March (territory)

In medieval Europe, a march or mark was, in broad terms, any kind of borderland, as opposed to a state's "heartland". More specifically, a march was a border between realms or a neutral buffer zone under joint control of two states in which different laws might apply. In both of these senses, marches served a political purpose, such as providing warning of military incursions or regulating cross-border trade.

Marches gave rise to the titles marquess (masculine) or marchioness (feminine).

The word "march" derives ultimately from a Proto-Indo-European root *merg-, meaning "edge, boundary". The root *merg- produced Latin margo ("margin"), Old Irish mruig ("borderland"), Welsh bro ("region, border, valley") and Persian and Armenian marz ("borderland"). The Proto-Germanic *marko gave rise to the Old English word mearc and Frankish marka, as well as Old Norse mǫrk meaning "borderland, forest", and derived from merki "boundary, sign", denoting a borderland between two centres of power.

In Old English, "mark" meant "boundary" or "sign of a boundary", and the meaning only later evolved to encompass "sign" in general, "impression" and "trace".

The Anglo-Saxon kingdom of Mercia took its name from West Saxon mearc "marches", which in this instance referred explicitly to the territory's position on the Anglo-Saxon frontier with the Romano-British to the west.

During the Frankish Carolingian dynasty, usage of the word spread throughout Europe.

The name "Denmark" preserves the Old Norse cognates merki ("boundary") mǫrk ("wood", "forest") up to the present. Following the Anschluss, the Nazi German government revived the old name "Ostmark" for Austria.

In the early ninth century, Charlemagne issued his new kind of land grant, the aprisio, which redisposed land belonging to the Imperial fisc in deserted areas, and included special rights and immunities that resulted in a range of independence of action. Historians interpret the aprisio both as the basis of feudalism and in economic and military terms as a mechanism to entice settlers to a depopulated border region. Such self-sufficient landholders would aid the counts in providing armed men in defense of the Frankish frontier. Aprisio grants (the first ones were in Septimania) emanated directly from the Carolingian king, and they reinforced central loyalties, to counterbalance the local power exercised by powerful marcher counts.^{[citation needed]}