Some of the richest places in the world have very high historical border presence, and are often located in particular geographic environments. In this paper we compile grid-cell level data on borders between sovereign states in Europe and surrounding areas from 1500 until today to document that state borders tend to be located in rugged and mountainous terrain, by rivers, and where it rains a lot. Moreover, two commonly used measures of economic activity—night lights and population density—are higher in cells with more borders, in particular more stable borders. This result holds also when controlling for geography. However, by the same metric, cells with more borders than neighboring cells are less developed than those neighbors. These patterns are consistent with a theory in which state competition benefits long-run development, but these benefits accrue more to the center than the periphery of states.

The CEGA Working Paper Series showcases ongoing and completed research by faculty affiliates of the Center. CEGA Working Papers employ rigorous evaluation techniques to measure the impact of large scale social and eco nomic development programs, and are intended to encourage discussion and feedback from the global development community.

In this paper we propose that state structure in European history is linked to how geography affects the effective distance between state capitals. First we document that military battles tend to occur close to the shortest-distance corridors between the capitals of the belligerent powers, *except* where that corridor is intercepted by certain types of geography, specifically seas, mountains, and marshes. Geography thus seems to have influenced the effective military distance between the belligerents’ capitals. Then we explore similar corridors between a multitude of European cities, documenting two patterns: (1) state capitals tend to be closer to each other when the geography between them is more separating, as measured by similar types of geography found to affect battle locations; (2) controlling for distance, the likelihood that any two cities are located in the same state decreases with the same types of geography between them. We present a model consistent with these patterns.

No abstract