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The authors deal with selected aspects of past and present border shaping processes in Croatia, regarding its sociological and historical perspective. Some circumstances under which the boundaries between countries are established, maintained and changed are discussed. As socially constructed phenomena, the boundaries change their meaning over time, aiming to exclude the Others and/or Strangers and to determine the belonging. They are under ambivalent pressure of limitations, divisions, conflicts and exclusions on ethnic or national level on one hand and under impact of the enlarging processes, inclusions and political interests on local, regional, national and supranational levels, on the other hand. Such a comparative interdisciplinary approach reveals liminal character and importance of Croatian borders which, positioned at almost same places as today, were in the Early Modern Period perceived as the civilization edge (e.g. Antemurale Christianitatis) and confessional barrier towards the Other. The analisys showed that the role of Croatian borders is apparently, among the others, to strengthen the defence of the Fortress Europe (Schengen area) from the irregular migrants and migrants as the Others. On selected cases the paper examined how do political elites manage to shape the borders and make it (non) permeable for the movement of goods, services and people, depending on their interests. While the certain policies were imposed from above, everyday practices of local population were usually opposed and still happen to oppose proclaimed limitation, turning the boundary from the barrier to the place of exchange and cooperation. Simultaneously, the fragmentation of European space and strengthening of national interests leads to stronger "Europe of borders" instead of the proclaimed ideal of "Europe without borders". [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper contains the analysis of maps and textual geographical descriptions (pilot) of the Zadar maritime zone from the work Kitâb-ı Bahriye (Book of Navigation) by Pîrî Reis, an Ottoman seafarer, pirate and later admiral. Comparative analysis was made of several examples of that navigational manual from Istanbul sources known to date and also from a lesser-known example from The Walters Art Museum in Baltimore. The objective was to compare the information obtained by the Ottomans regarding wide Zadar area based on the secretive work of a foreigner from ranksof the enemy, Pîrî Reis, with that shown in the works of his contemporary Venetian cartographers, his'hosts' on the eastern Adriatic coast. Providing either the historical-cartographical or imagologicalgeographical perspective, the research reveals that Pîrî Reis managed to balance the demand for production of high quality navigation and geographical materials with his position as a foreigner on the east Adria. Cartographic and narrative images of the Zadar maritime zone by Pîrî Reis represent a reflection of the scope and possibilities of Ottoman cartography, enabling its reappraisal. The reason lies in the fact that the quality of the cartographic and narrative output of Pîrî Reis was not achieved in the navigational manuals of that time. The toponyms employed indicate that Pîrî Reis used other accessible sources, for example, navigation instructions, but he combined them with numerous observations of his own. Therefore, his work represents a totally original description of the Zadar maritime zone which, due to a lot of new information it contains, provides completely new scholarly cognisance. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]