42 – The Free City of Danzig (1919-1939)

Maps on old postcards look really cool, I think (see previous post). So I looked for another one, and found this postcard, dating from 1929. Coincidentally, it illustrates another area peripheral to Germany: the Free City of Danzig.

41 – Amikejo, the World’s First (and Only) Esperanto State

The story of Amikejo is a fantastic piece of obscure cartographic and cultural history: Amikejo was the world’s first and only state based on the ideals of the Esperantist movement. It was founded in a tiny (3,5 km²), wedge-shaped area that for a hundred years was an easily overlooked ‘neutral zone’ in Western Europe.

40 – Totem Foods of North America

This map illustrates the ‘Totem Foods’ of North America, celebrating ”the many distinctive regional food traditions on the North American continent by featuring a totem food key to the identity of each region. These totem foods are more than just important commodities – community feasts, household rituals, song, stories and the nutritional well-being of residents have revolved around these foods for centuries.” Contributed by Andrew as a comment on post #17 on this blog and to be found here.

39 – Manhattan Neighbourhoods (2.0)

A variation on post #10 in this blog, done by Alexander Cheek and to be found on this page of his website. The differences between these two maps indicate that neighbourhoods in Manhattan are ‘fluid’, and constantly evolving.

38 – The World According to Ronald Reagan

This parody map shows the world as Ronald Reagan (US president 1980-1988) might have imagined it. Even as parody, it indicates an interesting duality: on the one hand, it presents a view of the world as it no longer is, the Cold War having ended; on the other hand, it illustrates a disparaging outlook on the rest of the world that some would argue persists in to this day in American culture and foreign policy.

The map shows an ‘us’ vs. ‘them’ bipolarity, with exaggerated sizes for (non-American) ‘good guys’ such as:

37 – Newyorkistan

The application of the suffix -stan (Persian for ‘home’) generally refers to countries in central Asia – in fact, the formerly Soviet states that occupy Central Asia are sometimes referred to collectively as ‘The Stans’. When used in other contexts, the suffix can have a negative connotation.

36 – An Inaccurate Map of Charlottesville

Russell Richards is an artist who (as far as I can tell) lives and works in Charlottesville, Virginia. I like his work, very funny and direct. In my mind, it combines interesting aspects of comic strip art with Picasso’s semi-abstract figures. But I can’t claim to know much about art. I did notice however that some of his work is influenced by his love of maps, most notably in the aptly named collection called ‘Inaccurate Maps of Charlottesville’. He has kindly allowed me to publish some of his work on this blog. Here is what I suppose is the centerpiece of that collection: ‘An Inaccurate Map of Charlottesville’ – a beautifully executed piece of  ‘subjective mapping’…

35 – The Size of Africa

Africa remains the least developed continent, and the most plagued by disease, poverty and malnutrition. The ‘dark continent’ also largely remains off the news radar in the developed world, although it’s not clear to me whether that is a consequence or a cause of the troubles it suffers.

34 – The 6 Regions of Movie Viewing

This isn’t a political, but a commercial world map: it specifies the six distinct global ‘DVD regions’ of the world. DVD is short for ‘digital video disc’, the successor to the analog VHS system. Contrary to VHS tapes, which were universally playable on each video recorder, a typical DVD disk can’t be played on each DVD player.

33 – Enclaves and Exclaves in Eastern Cyprus

Since the Turkish invasion of 1974, the island of Cyprus is divided into two main entities: an internationally recognised Greek republic in the south, and a Turkish republic of northern Cyprus, only recognised by Turkey. The situation on the ground is however a bit more complex: a UN buffer zone separates the two states, occupying an almost impenetrable swathe of territory that cuts the country (and the capital, Nicosia) in half – thus constituting a third territorial entity on the ground.

32 – Britain, USA

The The once sang about Great Britain being the ’51st State of the USA’ – a comment on the culture and foreign policy of the United Kingdom, which were then as now dominated by those of the United States. This fact in and of itself is not unexpected or inexplicable, as both countries do share historical, linguistic and cultural ties, and one is much bigger (size- and population-wise) and more influential than the other.

31 – Newfoundland On A Stamp

Not so much strange as just darn purty, this map of Newfoundland on a postage stamp, probably dating from before 1949, when it became a province of Canada (this happened after a referendum in which the other option was independence, with the joining of Canada making it with the slimmest of majorities: 50,50%). Taken off the website of Living Planet, a Newfie t-shirt producing collective with some more nice designs.

30 – the Afrikaner Volkstaat

‘Volkstaat’ is Afrikaans for People’s state – the people in this case being the white South Africans who identify themselves as ‘Afrikaners’ (mainly descendents of Dutch settlers, speaking a language derived from Dutch and considering themselves an indigenous nation in Africa).

29 – The Berlin Republic

I don’t remember where I got this map from, but the context seems quite straightforward. The two figures in the foreground are saying “ein Geschwür!” (literally: “an ulcer”) and “Da sei Gott vor!” (“may God prevent this”). It must be a comment on the role of Berlin, once more the capital of Germany after Unification in 1990. Before this, West Germany’s capital was the comparatively tiny town of Bonn.

28 – the 10 Regions of American Politics

All results of a nationwide election in the US can usually be translated into a ‘binary’ map, divided into red states (Republican, mainly in the middle) and blue states (Democratic, mostly on the coasts). In January of 2004, the Boston Globe newspaper issued an original variation on the theme of political preferences in America: it divided the country into 10 distinct, but not necessarily contiguous areas.

27 – The Republic of Indian Stream (1832-1835)

The territorial history of the US seems pretty straightforward: 13 British colonies on the eastern seaboard secede at the end of the eighteenth century, then follow their ‘Manifest Destiny’ westward, eventually encompassing 50 states by the middle of the twentieth century.

There are, however, ‘territorial anomalies’ that serve as interesting footnotes to this consolidation of empire. One of them is the Republic of Indian Stream: a self-declared (but unrecognised) republic in a ‘grey area’ between the US and Canada, that existed from 1832 to 1835. Although very small and sparsely populated (the ‘Streamers’ never numbered more than about 300), the RoIS boasted a constitution and an elected government.

26 – Flash Gordon’s planet Mongo

Much of the action in the comic strip (and later movies) starring Flash Gordon take place on the fictional planet Mongo. This planet is divided in several realms, such as:

25 – Suur Suomi

Finland gained independence from Russia right after the Bolshevik Revolution of 1917. A civil war ensued, along the lines of the post-revolution conflict in Russia itself: ‘Reds’ against ‘Whites’. The conservative ‘White’ forces won out, thanks in part to support of the Germans.

An outgrowth of this conservative victory was the birth of an irredentist, ‘Pan-Finnish’ movement, claiming a ‘Greater Finland’ (Suur Suomi) composed of all areas inhabited by Finns or by people ethnically related to Finns. This irredentism was in large part aimed at areas still under control of the fledgling Soviet Union.

24 – Europe’s north-south divides

This map is yet another dissection of Europe, this time focussing on the north-south divides in the continent. Some of the boundaries here were already present in one or both of the earlier maps, especially the religious (Protestant-Catholic) and linguistic (Germanic-Romance) divides. Three additional borders are of a more climatic nature: