Making the Rapallo boundary : demarcation and the production of territorial fixity, 1920–1925

Mikša, Peter (author)

Treaties define borders in principle but do not produce lines on the ground. This article examines how the 1920 Treaty of Rapallo was translated into a material boundary between Italy and the Kingdom of Serbs, Croats and Slovenes by a joint demarcation commission working between 1921 and 1925. Drawing on the records of the Yugoslav demarcation bureau (Archives of Yugoslavia, fond 334), it asks how the sequence and institutional organisation of demarcation practices shaped the boundary that emerged. Three mechanisms are identified. Spatial calibration set the resolution at which the line could be fixed, as terrain, weather, and instruments determined attainable precision. Institutional filtration determined which forms of local knowledge could become operative, as petitions shaped agendas and proposals but altered the line only when translated into the commission’s technical mandate or raised to interstate negotiation. Bilateral certification bound stones to protocols and maps, so that alteration ceased to be a routine administrative act and required renewed interstate agreement. Demarcation is analysed as a cumulative process of closure through which a spatially underdetermined treaty formula became a boundary whose location and legitimate procedures of alteration were progressively restricted.

• Language: English
• Keywords: border-making, boundary commissions, territorial fixity, Rapallo treaty, Yugoslavia, demarcation
• Work type: Article
• Typology: 1.01 - Original Scientific Article
• Organization: FF - Faculty of Arts
• Publication status: Published
• Publication version: Version of Record
• Year: 2026
• Number of pages: Str. 86-99
• Numbering: Vol. 94
• PID: 20.500.12556/RUL-190571
• UDC: 341.222(450.36+497.1)"1920/1925"
• ISSN on article: 1095-8614
• DOI: 10.1016/j.jhg.2026.10.003
• COBISS.SI-ID: 302158083
• Publication date in RUL: 29.10.2026

Record is a part of a journal

• Title: Journal of historical geography
• Shortened title: J. histor. geogr.
• Publisher: Academic Press
• ISSN: 1095-8614
• COBISS.SI-ID: 175304963

Licences

• License: CC BY 4.0, Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International
• Link: http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/
• Description: This is the standard Creative Commons license that gives others maximum freedom to do what they want with the work as long as they credit the author.

Secondary language

• Language: Slovenian
• Keywords: vzpostavljanje meja, oblikovanje meja, mejne komisije, utrjevanje ozemeljske razmejitve, Rapalska pogodba, Jugoslavija, demarkacija meje, razmejevanje

Projects

• Funder: ARIS - Slovenian Research and Innovation Agency
• Project number: J6-60101
• Name: Boj za gore: slovenska nacionalna apropriacija Alp (19.-21. stoletje)

• Funder: ARIS - Slovenian Research and Innovation Agency
• Project number: P6-0235
• Name: Slovenska zgodovina