In Prisoners of Geography Tim Marshall effortlessly navigated the complexities of contemporary geopolitics with the help of just ten maps. It made a compelling case of how physical geography constrains – and changes – how humans interact with our planet and with each other.

What about humans themselves? How do our minds, histories, cultures and traditions shape our complex world? In Divided: Why We’re Living in an Age of Walls, Marshall turns his attention from the physical to the psychological, seeking to explain why we choose to add barriers to those already imposed by nature. Some of the most striking walls are the ones we can’t see.

 

Information barriers

As far as manmade structures go, few are as impressive as the 13,000-mile long Great Wall of China. It was originally constructed to defend the Han people from “barbarity” on the other side, but today it serves as a national symbol helping to unify the people of China under one identity.

In reality, however, China’s 1.8 billion people are fragmented. People are divided by generation, class, income, ethnicity and religion. In the age of the Internet, the Chinese Communist Party cannot afford to let “dangerous” ideas like democracy enter from outside or, worse, allow frustrated citizens to connect with each other and organise. Hence, Marshall observes, China’s ‘Golden Shield’ is a “digital wall that separates China from the rest of the world and divides itself.” For the Party, it’s about maintaining control.

 

Trapped by traditions

The 26-foot-high slabs of concrete on the outskirts of Bethlehem provide a sharp visual reminder, if one were needed, of the conflict between Israel and Palestinians. But Marshall helps us see a more complicated picture. Only 3% of the ‘separation barrier’ between Israel and the West Bank is a concrete wall. Israelis and Palestinians are themselves divided on how to move forward. And, thinking more generally about the elusiveness of peace and stability in the Middle East, Marshall argues that “religion is a major factor in the increasingly bitter divisions.” This is not just simply between Judaism and Islam, but within the traditions of Islam itself, between Sunnis and Shiites, secularists and fundamentalists.

Quoting the speech of former Egyptian president, Anwar Sadat, at the Israeli Knesset in 1977, Marshall argues that its sentiment still applies today – right across the Middle East:

Yet there remains another wall. This wall constitutes a psychological barrier between us; a barrier of suspicion; a barrier of rejection; a barrier of fear, of deception; a barrier of hallucination without any action, deed or decision.

Striking words. And they don’t just resonate in the usual ‘trouble spots’ around the world. Think about the “horrors” of India’s Caste system, “one of the most degrading social systems on the planet,” in an otherwise largely peaceful country. These walls, Marshall writes, are designed “to keep people down.”

 

Defending the nation

“Show me a 50-foot wall and I’ll show you a 51-foot ladder.” Introducing readers to Trump’s USA, Marshall quotes Janet Napolitano, former US Secretary of Homeland Security. It’s a perfect framing device because, as the author goes on to explain, ‘The Wall’ has very little to do with practicality. Indeed, if you’re an illegal immigrant in Phoenix and things aren’t working out, it’s a lot harder to leave: “There’s a certain irony in building something that might seem to solve the problem of how to stop people getting in but simultaneously stops them from getting out,” Marshall ironically observes.

Whether it’s in Europe or the USA, it’s overwhelmingly about the psychological reassurance that a physical border provides. It helps to define the nation – especially at a time when the nation itself feels vulnerable, swept along by a fast changing world. The world has always been changing, of course. Back in the 1820s it was the Mexican government that encouraged American colonists to settle in Texas, to dilute the threat from the Comanche nation. Things didn’t work out entirely as planned, and the rest is history.

But the world is more interconnected than it was in the 1820s. With intense political polarisation in the United States, loosely mirroring a growing ‘values’ debate on the other side of the Atlantic between the ‘Citizens of Somewhere’ and the ‘Citizens of Anywhere’, walls will continue to be a source of reassurance to some and intense unease to others for some time to come.

 

Building bridges

Tim Marshall performs the daunting, yet highly pertinent, task of trying to make sense of one of the biggest issues of our times: in a world that is increasingly globalised, a backlash apparently grows ever stronger. By taking a global view, Divided successfully brings some much-needed perspective. It raises more questions than answers, and occasionally makes for quite depressing reading.

But if you find yourself losing optimism as you journey through the world’s divisions, be sure to keep flicking back to one of the first pages where the author dedicates the book to his mother, Margaret McDonald, and her “life spent building bridges.”

There’s more work to be done.

 

Divided: Why We’re Living in an Age of Walls is published by Elliott and Thompson Ltd. It is scheduled for release on 8 March 2018.

 

Also published on Medium.