Assistant Professor, Xiaoyan (Christy) Qiu, has received the Outstanding Article Award from the International History and Politics section of the American Political Science Association (APSA).
Qiu's article, titled, "Endogenous Colonial Borders: Precolonial States and Geography in the Partition of Africa," examines the "conventional wisdom that Africa’s international borders were drawn arbitrarily," and uses information from European treaties with African leaders, bodies of water, and other data sets to revise that "conventional wisdom." Qiu co-wrote the article with Jack Paine (Emory University) and Joan Ricart-Huguet (Loyola University - Maryland). The article was published in the journal, American Political Science Review.
According to the International History and Politics section, the Outstanding Article Award recognizes "exceptional peer-reviewed journal articles representing the mission of the International History and Politics Section of the APSA, including innovative work that brings new light to events and processes in international politics, encourages interdisciplinary conversations between political scientists and historians, and advances historiographical methods."
This is the second award the article has received. The article won the 2025 Luebbert Best Article Award from the Comparative Politics section.
Read the abstract below and the full article here.
Abstract:
We revise the conventional wisdom that Africa’s international borders were drawn arbitrarily. Europeans knew very little about most of Africa in the mid-1880s, but their self-interested goals of amassing territory prompted intensive examination of on-the-ground conditions as they formed borders. Europeans negotiated with African rulers to secure treaties and to learn about historical state frontiers, which enabled Africans to influence the border-formation process. Major water bodies, which shaped precolonial civilizations and trade, also served as focal points. We find support for these new theoretical implications using two original datasets. Quantitatively, we analyze border-location correlates using grid cells and an original spatial dataset on precolonial states. Qualitatively, we compiled information from treaties and diplomatic histories to code causal process observations for every bilateral border. Historical political frontiers directly affected 62% of all bilateral borders. Water bodies, often major ones, comprised the primary border feature much more frequently than straight lines.
