ABSTRACT
Alsace-Lorraine was acquired by the French through the methods which have led to the consolidation of most modern States, namely, conquest, trickery and cession. (Temperley 1920, p. 159)
The brutal honesty of this statement would be preserved if names such as Tacna, Bornu, and Primorskiy Kray were substitutes for Alsace-Lorraine and the charge was made against Chile, Britain, and Russia respectively. However, it would be an error to assume that because European states had similar territorial ambitions in Europe and the other continents and used similar policies to achieve them that there are close similarities between the evolution of boundaries in Europe and in the other continents. There are more important differences in respect of boundary evolution between Europe and the rest of the world than there are between any other two continents.
