The idea of this book was in the making for some time, as it often the case. It originally developed from a deep interest in the concept of ‘frontier’ during the research for my Phd at the School of Oriental and African Studies. While working on the political history of the precolonial southern African highveld, in 2014 or 2015, I was drawn in long discussions with my patient supervisor, Wayne Dooling, over the – so I believed – clearly colonial nature of the ‘frontier’. Thanks to him, my militant simplicity and my blind refusal started to change into a more nuanced approach, which was committed into printing in 2019. Yet, the elaboration encapsulated in the thesis was bound to be only a first step, as it did not fully satisfy me.
In the following years, further discussions on the broad matter, and specifically on borders in precolonial Africa, kept this interest alive during my Postdoctoral fellowships. Pierluigi Valsecchi pushed back on many of my proposals on the existence of borders before colonialism, not in disagreement but because they were hardly novel. Much of what I said he had already heard, read, and in some cases written himself in the previous about twenty years of research on West Africa. Carolyn Hamilton and I, on the opposite, differed more substantially, at least about southern African history. How could there be borders, if people moved and mixed extensively, private land property did not exist, and sovereignty and territory were radically dissimilar to what we usually think of them? These combined objections shaped the elaboration of the present approach, which tries to find new solutions for old problems, and perhaps even to find new issues to be debated: such as, for example, movement as a central element in the conceptualisation and historical reality of the border.
The first attempt to put these ideas into writing was made in 2020 with a co-proposed panel ‘African limen: Drawing the Line, Crossing the Line in Pre-Twentieth-Century Africa’ at the European Social Science and History Conference (ESSHC), which was to be held in Leiden but was postponed to 2021 due to the Covid-19 pandemic. There sedimented the decision to include a reflection on European borders and on the ‘modern state’ in this ongoing exercise. When the conference finally took place, I found in my co-panelists Pierluigi Valsecchi, Fernando Mouta and María José Pont Chafér similar musings on the present state of the literature on borders in Africa, and similar interests in the commercial, cultural, political, and diplomatic aspects of the matter. We agreed, pushed by the positive feedback we received by Stefano Bellucci at the Conference, to pursue the idea of a publication.
The first thanks, indeed, go the authors of the chapters of the book Fernando Mouta, Pierluigi Valsecchi, María José Pont Cháfer, Giulia Casentini, and Aimé Raoul Sumo Tayo, who decided to entrust their excellent work to my cares with the understanding that, despite our deep specialisations, we all find something valuable in the central concept of this volume, the threshold. It is plain to say that, without its authors, a book simply would not be: it is less predictable that, with them, it would be a great book. I dare to affirm that all chapters improve greatly our knowledge in the respective fields in which they are located. In addition, together, they constitute the demonstration for the need to centre movement, places of passage, and passengers – and to decentre and marginalise states.
As to the central idea, the limen or threshold, its elaboration fundamentally benefitted from the wise and sharp judgement of my three mentors, Wayne Dooling, Pierluigi Valsecchi, and Carolyn Hamilton, who in three different moments and places faced the rambling brainstorm which would eventually be condensed in the pages of the Introduction to the volume. They tried their best to make it at least worth a read, and in this they succeeded, but their respondant was too obstinate to trim, straighten, and polish. He should be considered the sole responsible of anything this proposal is to be found wanting.
Among the people not directly involved in the writing of the book, Stefano Bellucci deserves to be acknowledged for hosting the first nucleus of this book at the ESSHC, for seeing the potential that the project bore, and for pushing us towards other drafts, a book proposal, and much more work. I thank him for his encouragement and his advice. Likewise, I thank the editors from Brill
This book was thought, made, and written between London, Cape Town, Pavia, and Basel, sometimes on buses and planes, more often on trains – possibly as often as while sitting behind a desk. In the process, it crossed borders countless times. It was there when border guards walked by, when they asked where I was going, where they asked for my ID. It was there when they did the same, but less gently, with the people sitting next to me who had a different complexion, a different accent, a different document, or no document at all. When they were stopped and rejected. The fact I found myself writing a book on borders in the privileged position of somebody who can cross them at ease might have had an implicit impact on aspects of the argument here proposed. I will leave to the reader the pleasure to find them. As for the explicit impact, this book is dedicated to the passengers who are not allowed to pass. To all those whose life faded at the threshold. May your spirits guard those who will come and pass, today and tomorrow.
In the years that saw me writing this and other things, while moving between places, my home remained in Milano, where I was born and where my family is. Having a place that we can call home, a place to go back to, and where to find love, warmth, and shelter is indeed the greatest of privileges. The winds of war are howling and every day reminds us more painfully than the previous one that no place is truly safe in this world. Somewhere not too far away homes become graveyards in the blink of an eye. While we contemplate this predicament, as the poet Eugenio Montale did overlooking a ruined custom house on the steep cliffs of Liguria, I urge us to ask ourselves: who comes, and who stays? Is the gap here? Il varco è qui?
Milano, 15 October 2024