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The Great Wall Of China, The Berlin Wall, And The History Of Border Walls
Posted
December 5, 2018
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December 5, 2018
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13:39Now PlayingPresident Donald Trump's proposed US-Mexican border wall has become an emblem of a fiery, divisive, political debate about immigration. How will Trump's border wall be remembered in history, if at all? This is what some of the most famous walls in history can tell us about the U.S.-Mexico border today.
A wall can keep people out or hold people in and almost always creates some sort of divide. In China it was an ancient defense system and that became a national landmark. In Berlin, it was an infamous blockade.
Territory is at the core of so many walls in history. Even Wall Street got its name from a wall. It was originally built by the Dutch to protect themselves from British colonists, and keep Native Americans out. The financial district has earned a reputation of vast wealth - the center of capitalism: it's become a symbol of a system that created more wealth than the world has ever seen
But also exploitation – deepening the divide between the haves and have nots. That's been ingrained in the area from its very inception. In 1644 Governor Peter Stuyvesant ordered his citizens to build a wooden barricade on the northern edge of the New Amsterdam Settlement.
A few years later, the Peach Tree war broke out between the Dutch and Native Americans and Stuyvesant ordered an expansion of the wall to defend against future attacks. It worked for a while, but then the British came by boat through the southern end of the colony, took the land and named it New York. The wall itself was taken down by the end of the century, but the name stuck.
In 1711, Wall Street was turned into the city's official market for a very valuable resource at the time - slave labor and that is something that's weaved throughout many walls of the past, no matter how emblematic they may be.
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The Great Wall Of China, The Berlin Wall, And The History Of Border Walls
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