Inama-Sternegg’s journal article develops a theory of state territory through two connected inquiries: territorial extent and state boundaries. Presented as sections of a larger inquiry into the foundations of political life, it combines philosophical analysis, law, and practical statecraft. Territory, people, and government constitute the state’s material, mixed material-spiritual, and spiritual foundations. Territorial strength consequently depends not on acreage alone but on the coordination of economic resources, social cohesion, and governmental capacity.
The first section advances from surface area to population and then to the qualitative relations that make either politically significant. Large territories can supply complementary resources and defensive depth, but area and population furnish only preliminary measures of power:
Die feinen geistigen Elemente des menschlichen Gesellschaftslebens entziehen sich der zahlenmässigen Darstellung.
English translation: The subtle spiritual elements of human social life elude numerical representation.
This objection targets a political arithmetic inherited from absolutism, which treated inhabitants chiefly as soldiers and taxpayers. Modern political life requires welfare, national consciousness, and active social capacities. Territorial acquisition can therefore weaken a state, while territorial loss can strengthen it through concentration.
The appropriate extent of territory follows from the state’s purposes and the conditions of independence. External independence requires effective defensive power, since international law lacks an enforcing authority. Internal independence requires mutually supporting economic, social, and political forces. Inama-Sternegg describes economic life as nested market circles, expanding with the decreasing urgency of needs. A system capable of satisfying essential needs supplies a territorial minimum, without excluding wider trade. Social cohesion likewise requires shared interests and a consciousness of belonging. Effective government, however, imposes an upper limit: excessive size dissipates administrative resources and makes genuine parliamentary representation impracticable. The desirable scale lies between these requirements, not in a universal numerical formula.
His argument nevertheless qualifies its preference for consolidation. A small people with a distinctive cultural vocation may possess a justified independent existence. Material intercourse encourages larger political units, while humanity’s intellectual development requires diversity. The article thus distinguishes a dissolving cosmopolitanism from a higher cosmopolitan purpose fulfilled through differentiated peoples.
The second section examines how boundaries convert territorial relationships into definite jurisdictions. Treaties supply precision and recognition, but their provisions should respond to geographical and social conditions rather than dynastic convenience alone. Statecraft also retains responsibility for defence, territorial continuity, and administrative effectiveness.
The decisive distinction separates geographical boundaries from their political uses. Mountains, watersheds, and seas acquire different meanings as transport and warfare change; an obstacle may become a connection. Hence:
Wir können daher sagen, dass die geographischen Momente für die Grenzbestimmung eines Staates nie eine absolute Bedeutung haben, dass sie immer nur Anhaltspunkte sind welche ihren wahren Werth und ihre eigentliche Bedeutung erst durch den Zusammenhalt mit dem socialen und politischen Bedürfnisse eines Staates gewinnen.
English translation: We can therefore say that geographical factors never have an absolute significance for determining a state’s boundary, that they are always only points of reference which acquire their true value and proper significance only when considered together with a state’s social and political needs.
The concluding analysis applies this relational method to economic and national boundaries. Exchange generates demands for common law and thus for political association. Nationality encompasses multiple social relations; neither ancestry nor language independently determines its political limits. Language often indicates communities of intercourse, while expanding exchange modifies customs and inherited affiliations. Yet historical institutions and collective character can resist economic convergence and attach populations to particular political forms.
The argument returns finally to treaty-making:
Nur darin ruht die Gewähr, dass sich die vertragsmässige Grenze auch allgemeine Anerkennung gewinne, welche dann wieder die Voraussetzung für den geordneten friedlichen Verkehr der Nachbarstaaten bildet.
English translation: Only therein lies the guarantee that the boundary established by treaty will also gain general recognition, which in turn constitutes the prerequisite for orderly, peaceful intercourse between neighbouring states.
“ Therein” refers to careful consideration of all territorial tendencies, rather than arbitrary demarcation. The article’s significance lies in making territory a historically changing relationship among geography, economy, nationality, and political agency. Its organic vocabulary and assumptions about cultural homogeneity constrain that pluralism, but its central conceptual move is clear: neither nature nor nationality draws an authoritative political boundary without interpretation and legal settlement.
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