23 – Beyond the pale

Beyond the pale is an English expression for anything beyond the limits of the law or of accepted morality. The aforementioned ‘pale’, far from being a symbolic separator, at one time was a very real barrier: it separated the area of Ireland under English control from the (larger) part of the country where fierce Celts still held sway unopposed.

22 – Europe: core and peripheries

Post #12 shows a map identifying three core areas of Europe with transition zones in between. This map here has a different approach to European cultural diversity.

21 – Australia 1787-1863: the shrinking of New South Wales

For a long time, Australia was known as New Holland, after the country that first explored the island/continent. The British, who eventually colonised the place, at first adopted the name, but settled on an adaptation of the term Terra Australis for their new colony. That name refers to the giant continent in the South that was thought by pre-exploration geographers in the Old World to counterbalance the land-mass of the then-known world.

20 – Sri Lanka on top!

Funny how something as arbitrary as map orientation can skew the perception of countries. On this map, from the vaults of the  Perry-Castañeda Library Map Collection at the University of Texas in Austin (and to be found separately here), the Indian Subcontinent is shown ‘upside-down’: South is top of the map, North is bottom. Consequently, East is left and West is right (otherwise the map would be mirrored).

19 – A Europe of ‘little states’

One  last map by Leopold Kohr, also an addendum to his book ‘The Breakdown of Nations’ (1957). Kohr probably realised that dividing Europe into rectangular, US-style states would clash with the ‘tribal’ makeup of the Old Continent’s culturally diverse peoples. So he modified that idea to propose a European federation of ’little states’: still too small to cause harm, but more in line with Europe’s ethnic composition.

18 – The world à la Leopold Kohr

“Small is beautiful” is an aptly brief summary of the thinking of Leopold Kohr (1909-1994), an Austrian philosopher influenced by Anarchism and influential on the Green movement. In his best-known work, ‘The Breakdown of Nations’, he applied his theory of size to nations. Why? “There seems only one cause behind all forms of social misery: bigness…” Or, put differently again: “Whenever something is wrong, something is too big.”

17 – the United States of Greater Austria

Franz Ferdinand’s assassination at Sarajevo in 1914 triggered the First World War. The Austro-Hungarian Archduke and crown prince is known mainly for this (and for the Scottish band named after him), but here’s another interesting piece of info about him:

16 – Europe fits in Brazil

At 8.511.965 km², Brazil is the 5th largest country on earth, the larger ones being Russia, Canada, the US and China (in that order). The country conjures up mostly images of leasurely beach life, or crime-ridden slums. However, Brazil is slowly emerging as an industrial giant and might soon have an economic punch matching its surface (almost half of South America) and population (exceeding 188 million).

15 – Divided States of America

I was alerted to these maps by a Turkish gentleman, who posts them on his website. They are a reaction to the map of the Middle East, re-drawn as it was in the July issue of the US Armed Forces Journal (mentioned earlier in this blog). This American vision has upset a lot of people in the Middle East, not in the least in Turkey, which, in that American scenario, would lose about a quarter of its current territory in the East to a Free Kurdistan.

14 – What will happen after Belgium?

Belgium sits astride one of the main cultural fault lines of Europe, consisting roughly of a northern half that speaks Dutch and is oriented towards the ‘anglosphere’ and a southern half that speaks French and is oriented towards the ‘francophonie’. Ever since the federalisation of the country from the Seventies through the Nineties of the previous century – basically in two halves that correspond with the aforementioned cultural divide, although the institutional reality is much more complicated – two ’sub-nations’ have formed that keep drifting further away from each other.

13 – The retreat of Cornish

Cornwall is the southwesternmost county of England. As with other ‘extremities’ of the British Isles, it was one of the refuges of the original (partially romanized) Celtic inhabitants, fleeing before the invading Anglo-Saxons. Actually, when it was independent (during a period in the early Middle Ages known as the Heptarchy, when England was divided into 7 kingdoms), the Kingdom of Cornwall was also known as West Wales.

12 – Europe’s divides

An interesting look at the religions and language groups that are elements of division (and union) in Europe. The mapmaker wanted to make a point by indicating three ‘core areas’ where a certain language group and religion overlap – resulting in an area that is Germanic+Protestant, another one that’s Slavic+Orthodox and one that is Romance+Catholic. I’m not sure which point…

11 – “Edwardistan”

The British tried their hand at subduing Afghanistan in the 19th Century, when the Empire was at the top of its game. Their troops were massacred (with one man left alive to warn off other invasion attempts), which the British found in rather bad taste.

This never gave them the opportunity to turn the country into “Edwardistan”, as shown in this parody of both the naivety and the arrogance of British Imperialism – or, more truthfully, its outer limits…