Limitrophe states are territories situated on a border or frontier.[1] In a broad sense, it means border countries, any group of neighbors of a given nation which border one another thus forming a rim around that country. The English term derives from pays limitrophes, a term in diplomatic French.[2]
In ancient Rome, the term referred to provinces at the borders of the Roman Empire (Latin: limitrophus), which were obliged to provide billeting of the limitanei legions deployed on their territory, mostly in limes.[3]
In modern history, it was used to refer to provinces that seceded from the Russian Empire at the end of World War I, during the Russian Civil War (1917–1922), thus forming a kind of belt or cordon sanitaire separating Soviet Russia from the rest of Europe during the interwar period.[4]