Capital cities and state borders: Spatial relationships and shifts

Abstract

The aim of the article is to verify the opinions of classic Russian geographers on the geographical positions of capital cities and the commonality of their historical destiny. The remoteness of 178 official and 45 alternative capitals from the outer contours of their countries has been measured. Their relation to the “reduced radius” (RR) of national territories has been calculated. The distributions of indicators and their dependence on the closest border, either terrestrial or maritime, have been analyzed. The results are shown on maps. The remoteness proved quite small on average (70 km, or 20% of the RR), especially the remoteness of informal capitals gravitating to the sea (20 km, or 6% of the RR). Particular cases of the closeness of capitals to borders are considered. A number of examples demonstrate that the areas of the historical migration of capitals are more often than not triangular in form and also small compared to modern countries. The migration of Russian capital cities is highlighted in the greatest detail. The thesis about the commonality of the destinies of capitals and countries with their borders, just like the thesis about the gravitation of capital cities to the interiors of countries, is only partially true. They are interrelated but not identical. At the same time, capital city and border are key, mutually complementary, and even somewhat similar spatial attributes of the state.