The Invention of the USA: Borderlands
Seriously...
BBC
4.1 • 885 Ratings
🗓️ 9 May 2017
⏱️ 34 minutes
🧾️ Download transcript
Summary
Just two centuries ago, no one had a clue where the borders of the USA actually were. Hemmed in by the Atlantic, the Appalachian mountains and Canada to the north, early Americans could only dream of the massive territory Donald Trump and his government control today. So why is the border with Mexico where it runs today? For that matter what fixed Canadian border? The answer to both questions is war.
Misha Glenny and producer Miles Warde travel across Texas and into Mexico to find out what defined the USA in the south. This is fringeland where multiple cultures collide. Local response to the President's wall proposal is not what you'd expect. With contributions from Andres Resendez, Kate Betts of the Bullock State Museum in Austin and Clive Webb on the history of the line in the south; plus Margaret MacMillan, Kathleen Burk and Alan Taylor on the numerous wars that shaped the frontier in the north.
Transcript
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| 0:00.0 | This was an impregnable fortress. The only way you get out was in a wooden box. |
| 0:05.0 | The controversial maximum security prison impossible to escape from. |
| 0:09.0 | And one of the duties of a political prisoner is the escape. |
| 0:12.0 | The IRA inmates who found a way. of a political prisoner is the escape. |
| 0:12.5 | The IRA inmates who found a way. |
| 0:14.5 | I'm Carlo Gableer and I'll be navigating a path |
| 0:19.5 | through the disturbing inside story of the biggest jailbreak in British and Irish history. |
| 0:25.0 | The narrative that they want is that this is a big achievement by them. |
| 0:28.5 | Escape from the Maze, listen first on BBC Sounds. |
| 0:34.0 | This is the BBC. |
| 0:41.0 | You know, we used to go over and buy cactus out of Mexico drove my pickup over there and buy them by the thousand |
| 0:48.6 | You've got Los Fresnos, Commodore, Pilates, Pulvenir |
| 0:52.3 | all of these places that now then there's hardly nobody. |
| 0:57.0 | The border of the United States of America and Mexico has not exactly gone undiscussed in the last 12 months. |
| 1:06.1 | Even mentioning the two countries in the same sentence, I imagine your mind goes straight |
| 1:10.1 | to a certain wall. |
| 1:12.3 | But 200 years ago the USA had no borders and where borders are |
| 1:17.0 | drawn and what they mean has always shifted and continues to shift. |
| 1:21.8 | So September the 11th, 2001 was something that shocked Americans to their core |
| 1:28.0 | and Homeland Security, this vast bureaucratic apparatus, this whole web of law sprang sprang up and one of the things that |
| 1:34.2 | done is make the borders a lot tighter but that means the old ease of travel between |
| 1:38.6 | Canada and the United States has gone that's ended. I'm Rialna Dylan, and today's seriously interesting story is |
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