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Putting the World on the Map: History - Political Geography - Borders - Lands - Maps

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@PaulPlamondon Et, grâce à votre plume, on aura un Monsieur St-Pierre Plamondon, Lord-Protecteur du Commonwealth de Québec, une province du Royaume du Canada... Bravo! Se non è vero, è ben trovato.

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@AromaticsMilton It was a standard classroom wall map (and then a school atlas map) made in Germany (Velhagen und Klasing).

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History, maps and borders: "Ukraine and its historical limits" - A French View, 1941 (from Jacques Benoist-Méchin, L'Ukraine des origines à Staline, Paris, Albin Michel, 1941)

The territorial schema reproduced by Jacques Benoist‑Méchin in "L’Ukraine des origines à Staline" (Paris, Albin Michel, 1941) reflects a markedly different cartographic imagination from the administrative boundaries asserted by Ukrainian political actors during the revolutionary years. Rather than depicting a functioning state or a legally grounded claim, the map presents a synthetic vision of the Ukrainian nation as conceived within interwar nationalist discourse, shaped by ethnographic arguments, historical retrospection, and the geopolitical anxieties of the late 1930s.

Benoist‑Méchin’s outline encompasses a broad arc of territory stretching from the Carpathians to the Don basin, integrating regions that had never formed a single political unit but were understood by nationalist writers as belonging to a continuous Ukrainian ethnolinguistic zone. Galicia, Bukovina, and Transcarpathia appear alongside the core lands of the former Russian guberniyas, while the steppe districts of the Black Sea littoral and the approaches to the Caucasus are included as extensions of a historical frontier shaped by Cossack settlement and imperial contestation. The resulting configuration is less a political boundary than a cultural‑historical construct, projecting a unified national space across multiple imperial legacies.

The map’s outer limits thus exceed any contemporary administrative reality, enclosing territories under Polish, Romanian, Soviet, and even nominally autonomous control. By plotting this maximalist perimeter, Benoist‑Méchin translates an ideological claim into cartographic form, presenting the Ukrainian nation as a trans‑imperial continuum whose fragmentation is attributed to external domination rather than internal diversity. For readers in 1941, this juxtaposition of present borders and imagined national extent visually stages the unresolved question of Ukrainian unity, framing territorial loss and partition as the central drama of the country’s modern history.

Read in context, the map functions less as a record of political fact than as a window onto the nationalist narratives circulating in Europe on the eve of the Second World War: expansive, retrospective, and designed to assert a coherent national geography where none yet existed.

(For a larger version: https://t.co/9OI6j1at1b
For more historical maps of Ukraine: https://t.co/4QViAQTPFm)

#history #historical #map #war #Ukraine #Russia #Germany #Poland #Hungary #Romania #Moldova #Slovakia #Belarus

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@blambertcarto Félicitations ! Une très belle carte, mais il faut réviser les coordonnées géographiques (les nombres pour la latitude - n.b.).

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@hardsimply No. You could try an Image-Based Font Finder.

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History, maps and languages: Ethnolinguistic Map of East-Central Europe, 1910 - A German View
#history #historical #ethnographic #ethnolinguistic #ethnic #map #Central #Eastern #Europe #Germany #Russia #Austria #Poland #Romania #Hungary #Bulgaria

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History, geography and school maps: Empire of Japan, 1943 (from Goode's School Atlas, Chicago, Rand McNally and Co., 1943)
#history #historical #geography #geographical #map #atlas #Japan #China #Korea #Russia #USA

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A very interesting map of the Falkland Islands / Islas Malvinas detailing the administrative division under Don Luis Vernet, "Comandante Político y Militar de las Islas Malvinas" (1829-1831).
#history #historical #map #Argentina #Britain #Malvinas #Falkland

[Bautista M. Guillamondegui @bautistaguilla_]

🗺️🇦🇷La Comandancia Política y Militar de las Islas Malvinas (1829-1833) fue el régimen político que bajo Luis Vernet hizo posesión efectiva de las Islas, siguiendo a la antigua Comandancia Militar. Las Islas Malvinas se encontraban bajo dominio hispánico desde el año 1767+

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History, maps and religion: The Eastern Patriarchates, c. 750 (from R. Lane Poole, Historical Atlas of modern Europe from the Decline of the Roman Empire, Oxford, Clarendon Press, 1902)

By 750 CE, the geopolitical landscape of the Eastern Mediterranean had fundamentally fractured, shattering the ancient Roman oikoumene. This map illustrates the starkly divided realities of the four Eastern Patriarchates following the lightning expansions of the Rashidun Caliphate and the subsequent rise of the Umayyad Caliphate (which fell to the Abbasids in this pivotal year).

Only Constantinople remained within the borders of the heavily militarized Byzantine Empire. It served as the Ecumenical Patriarchate, tightly bound to the imperial court and protected by the newly established themata (military-administrative units) across Anatolia and the Balkans.

In contrast, the other three ancient sees were fully incorporated into the administrative machinery of the Caliphate. Antioch (conquered by Khalid ibn al-Walid in 637 CE), Jerusalem (surrendered to Caliph Umar in 638 CE), and Alexandria (permanently secured by Amr ibn al-A'as in 646 CE) operated as dhimmi communities within Islamic provinces—such as Jund Filastin and Jund Qinnasrin. Despite their political isolation from Constantinople and the physical barriers of the Thughur (the fortified frontier zone), these three Melkite sees maintained their theological ties to the Chalcedonian world, enduring across hostile imperial borders.
#history #historical #map #religion #Greek #Christian #Patriarchate #Constantinople #Alexandria #Jerusalem #Antioch #Byzance #Byzantine #Empire #Balkan #Anatolia #MiddleEast #Palestine #Egypt #Syria

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History, maps and nationalism: Ethnographic map(s) of Macedonia, 1914 - Serbian view vs. Bulgarian view (from Carnegie Endowment for International Peace, Report of the International Commission To Inquire into the Causes and Conduct of the Balkan Wars. #Washington: The Carnegie Endowment, 1914)
These two ethnographic maps of Macedonia reflect how cartography became a tool for advancing competing national narratives. Although produced within the same geopolitical moment, the Serbian and Bulgarian maps present sharply divergent readings of the region’s demographic landscape. Each relies on distinct ethnographic categories and visual conventions to assert historical rights and cultural continuity.

The Serbian interpretation foregrounds a predominantly “Serbian” or “Old Serbian” population, reinforcing Belgrade’s claim that Macedonia formed an integral part of the Serbian national space. The Bulgarian map, by contrast, highlights extensive “Bulgarian” settlement zones, supporting Sofia’s position that Macedonian Slavs were fundamentally Bulgarian in origin. These differences were not merely scholarly disputes: they were embedded in broader territorial ambitions following the Balkan Wars.

Within Serbian and Bulgarian societies, such maps circulated widely in newspapers, pamphlets, and educational materials, shaping public opinion and legitimizing political claims. By presenting ethnography as objective fact, they helped mobilize national sentiment and provided visual evidence for competing state projects. Viewed today, they reveal how cartography functioned as a persuasive instrument, an essential component of early twentieth‑century propaganda surrounding the Macedonian question.

#history #historical #ethnic #ethnographic #map #wars #carte #ethnographique #Balkan #Macedonia #Macédoine #Bulgaria #Serbia #Greece #Albania #Turkey #Romania #Montenegro #Russia #USA

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History, maps and ethnicities: "Map of the South Slavonic Countries" (1877), an ethnographic map of the Balkans produced during the Russo-Romanian-Turkish War by Georgina Mary Muir Mackenzie and Adelina Paulina Irby for "Travels in the Slavonic Provinces of Turkey‑in‑Europe".

Emerging amid the Eastern Crisis and intensifying debates over Ottoman governance, the map reflects a distinctly British liberal‑philhellenic and pro‑Slavonic interpretive framework and organizes the South Slavonic lands (Serbia, Montenegro, Bosnia, Herzegovina, Bulgaria, and adjacent regions) into a coherent ethnographic and territorial schema that foregrounds Slavic demographic presence and historical claims.
Its cartographic choices, including the delineation of provincial borders and the emphasis on key urban centres, participate in contemporary efforts to render the Balkans legible to Western publics and policymakers.
As such, the map is not merely descriptive: it is an intervention shaped by humanitarian activism, political advocacy, and evolving nineteenth‑century ethnographic conventions. It offers insight into how external observers conceptualized the region’s populations, imperial structures, and emerging national movements.
#history #historical #ethnographic #maps #war #ethnicities #Balkan #Bulgaria #Serbia #Greece #Albania #Macedonia #Bosnia #Croatia #Montenegro #Turkey #Romania #Russia #Hungary #Austria

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History, maps and Irishmen: A school map of Ireland since 1500 (from Charles Andrews, A Short History of England, Boston-New York, Allyn & Bacon, 1921)

This map traces the shifting contours of English authority in Ireland from the early sixteenth century onward, with particular attention to the Pale under Henry VIII and during the Stuart monarchy.
In Henry VIII’s reign, the Pale constituted a confined zone centred on Dublin, where English law, administration, and cultural norms were actively maintained. Beyond its limits, Gaelic lordships and autonomous Anglo‑Irish jurisdictions preserved distinct political traditions.
Under the Stuarts, the Crown pursued a more assertive programme of territorial consolidation, marked by plantations, institutional reforms, and sustained military intervention. These measures gradually diminished the Pale’s administrative distinctiveness as English governance extended across the island.
By juxtaposing both periods, the map underscores the transformation of Ireland’s political landscape and the complex interplay between local authority, colonial policy, and evolving territorial control in the early modern era.
#history #historical #maps #school #classroom #textbook #Irish #Ireland #English #England #British #Britain #Europe

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@blambertcarto Try with the Great Lakes! (You'll need two versions because of the Lake Ontario/Lake America "dilemma" - n.b.)

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@rentaquill A "strange" map, because all the Soviet maps from the 1920s and 1930s labeled or treated Bessarabia as territory separated from or unlawfully held by Romania.

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History, maps and lands: Administrative-Economic Map of the Autonomous Soviet Socialist Republic of the Volga Germans, 1938 (Saratov, 1938)
#history #historical #map #Volga #German #Russia #Germany

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@rinalu_ So, for you: Poland is Bessarabia, Azerbaijan is Kurdistan, and the Pacific Ocean became Sea of Japan... Your map is a joke.

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History, maps and territories: "The Euphrates Valley, Syria, Kurdistan & c." (from Stanford's London atlas of universal geography..., London, Stanford's Geographical Establishment, 1904)
A British view of the Levant under Ottoman rule, early 20th century.
#history #historical #map #borders #territories #Levant #MiddleEast #Ottoman #Turkey #Turkish #Arab #Syria #Kurdistan #Lebanon #Iran #Persia #Palestine #Jerusalem #Damascus #Baghdad #Beirut #Aleppo #Tehran

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History, maps and ethnicities: Ethnographic Map of Central Europe, 1915 (From B. V. Darbishire, War Atlas, London, Oxford University Press, 1915)
A British view of the ethnographic puzzle of the Central Europe before WWI.
#history #historical #ethnographic #ethnic #linguistic #ethnolinguistic #map #borders #territories #Central #Europe #Germany #Austria #Switzerland #France #Britain #Russia #Ukraine #Italy #Poland #Czechia #Slovakia #Hungary #Romania #Belgium #Netherlands #Denmark

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History, maps and postcards: "Heimkehr in das Altreich" - Return to the Old Reich (German nationalistic propaganda postcard, December 1938)
#history #historical #propaganda #postcard #map #nationalism #WWII #Germany #Austria

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History, maps and languages: Ethnolinguistic map of Germany, 1938 (compiled and drawn in the Branch of Research and Analysis, U.S. Office of Strategic Services, Washington, November 1943)
A very simplistic ethnolinguistic map of Germany after the Anschluss made by the U.S. Office of Strategic Services. (Use of super intelligence: not involved.)
#history #historical #ethnographic #ethnic #linguistic #ethnolinguistic #map #Germany #Austria #Switzerland #borders #territories #Central #Europe #USA #France #Britain #Russia #Ukraine #Italy #Poland #Czechia #Slovakia #Hungary #Romania #Belgium #Netherlands #Denmark