Inno's analysis really only applies to modern Europe and it could be applied probably more or less equally to the Greek poleis of classical antiquity (which are the model of a "self-ruling community" in Western thought), but of course his argument ignores the fact that borders have very frequently been a tool of imperial rule imposed on people who, somehow, managed to live without them. One of the perennial features of the spread of "civilization" through empire has been the usually extremely violent imposition of borders on nomadic or semi-nomadic peoples. The Roman empire's provinces (created of course when Rome was still a "self-ruling community" in the form of the Republic) imposed borders where there had been none before, and in many parts of the empire the Romans brought formal borders to places where nomadic or semi-nomadic peoples had lived without any borders.