84 - The Free and Independent Republic of West Florida

“West Floriday, that lovely nation,

Free from king and tyranny,

Thru’ the world shall be respected,

For her true love of Liberty!”

So goes a marching song that never got to mature into a national anthem. Too brief was the independence of a smallish North American state calling itself the Free and Independent Republic of West Florida (the spelling ‘Floriday’ was just for rhyming purposes). This plucky little country was the original ‘Lone Star State’, long before Texas usurped the title (and the star). By then, West Florida had been unceremoniously annexed by the US.

The historical-geographical term West Florida describes a contested region with varying borders on the north shore of the Gulf of Mexico. Sovereignty over the territory was equally fleeting, drifting from French and Spanish to British to Spanish again to self-government to US to Confederate and back to US again. Nowadays, unless applied to the western part of the present-day state of Florida, ‘West Florida’ is a term without meaning. The former territory is split up and incorporated into parts of the states of Louisiana, Mississippi, Alabama and Florida.

Until 1763, West Florida was partly Spanish (with a garrison at Pensacola) and partly French (with Mobile an outpost of the French colony of Louisiana). In that year, the treaty concluding the Seven Years’ War awarded to Britain all of Spanish Florida and that part of French Louisiana between the Mississippi and Perdido rivers and north of Lake Pontchartrain. The British reorganised all this new land on the Gulf of Mexico into East Florida (most of present-day Florida) and West Florida, bounded on the west by Lake Pontchartrain and the Mississippi River, on the north by the thirty-first parallel and on the east by the Apalachicola River. British West Florida’s capital was Pensacola.

In 1764, the British extended the northern border of West Florida to 32°28’, encompassing the southern third of present-day Mississippi and Alabama. The 1783 Treaty of Paris, which ended the American War of Independence, saw both British Floridas transferred back to Spain – but without specifying the borders.

Naturally, Spain wanted the border extended to the north in 1764, while the newly independent US insisted on the border at the thirty-first parallel. Spain recognised the former position at the 1795 Treaty of San Lorenzo.

But there was more wrangling over West Florida. France had ceded its gigantic Louisiana Territory to Spain in 1763, but Spain returned it to France in the secret Treaty of San Ildefonso in 1800.

Three years later, the US bought the selfsame territory from France in what became known as the Louisiana Purchase. The US claimed the territory between the Mississippi and Perdido Rivers, as it had been part of French Louisiana prior to 1763. Spain insisted it had not returned that territory to France in 1800 and continued to administer it.

Meanwhile, new American settlers in the territory united with ‘old’ formerly British settlers from the British era to resist Spanish rule, leading to a rebellion in 1810. On September 23, 75 West Floridian rebels overcame a Spanish garrison of 28 (sleeping) soldiers at Baton Rouge, replacing the Spanish colours with the Bonnie Blue Flag (a single white star on a blue field) of the new nation. The fight left two dead and five wounded – sources aren’t clear whether these were rebel or soldier. Independence was formally declared three days later (and would last a grand total of 74 days.)

The town of St. Francisville was established as the new capital. The nation’s borders were the thirty-first parallel to the north, the Perdido River to the east and the Mississippi River to the west. None of present-day Florida was part of the new republic, whose official name nonetheless was, simply, ‘State of Florida’.

Apparently the West Floridians weren’t so keen on independence as on absorption by the US. Their first and only ‘president’ was Fulwar Skipwith, a former American consul general to France under Jefferson who had successfully negotiated the Louisiana Purchase, and who mentioned in his inaugural address: “(…)the blood which flows  in our veins (…) will return (…) to the heart of our parent country.” Previously, he had supported self-rule for West Florida as “the best way to turn the captured province over to the United States.”

Yet on October 27 of 1810, the US annexed the region by a simple proclamation, claiming the territory was part of the original Louisiana Purchase. This did not sit well with the West Floridians themselves, who would have preferred to enter the Union on their own terms. The rebels threatened to rebel again, Governor Skipwith even stated he was ready to “die in defense of the Lone Star Flag” when William C.C. Claiborne, sent by Washington to take possession of the territory, refused to recognise his government. He eventually backed down and accepted American annexation.

The western part of West Florida was attached to Orleans Territory in 1810, the rest, known as the Mobile District to the Mississippi Territory in 1812. Spain continued to dispute the US annexation until it ceded all of (East) Florida to the US in 1819, which was organised into the Florida Territory in 1822.

Today, those parts of Louisiana once part of West Florida are still known as the Florida Parishes. In 1993, the Louisiana State Legislature renamed I-12 through these parishes the ‘Republic of West Florida Parkway’. In 2002, the great-granddaughter of governor Skipwith donated the original copy of the West Floridian Constitution to the Louisiana State Archives. The State of Florida itself incorporates only a small slice of former West Florida.

This map found at Exploring Florida, a resource website for social studies.

83 - A Voyage to the Country of the Houyhnhnms

Gulliver’s Travels (1726) is a satire of contemporary England dressed up as a faux traveller’s tale by Jonathan Swift, narrating in the first person the voyages of one Lemuel Gulliver. The book, divided in four parts, tells of Gulliver’s shipwreck on Lilliput (which is inhabited by people no more than 15 cm tall), abandonment in Brobdingnag (where giants of 22 metres tall live), rescue by the flying island of Laputa, trip to Balnibarbi (where science is pursued without practical ends) and finally his voyage to the country of the Houyhnhnms.

These Houyhnhnms are horses that rule over Yahoos, who are deformed, debased humans. Gulliver sides with the horses, comes to despise the humans, but in the end is expelled. Upon his return to England, Gulliver can no longer stand the company of ‘Yahoos’, and becomes a recluse, preferring the company of his horses.

The island of the Houyhnhnms is apparently situated close to the recently explored continent of Australia (or ‘New Holland’, as it was then known), evidenced by the many Dutch names on the mainland visible on this map, e.g. Nuyts Land, Maelsuyker Island, De Wits Island.

This map found on this page at the British Library.

82 - When Monaco Was 20 Times Less Tiny Than Today

At present, Monaco is the world’s second-smallest state (Wikipedia mentions both 1,64 and 1,95 km², although another source mentions 1,49 km²) after the Vatican (0,44 km²) as well as the most densely populated (at 23.660 inhabitants/km²). Yet at one time, Monaco was decidedly less mini than it is now. Before being dismembered in the second half of the nineteenth century, Monaco covered around 30 km², which is about half the size of San Marino.

 In 1997, the Grimaldi dynasty celebrated its 700-year dominion over Monaco. These philatelic references to former ‘greatness’ (again found at Dan’s Topical Stamps) were issued at that time. The stamp in the upper left corner shows Monaco in the 13^th century. Monaco’s origins lie in a land grant by Emperor Henry VI of the Holy Roman Empire in 1191, but  it was re-founded early in the thirteenth century as the western outpost of Genoan control. On this map, Genoa’s territory can be seen extending westward on the Côte d’Azur to include Monaco. In 1297, Francesco Grimaldi (Il Malizio - ‘the malicious’ or ‘the cunning’) and some fellow plotters captured the fortress on Monaco rock disguised as Franciscan monks - hence the monks with swords in Monaco’s coat of arms.

There is some confusion whether Monaco was named after this incident (Monaco is Italian for ‘monk’) or whether its name dates to the much earlier Greek period (the Greek colony of Massilia – later to become Marseilles – called the local Ligurians monoikoi, possibly because of their habit of living individually, monoikos meaning ‘single house’; or as a reference to Hercules, who is supposed to have lived alone there. In Antiquity, Monaco had a temple dedicated to Hercules and was in fact called something akin to Port Hercules).  

The map in the upper right corner shows the shrinkage which occurred in the nineteenth century. Monaco succeeded in tearing loose from Genoa and had its independent status confirmed by the King of France and the Duke of Savoy in 1489. But in the centuries that followed, the Grimaldis presided over a territory under increasing pressure from the consolidating nation-states surrounding it. From 1793 to 1814, Monaco was even occupied by revolutionary France.

The Congress of Vienna designated Monaco as a protectorate of the Kingdom of Sardinia from 1815 to 1860, whereafter the surrounding county of Nice (and the Duchy of Savoy) was ceded to France. During this time, the Grimaldi-ruled towns of Menton and Roquebrune (which had been acquired as early as 1341) declared independence, hoping for annexation by Sardinia. The unrest ended in 1861, when Monaco ceded both towns (95% of its territory) to France in exchange for 4 million francs.

Having lost so much terrain on land, Monaco turned to the sea. The map on both lower stamps shows the amount of territory gained by landfill (plus dates of completion); as well as the extension of territorial waters to 12 nautical miles in 1984. The panoramic view at the very bottom is of the present-day western half of Monaco.

81 - The First Turkish World Map, by Kashgari (1072)

This map, made by Mahmud Kashgari bin Husayn bin Muhammad, was included in his Divanu Lügat-it-Türk, a scientific work he published in 1072 (AD) for the benefit of the Caliph of Baghdad. It is the first world map of Turkish origin known in history, and is preserved at the General National Library (Millet Genel Kütüphanesi) in Istanbul. It is presented on a stamp issued in 1972, on the occasion of the map’s nine-hundredth birthday.

The map is oriented with the east on top (but is shown here with north on top) and centres on the Turkic areas in Central Asia, which include Kashgar, the birth-place of Kashgari. The map scale is reduced towards the edges of the map. The geographical features are colour-coded thus:

• Blue – rivers
• Green – seas
• Light yellow – deserts
• Red – mountains
• Yellow – cities, countries, lands and peoples

This map was taken from the excellent stamp website mentioned in the previous post, and is overlaid with numbers 1-24 to indicate references to (mostly) real places. Which are:

1. Bulgaria (judging by its location, probably the so-called Wolga-Bulgaria rather than present-day Bulgaria)
2. Caspian Sea
3. ‘Rus’ (Russia)
4. Alexandria
5. Egypt
6. Tashkent
7. Japan (surrounded by a green semicircle)
8. China (with water to the west)
9. Balasagun (now in Kyrgyzstan, then the ‘centre of the world’)
10. Kashgar (the map-maker’s birthplace)
11. Samarqand
12. Iraq
13. Azerbaijan
14. Yemen
15. East Somalia
16. East Sahara
17. Ethiopia
18. North Somalia
19. Indus
20. Hindustan
21. Ceylon (Adam’s Peak or Jebel Serandib, indicated by the red dot on the south of the island, supposedly is where Adam was exiled to after being kicked out of Paradise)
22. Kashmir
23. Gog and Magog (Biblical/legendary land walled off from the world by a mountain range)
24. The World-Encircling Sea

80 - Trieste, Zones A and B

 

Following World War II, the city of Trieste and its environs was administered as the Free Territory of Trieste. The area was contested between Italy and Yugoslavia. Trieste was the southern point of the newly-descended Iron Curtain, as Yugoslavia had turned communist, therefore ‘upgrading’ a mere border dispute to a flashpoint with World War III potential.

In 1954, the so-called London Memorandum divided the Free Territory of Trieste in two zones, with Zone A falling under Italian jurisdiction and Zone B to be administered by Yugoslavia.

The memorandum was officialised by the signing of the 1975 Treaty of Osimo. In 1992, the independent state of Slovenia assumed jurisdiction over the former Yugoslav Zone B. 

On this map ‘Cona A’ and ‘Cona B’ are easily identifiable. The Slovenian place names Gorica and Trst indicate the now-Italian towns of Gorizia and Trieste. Trzic, Piran and Koper are presently Slovenian, N. Grad, Buje, Miu(e), Porec, Rovinj and Rijeka are Croatian.

This map appeared on a stamp issued in 2004 by Slovenia, commemorating the 50th anniversary of the London Memorandum. The map was found on Dan’s Topical Stams, an excellent philately website which I’m sure to revisit, as it features many interesting maps…

79 - East Germany Lives On - As A Tiny Carribean Island

Most people think East Germany ceased to exist in 1990, when the (East) German Democratic Republic was absorbed by the Federal Republic of (West) Germany. So did I. Turns out I was wrong: the GDR lives on, and in a very comfortable climate to boot: a small island off Cuba is the last official territory of the good old Deutsche Demokratische Republik.

In a military exclusion zone in the Gulf of Cazones, not far to the south-west of the infamous Bay of Pigs, lies a small island formerly known as Cayo Blanco de Sur. The island is 15 km long, but never more than 500 metres wide (although another source claims it is 24 km long and 1 km wide). It is uninhabited but for the iguanas and birds that are indigenous there, and the occasional tourists stopping over. The area is very biodiverse, hosting several endangered species of fish and coral. The reefs make the island inaccessible to any but the smallest boats, and even then landing often involves wading ashore.

In June 1972, Fidel Castro while on a state visit to East Berlin gifted the island to East Germany. Cuba renamed it Cayo Ernesto Thaelmann, after the German communist politician. Ernst Thälmann (German spelling) was leader of the German Communist Party (KPD) during much of the Weimar era, unsuccessfully stood for the presidency against Hitler and was imprisoned without trial from 1933 until his execution in 1944.

The southern beach of the island was renamed Playa RDA (‘GDR Beach’), and in August 1972, the East German ambassador to Cuba erected a bust of Ernst Thälmann on communist Germany’s one and only foothold in the tropics. In 1975, East German Schlager singer Frank Schöbel traveled to the island to record ‘Insel im Golf von Cazones’ on the spot – a musical effort which apparently has been lost to posterity. The island wasn’t mentioned in the treaty unifying both Germanys, which makes it at least thinkable that at present it’s the last remaining piece of East German territory. For the reunified (and capitalist) Germany post-1990 never made any formal claims on the island.In 1998, the island was severely battered by hurricane ‘Mitch’ – the bust of Thälmann fell over and hasn’t been replaced since. In 2001, the German online newspaper ‘Thema 1’ learned of the existence of Ernst Thälmann Insel and attempted to parcel it up for sale. The renewed interest by a re-united, ‘capitalist’ Germany embarrassed Cuba, which denied German journalists access to the island and declared that the 1972 transfer was ‘symbolic’ only…

This story is so nicely bizarre that I originally posted it without a map of the island. Many thanks to all who commented on ways to find an image of the place (although this is a satellite image, so technically not a ’strange map’). And thanks especially to Erik, for providing the picture above, and pointing out that the coordinates point to the southwestern of the longer islands in the arc of islands (as they aren’t labelled). Anyone able to provide an actual map of the island is still more than welcome to do so!

78 - The Most Generic Country Ever

This map is from the Agile Rabbit Book of Historical and Curious Maps (Pepin Press, 2005). It’s a British map dating from 1897, explaining geographical terms by showing them in the sort of landscape they’re supposed to describe… In the process producing a map of the most generic country ever.

The country is bounded in the south by an ocean called ‘Ocean’, which closer to land is labelled ‘Gulf’, ‘Sea’, ‘Channel’ and ‘Bay’. Several islands are named ‘Island’, except where they occur in a group, in which case they’re called ‘Group of Islands or Archipelago’. Or ‘Islets’ where they’re very small. Other land features include several ‘Capes’, a few ‘Promontories’ (also called ‘Headlands’), a ‘Sea Shore’, some ‘Cliffs’, a few ‘Peninsulas’, of which one is connected to the mainland (called ‘Continent’) by an ‘Isthmus’.

A ‘Sea Port Town’ is located near a ‘Port or Harbour’, slightly further inland is a city called ‘City’ and further still a village called ‘Village’. To the east is a ‘Town or City’ (one wonders when a locality is a ‘Town or City’ rather than just a ‘City’). There are several streams labelled ‘River’, some of which instructively have a ‘Tributary’ or end in a ‘Delta’. A ‘Canal’ is marked to differentiate it from the natural flows it connects.

A ‘Water Shed’ divides the draining systems of different rivers, and in the distance a ‘Hill’ and two ‘Mountains’ (one culminating in a ‘Table’, the other in a ‘Peak’) demonstrate the different types of elevation. To the east, a ‘Crater’ and a ‘Volcano’, puffing away, complete the picture. Other natural features include a ‘Desert’, punctuated by the inevitable ‘Oasis’, a ‘Lake’ and a much larger ‘Lake or Inland Sea’.

As for other map features referring to human presence, there are ‘Boundaries’, and ‘Roads’ crossing at, you guessed it, ‘Crossroads’. The country is called ‘Country or Kingdom’ (republics being unwanted impositions on the tender imaginations of turn-of-the-19th-century British school kids, I suppose).

77 - The Abercrombie Plan for London as a Park City

No cloud without a silver lining: the extensive bombing damage to London during the Second World War provided an opportunity to develop a drastic plan for a green, open-spaced city in the post-war era. Even before the bombing began, London already had a reputation as being an open-spaced place, albeit in an unplanned fashion, having engulfed royal parks such as St James’s, Green and Hyde Parks in a 19th century growing spurt. This impromptu arrangement inspired planners such as Haussmann, who applied its principles to the redesign of Paris, and Frederick Law Olmsted who had it in mind while creating the Emerald Necklace in Boston.

Town planner Leslie Patrick Abercrombie devised the County of London Park System in 1943 and the Greater London Regional Plan in 1944, while the bombs were still falling. The second plan being an elaboration of the first, both are known collectively as the ‘Open Space System’ or simply the ‘Abercrombie Plan’, because both clearly bore the stamp of his half century of experience in architecture and planning. Abercrombie (1879-1957) had been professor of Civic Design at the Liverpool School of Architecture and of Town Planning at University College in London. He was past president of the Town Planning Institute, a member of the Institute of Landscape Architects and a fellow of the Royal Institute of British Architects. Pre-war, he made award-winning designs for Dublin, Hull, Bath, Edinburgh, Bournemouth and other cities. After 1945 (when he became a Sir), Abercrombie was commissioned to redesign Hong Kong by the British government, and by Haile Selassie to draw up plans for Addis Abeba.

“Adequate open space for both recreation and rest is a vital factor in maintaining and improving the health of the people”, begins the ‘Abercrombie Plan’. It’s at once a visionary plan, in that it creates a coordinated Park System, and a very detailed one in its many comments and varied recommendations.

Details such as the contemporary ratio of open space per 1.000 persons (2,43 hectares in Woolwich, 0,04 in Shoreditch). Abercrombie proposed a ‘standard of open space’ of 1,62 hectares (or four acres) per 1.000 people, “considerably below the 2,83 hectares (or 7 acres) suggested by many competent authorities, both in this and other countries but it is put forward in view of the already highly developed use of the land in these areas.” Of these open spaces, Abercrombie said that “(they) need to be considered as a whole, and to be co-ordinated into a closely-linked park system, with parkways along existing and new roads forming the links between larger parks.” The goal was that city-dwellers could “get from their doorstep to open country through an easy flow of open space from garden to park, from park to parkway, from parkway to green wedge and from green wedge to Green Belt.”

Abercrombie identified seven categories of parkways: linear strips of open space; riverside walks; footpaths through farmland; bridle tracks and green lanes; bicycle tracks; motor parkways; and express arterial roads. In the plan, a Green Belt Ring of about 8 kilometres deep would be used for recreational purposes, with a mainly agricultural Outer Country Ring. In both rings, no new building would be allowed and an extensive system of radial and connecting footpaths was to be created.

Most of Abercrombie’s plan was never implemented in its totality; some parts were, though. The most developed part is the Lee Valley Regional Park Authority, created by a special Act of Parliament in 1968 and today still funded by a tax on all of London – apparently despite the fact that the park is mainly used by locals. Another element in the Abercrombie Plan that made it off the drawing board were New Towns to be built outside the Outer Country Ring, such as Stevenage, Harlow, Crawley and Harold Hill.

This map taken from this page at the London Landscape Web, which advocates a change in London city planning much in the spirit of the Abercrombie Plan.

76 - Driving Orientation: A World Map

Another traffic map of sorts. If this world map vaguely looks like it’s highlighting a remnant of the British Empire, that’s no coincidence. This map shows which side of the road traffic drives on.

Dark blue: drives on left (mainly British ex-colonies).
Light blue: used to drive on right, now on left (Namibia).
Purple: used to have mixed system, now drives on right.
Light red: used to drive on left, now on right.
Dark red: drives on right.

As one might gather from the map, the story of left or right hand side driving is more than just a derivative of British Imperialism. Right-handedness, a trait shared by 85 to 90% of people, is the reason for the initial preference for left and for the switch to right side driving.

Throughout the ages, horsemen preferred passing each other on the left side, because this allowed them to hold on to the reins with their left hand while with their right they shook hands with or swords at passers-by (as the situation warranted).

In the late 1700s, teamsters in many countries switched to bigger freight waggons drawn by multiple pairs of horses. They would sit on the left rear horse, thus able to whip with their right hand. This allowed them better vision on their left-hand side, so they preferred the opposing traffic to cross them on the left – meaning they switched to driving on the right-hand side of the road. So nowadays, an estimated 66% of people worldwide live in right-hand side countries, and 72% of all distances are completed while driving on the right side of the road.

Britain was the main exception: smaller waggons meant the driver was able to sit on top of them, not needing to ride one of the horses. British drivers remained seated on the right-hand side, and thus kept driving on the left-hand side of the road. This British custom would be adopted in most if not all British colonies, at least initially.

One of the main promulgators of driving on the right was revolutionary France, at that time Britain’s arch-enemy, thus lending a ‘political’ subtext to this purely practical question. France spread the practice to most of the countries it conquered at the turn of the 19th century.

Even in spite of France’s revolutionary conquests, several European countries other than Great-Britain kept their traffic on the left of the street. Most eventually made the switch to right side driving: Finland (1858), Russia (at the end of the Czarist era), Italy (1924), Portugal (1928), Austria, Czechoslovakia and Hungary (all three in the Nazi era), Sweden (1967) and Iceland (1968). One boy broke his leg due to that last European switch. Today, the only European countries driving on the left of the road, excepting Britain, were once ruled by it: Ireland, Malta and Cyprus (including the separate but internationally unrecognised Turkish republic of Northern Cyprus). Ironically, Gibraltar, the last colony in Europe and still ruled by Britain, switched to right-hand driving in 1929.

Many former British colonies outside of Europe continue to drive left: India, Pakistan, Hong Kong (even though it’s been returned to right-side driving China in 1997), Australia, New Zealand and the former British colonies in the West Indies. Macau and Mozambique also drive on the left. Colonies of Portugal, they opted for the ‘British’ side of the road due to proximity to British colonies. This may also be why Suriname, a former Dutch colony in South America, drives on the left: its neighbour is the ex-British, left-driving country of Guyana. Those two countries are the last on continental America to drive left.

Many other ex-British colonies did change to driving on the right, as with Gibraltar mostly to conform to the practice on the other side of the border. In Canada, the practice varied between the provinces and territories. The switch to the right side took place from 1920 onwards, to be completed by Newfoundland in 1947. Other cases in point: Belize (1961), the Gambia, Ghana, Nigeria, Sierra Leone and Burma (1970).

The introduction of right-side driving sometimes did coincide with anti-British politics. This certainly was a factor in the American switch (the USA went right-side not long after independence, from 1792 onwards). And both on the Channel Islands, occupied by Germany in 1940, as on the Falklands, occupied by Argentina in the early 1980s, right-side driving was imposed, only to be reversed when both territories were reconquered by the British.

In spite of all the preceding, the choice of which side to drive on can not be reduced to a matter of British influence or not. Japan, Indonesia, Thailand, and the US Virgin Islands were never British colonies, but today they too drive on the left. An overview of left-side driving countries per continent:

Africa: Botswana, Kenya, Lesotho, Malawi, Mozambique, Namibia, South Africa, Swaziland, Tanzania, Uganda, Zambia and Zimbabwe. (off Africa: ) Mauritius, Saint Helena, Seychelles.

Asia: Bangladesh, Bhutan, Brunei, East Timor, Hong Kong, India, Indonesia, Japan, Malaysia, Maldives, Nepal, Pakistan, Singapore, Sri Lanka, Thailand.

In the Carribbean: Anguilla, Antigua and Barbuda, Bahamas, Barbados, Cayman Islands, Dominica, Grenada, Jamaica, Montserrat, Saint Kitts and Nevis, Saint Lucia, Saint Vincent and the Grenadines, Trinidad and Tobago, Turks and Caicos Islands, British Virgin Island, US Virgin Islands.

On mainland America: Guyana and Suriname. (off mainland America: ) Bermuda, Falkland Islands.

In Oceania: Australia and dependencies, Cook Islands, Fiji, Kiribati, New Zealand, Nauru, Niue, Norfolk Island, Papua New Guinea, Pitcairn Islands, Solomon Islands, Tokelau, Tonga, Tuvalu.

In Europe: Great Britain and dependencies (Channel Islands, Isle of Man), Cyprus, Ireland, Malta.

Upon review, the map does not correspond to all the info given here (for example, the text says Russia switched to right side driving while the map shows it always did); however both the map and the explanations were taken from the Wikipedia page about left-hand driving.

75 - A Diagram of the Eisenhower Interstate System

The Dwight D. Eisenhower National System of Interstate and Defense Highways (Eisenhower Interstate System for short) spans the entire USA, including Alaska and Hawaii. The EIS serves all major American cities and has a total length of 75.376 km (2004). And yet most of it is represented here in this diagram so simple that it looks rather more like a subway map than a road map.

Some interesting bits of info about the EIS:

• The EIS was initiated by Eisenhower in 1956, partly because he was impressed with the German system of Autobahns., which provided easy transport also for military purposes.
• The system was considered complete in as of September 15, 1991, when the last traffic signal was removed from I-90 in Wallace, Idaho.
• The accumulated cost of the EIS was $114 billion (original estimate: $25 billion).
• Interstates are funded and regulated federally, but owned by the states. The only exception is the Woodrow Wilson Bridge on the Capital Beltway (I-95/I-495), which is federally owned.
• The name ‘Interstate’ does not refer to the fact that these Highways cross state lines, but to the fact that they were funded federally. In fact, many don’t cross state lines. Best example: the Interstates on the island state of Hawaii.
• Most Interstates have two numbers (I-4, I-5 and I-8 are the only single-digit Interstates). Three-digit Interstates are auxiliary highways.
• Highways running east-west are given even numbers, those running north-south are assigned odd uneven. As a general rule, odd-numbered highways increase from west to east, and even-numbered ones from south to north. And highways divisible by 5 generally are bigger and longer than others.
• A widespread urban legend states that one out of every five miles of the Interstate Highway System must be built straight and flat so as to be usable by aircraft during times of war; this is not true.
• The most heavily traveled area of the Interstate Highway system is the 405 Freeway in Seal Beach, California, with a 2002 estimate of 377.000 vehicles a day. The least traveled section is I-95 just north of Houlton, Maine, with 1,880 vehicles a day (2001 estimate).

For info on the provenance of this picture, see first comment on previous post.

74 - The United States of Stellaland

Nowadays, the southern tip of Africa is dominated by a single state, the Republic of South Africa (punctuated by Lesotho, one of the world’s few enclave-states). But starting about a century and a half ago, when the usurping British were pushing the Dutch-originated Afrikaners inland, the eastern part of the RSA’s present territory was littered with a number of Boererepublieke (‘boer’ means ‘farmer’, but became synonymous with white, Afrikaans-speaking and anti-British).  

These republics were later annexed by the British, after two Anglo-Boer Wars at the end of the 19^th and the beginning of the 20^th century. The largest and best-known of these republics became constituent provinces of the Union of South Africa (later Republic of South Africa): the Orange Free State, Transvaal and Natal. But there were also smaller Boererepublieke that just disappeared off the map, including the intriguingly small and short-lived United States of Stellaland (1882-1885).

Stellaland owes its existence to the war between the Batlaping and the Korannas, black tribes that had both hired white mercenaries. David Massouw, leader of the Korannas, had promised the Boers homesteads if they helped him win the war. After the war ended in July of 1882, these homesteads were granted to exactly 416 white farmers, who thereafter considered themselves ‘free citizens’ and formed the independent republic of Stellaland on July 26, 1882.

The name was chosen to refer to the comet that was visible in the sky at the time of the decisive battle (although Stella is Latin for ‘star’, not for ‘comet’). The capital city was called Vryburg (‘Freetown’), on a place known to the Tswana as Huhudi (‘Running Water’). First and only president was Gerrit Jacobus van Niekerk (1849-1896). Stellaland expanded to include the neighbouring boer republic of Goosen. The two nations were known collectively as the United States of Stellaland.

Stellaland aspired to be united with the big boer republic to the east, Transvaal. The British government, then in control of the formerly Dutch Cape Province, objected to the westwardly expansion of Transvaal, and decided to invade. An expeditionary force under Sir Charles Warren entered the territory in February 1885, and it was formally annexed to British Bechuanaland on September 30, 1885.

During Apartheid, the area around Vryburg was a ‘white’ island in the (nominally) independent Bantustan of Bophutatswana. Since 1994, when the RSA’s administrative divisions were reorganised following the end of Apartheid,  the area is part of the North West Province of the RSA. Today, the name ‘Stellaland’ is still used to refer to the area around the villages of Vryburg, Stella and Reivilo.

Stellaland has had three different flags in its short existence, the first being the state emblem on a green background, the second a six-pointed white star on the same green and the third an eight-pointed white star on a field split vertically between green (left) and red (right). One of the reasons for this diversity is that apparently the president’s wife had to make all those flags herself, and didn’t always have the right material to copy a previous design.

This map taken from the Wikipedia page on Stellaland.

73 - What the World May Come To: a Tetrahedron

Notwithstanding the fact that celestial objects of a certain mass generally are spherical in shape, an article in My Magazine, dated May 1918 (and titled What the World May Come To: The School Maps As They May Be in Millions of Years to Come) predicts that the earth is spinning itself into a tetrahedron. The explanation, as one can imagine, is very dodgy. The accompanying picture of the globe is strange enough to be figured here.

The article concludes: “We may be sorry for the editors and poets in those days. It is pleasant to write of sailing round the globe, or of this spinning ball, but who would not pity the poet who has to write and make his rhymes about some bold Sir Francis Drake’s brave journey round the tetrahedron? We hope the League of Nations will rule the Tetrahedron well.”

72 - The World As Seen From New York’s 9th Avenue

  Many New Yorkers feel their city is more than just the (self-proclaimed) capital of the world. They think it actually is most of the world, the rest of the planet merely being the unavoidable orchard in which their Big Apple grows.

Several cartoons illustrate this metropolitan hubris, and they do it so well – and with self-irony rather than sarcasm – that they can’t but have been made by New Yorkers. A nice one is Daniel K. Wallingford’s US map skewed to give NYC prominence over the rest of the country, which is mislabeled as a sign of New York arrogance and ignorance. That map dates from the nineteen thirties. I’m still looking for an image with sufficient resolution for me to post it here.

Another one is already on this blog (see post #37): a cover of the New Yorker magazine in the aftermath of 9/11 depicting the city as  ‘Newyorkistan’: its neighbourhoods renamed after far-off places and lesser-known tribes. Which is another way to ‘think the world’ of New York.

The map in this post is another, earlier cover of the New Yorker. In 1976, artist Saul Steinberg drew up this depiction of the world as seen from New York’s 9^th Avenue. Not being a New Yorker myself, I don’t know why this Avenue was chosen as the Centre of the World. Some observations:

• The map looks west, over 10^th Avenue and the Hudson into the rest of the US.
• The US is presented as a rectangle, bounded by Mexico to the left, Canada to the right and the Pacific Ocean on the far side.
• Right across the Hudson lies Jersey – in nondescript terrain but owing to its proximity to NYC still in bigger type than the rest.
• Washington DC is already much smaller (and almost in Mexico).
• Some rocks and a single bush (funnily enough near Las Vegas, where there’s not much vegetation) form the only distinguishing features.
• The only places that are mentioned in further away than DC and Jersey are Texas and Utah (as states) and Chicago, Las Vegas and Los Angeles (as cities).
• The US ends at the Pacific, across which are visible Japan (as a single island), which divides the land mass further away into China (to the left of Japan) and Russia (to her right).

Was this cover construed only to convey the fact that New York is rather self-centered? Or does the orientation also have some significance? Because it does seem strange that NYC, on the East Coast, has its back turned to Europe, which is completely absent in this map…

71 - The Island of California

One of the most famous misconceptions in cartographic history is of California as an island. The origin of this error is Las Sergas de Esplandian, a romantic novel written in 1510 by Garci Rodriguez de Montalvo, stating

“that on the right hand of the Indies there is an island called California very close to the side of the Terrestrial Paradise; and it is peopled by black women, without any man among them, for they live in the manner of the Amazons.”

This idealised view of California as a kind of Garden of Eden at the edge of the known world was negated by Father Eusebio Kino’s expedition from 1698 to 1701. Kino proved that Baja California, the (currently Mexican) peninsula which runs parallel to the mainland for hundreds of miles, is connected to it in the north.

Doubts remained, however, and the issue was finally laid to rest only with the expeditions of Juan Bautista de Anza (1774-1776).

It is somehow fitting that California, now home to the entertainment industry in general and Hollywood in particular, itself should be named after a fictional place first mentioned in a novel. Baja California was discovered in 1533 by a mutineer from Hernan Cortes‘ expedition into Mexico, followed by a trip by Cortes himself to that area (near present-day La Paz, on the southern tip of the peninsula). The lay of the land led him to believe this to be the island of ‘California’ from Montalvo’s novel.

Expeditions in 1539 and later seemed to indicate California was a peninsula, and at first it was thus shown on maps, including some by Mercator and Ortelius. Nevertheless, the idea of an insular California was revived, probably in part by the fictional accounts of Juan de Fuca. He claimed to have found a large opening in the western coast of North America, possibly the legendary Northwest Passage.

Further inspiration was the overland expedition by Juan de Oñate who descended the Colorado River (1604-1605) and believed he saw the Gulf of California continuing off to the northwest. California reappeared on the map as an island for the first time in 1622 in a map by Michiel Colijn of Amsterdam and this image would endure far into the 18th Century.

This map by Johannes Vingboons (1639) taken from the Library of Congress at this page.