Nations, indeed. The concept of nations basically arose with the French Revolution. But borders? Oh my yes did they exist in feudal Europe, they defined what realm a count, duke, king or emperor ruled over. But you are right they changed hands rather often.
My largest problem with the video is that the years at the bottom does not match the map. Watch from 1935 and notice how long it takes for Germany to reside, it's into 1955 before Germany has retracted back to East and West Germany. That's ridiculous.
yes, borders of territorial holdings absolutely existed, i didn't mean to imply otherwise.
But as you say they were a great deal more fluid. They did not usually imply the kinds of things modern borders have a strong tendency to (immigration controls, language and culture, etc). Nor was the reality of them largely viewed as immutable and above reproach.
Indeed not. Immigration control and passports did not arise until the first world war, in fact. Border crossings were quite open until then.
But culture was not insignificant. They did not define borders (and some might argue they still don't do to this day) in any way, but they guide monarchs whereto increase their realm's size.
But in a way, while culture didn't define borders, borders did define cultures. Where they speak French or German is largely attributable to the duchies and kingdoms where they spoke French and German.
The arbitrary borders of Europe can largely be attributed to this.
We're talking about a visual representation of 1,000 years in about 200 seconds (a pretty awesome feat) and, instead of focusing on the awesomeness of what it represents, you are hyper-focusing on about a 10-year time period and complaining about how it is "ridiculous". Tough crowd.
The data is an impression collection, I make no doubt about that. The years attached to the video are just inaccurate. That seems like sloppy work after all the great work was done.
Moreover, as pointed out in another post, this is from a piece of software called CENTENNIA Historical Atlas: http://www.clockwk.com/ Which I would be getting right now, if it had a Linux version.
The reason I complain about the years and the maps not matching is that they are doing a disservice to the people who have collected all this data.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZRGKhnn-SWw << Looking at this video, I get a sense of how impressive the data collecting is. Awesome I say. Much more interesting than the timelapse video.
My largest problem with the video is that the years at the bottom does not match the map. Watch from 1935 and notice how long it takes for Germany to reside, it's into 1955 before Germany has retracted back to East and West Germany. That's ridiculous.