The need by an individual or group to establish and hold an area of land is an urge, fuelled by aggression, to define a territory for mating and food supply. In human beings, territoriality is an organization of space in order to make sense of it. The individual needs security and identity, and this is shown most clearly in relation to the home, and the community requires a suburb or small town with which to associate. The importance of territory extends to larger units; the reorganization of the counties of Britain always causes distress, and the term is most often associated with nation-states which have the formal power to demarcate and control their borders. Hensel in J. Vasquez, ed. (2000) notes that, between 1816 and 1992, over half of all disputes began between neighbours, over a quarter involved territorial issues, and both contiguity and territory were involved in over half of all full-scale wars. See D. Storey (2001) for theories of territoriality and the geographical outcomes of territorial control, Johnston (2001) Polit. Geog. 20, 6 on territoriality in political geography, and Oosten (2003) Acta Politica 38, 2 on territoriality and globalization. Heeg and Ossenbrügge (2002) Geopolitics 7, 3 provide a concise overview of the history of the EU territoriality; see also K. Cox (2002). See Johnson (2001) Pol. Geog. 20, 6 on theories of territoriality.

Agnew (2005) AAAG 9 defines political territoriality as the administration of infrastructural power, and identifies four ‘sovereignty regimes’ that result from distinctive combinations of central state authority and degree of political territoriality. Lewis et al. (2002) PHG 26, 4 describe a territorial point of entry, which ‘emphasizes local social institutions, local government, the territoriality of resources, the articulation of local and global knowledge, and the spatial strategy of the enterprise’.