with ease. The Song dynasty took action to clarify its borders in response to pressure from the Liao, Xia, Jin, and Yuan states; established a system for managing markets for foreign trade, which clearly delineated boundaries between the dynasty and its neighbors in terms of both wealth and knowledge; and engaged in diplomatic negotiations in times of both peace and war. All of these actions brought the existence of borders and a consciousness of state sovereignty to Song-dynasty China at a very early time. Second, through the gradual establishment of a unified Han ethical system, the historical tradition, modes of thinking, and cultural identity established since the Song dynasty have clearly given rise to a self-affirming Han Chinese nationalist ideology. The debates about “distinctions between Chinese and foreigners” (Hua Yi zhi bian), debates about “orthodoxy” (zhengtong), and debates about the consciousness of “loyal subjects” (yimin) all took shape from the Song dynasty onward and originally were the products of this consciousness of the state. As for some of those borderlands that had been (in the language of the imperial court) “kept under the yoke,” “pacified,” or left under the jurisdiction of local chieftains, they eventually became what was clearly part of the domain of the dynasty, both because of pressure from the court and decisions made by the leaders of these areas. As a result, the borders of Chinese territory gradually took shape. Third, China developed a complex set relations with the rest of Eastern world from the Song dynasty to the Qing dynasty.³² This was particularly true from the Ming and Qing onward, as the relations between the states of the Great Ming (and later Qing), Korea, and Japan formed into an “international” field that, between one state and another, resulted in dividing lines between them, over which they conducted reciprocal relations. This international field had an order of its own, one that the Ming and Qing dynasties imagined in terms of a tribute system or an order of “conferring nobility” that could manage relations between states effectively through ritual. This “international” field, however, disintegrated under the challenges posed by another, new world order and was eventually replaced and forgotten.

However, this trend toward a Han nation-state that originally could have moved toward distinct borders, a clear-cut identity, and ethnic-national unity—all of the markers of the transition to a “nation-state”—was considerably complicated by the history of rule by foreign peoples under the Mongol Yuan dynasty and the Manchu Qing dynasty, both of which greatly expanded their domains, bringing into China vast territories and a multitude of ethnic groups. This history shows us a path of state building that is completely different from what is found in early modern Europe. These complications are especially relevant for the Great Qing Empire, which was built on the inclusion Manchu, Han, Mongolian, Uighur, Tibetan, and Miao peoples, and whose domains extended to “Sakhalin Island in the east, from Shule in Xinjiang to the Pamir Mountains in the west, to the Stanovoy Range in the north, to Mt. Ya (Yashan) in Guangdong in the south.”³³ As China later inherited both this traditional idea of a “grand unification” (da yitong) and a state based on the Republic of China’s “Five Nations Under One Union,” both historical “domains” and modern “borders” became the subjects of extensive debates. These debates are also worthy of discussion.