Chapter 7 concludes by considering some of the book’s implications for the more recent history, and future, of linear borders. First, the way in which boundary studies has developed since the early twentieth century may help explain why boundaries have been so rarely altered or created since then. Having been further purified of its politics, boundary studies is left unable to produce reasons to change boundaries, and has become focused instead on maintenance work on existing boundaries. Second, the chapter returns to the question of natural and artificial boundaries, arguing that some ways of speaking of ‘artificial’ boundaries are more accurate than others, and that the history of linear boundaries can help us make sense of what it means to call boundaries ‘artificial’.