Giving an accurate and precise definition of the word « territory », is not an easy task. It all depends on the perspective (political, geographic, economic) adopted: a territory may be defined as the portion of an area possessed by a political and legal administration (a country), or characterized by a cultural ( the Tibetan territory, which is inhabited mostly by Chinese people) or natural specificity. The boundaries of a territory are marked by limits or frontiers.

From a political view point, we often speak of a national territory. The US territory is a geographical area located in the central north America, and bordered by two other territories: Canada and Mexico. A political authority (the power of an administration) is exerted on the US territory, and all the US citizens are bound to respect the rules enforced.
But living “physically” in the US is not a sufficient condition for a person to be legally accepted as a citizen in his own right on the US territory. In the US, and in many other countries, if you haven't the nationality but work for ten years on the territory, you may be considered as an illegal.

The boundaries of national territories are not just copied on the natural frontiers (mountains, waters...) which divide space into distinct areas. At the time when the American northern territory was entirely discovered by the settlers, the western and eastern US frontiers stopped stretching at some point for geographical reasons, because the Atlantic and pacific oceans mark the natural boundary of the continent. But north and south, the US borderlines never stopped moving before the 18th century, and for non-geographical reasons (in the battle for the control over the American territory, some areas were deemed to be French, others Spanish...). The geographical frontiers of the nation changed through history, depending on land administrative conquests and losses.

Space management, and its acquisition, has always been at stake in the human political and social conflicts. All conquerors, from Alexander the Great to William the conqueror, to Napoleon to Gengis Kahn, looked for stretching up their territory. No doubt, the appropriation of a territory was the concern of prehistoric men. Conquering a territory means owning (legally or not) its resources. It means creating a political area, raising an army, exploiting work..(all these concepts linked to power). And it also means building one's identity. Without a territory, without a limited space where human interactions and cultural customs are made possible, there's no feeling of identity. In the aftermaths of WWII, the new “distribution”of the global territory affected the life of millions of people who were cut off from their cultural territories...