170 - A Map of the Internet’s Black Holes

The series of tubes famously dubbed the ‘internets’ by president G.W. Bush* constitute a world wide web of interconnectedness. But, as this map demonstrates, there are some black holes in that web. They represent the 15 countries that limit or prohibit their citizens’ access to internet as a way of censoring the free flow of information.

Perhaps most notorious among those countries is China, with its Great Firewall (and its insistence on self-censorship by non-Chinese companies operating within the Middle Kingdom). Other countries also maintain firewalls, notably Saudi Arabia, while less-developed nations might just not allow their citizens to own computers.

This map was commissioned by Reporters Without Borders, which also publishes a World Ranking of press freedom. As the list of the 15 internet-restricting countries (followed by their ranking on said list) indicates, internet censorship is a strong indicator of press censorship in general:

1. Maldives (144)
2. Tunisia (148)
3. Belarus (151)
4. Libya (152)
5. Syria (153)
6. Vietnam (155)
7. Uzbekistan (158)
8. Nepal (159)
9. Saudi Arabia (161)
10. Iran (162)
11. China (163)
12. Myanmar/Burma (164)
13. Cuba (165)
14. Turkmenistan (167)
15. North Korea (168 and very last on the list)

I happened to be in one of those countries earlier this year. While attempting to go online in a hotel, I was told that the “internet was closed for the day.” I should try again the next day, when there was supervision. Which I did as early as possible: had I waited too long, the internet undoubtedly would have been on its lunch break.

Thanks to Jack E. Alexander for pointing out this map, which can be found here. The official site for Reporters Without Borders is here.

* : it was Alaska Senator Ted Stevens who called the internet ‘a series of tubes’. George W. Bush referred to the world wide web as ‘the internets’ both in the 2000 and the 2004 presidential election campaigns.

169 - The British Isles Inside Borneo

Preceded only by faraway Greenland (2.130.800 sq. km, 822.706 sq. mi.) and nearby New Guinea (785.753 sq. km, 303.381 sq. mi.), Borneo is the third-largest island in the world (748.168 sq. km, 288.869 sq. mi.) That’s a somewhat surprising accolade for this low-key South East Asian island with an institutionally split personality.

Borneo is shared by three states: the southern chunk is Indonesian, most of the northern part is Malaysian except for the enclaved sovereign sultanate of Brunei Darussalam (itself consisting of two non-contiguous parts). The Indonesians refer to their part of the island as Kalimantan, in Malaysia the Bornean states of Sabah and Sarawak are simply referred to as East Malaysia.

The two main British Isles are a bit further down the list of largest islands. Great Britain (218.595 sq. km, 84.400 sq. mi.) still is the eighth-largest, after the Japanese main island of Honshu and before the Canadian arctic island of Victoria . Ireland (81.638 sq. km, 31.521 sq. mi.), i.e. the Republic plus Northern Ireland (the British-governed part of Ireland) is the world’s 20th-largest island, after the southern Philippine island of Mindanao and before the northern Japanese island of Hokkaido. Together, they measure up about 300.000 sq. km (116.000 sq. mi.), or less than half of Borneo.

For the benefit of his primarily British readers, 19th-century naturalist and explorer Alfred Russel Wallace included this map in his 1869 book The Malay Archipelago, comparing the size of the British Isles with that of Borneo to give them an idea of the vastness of the place. The British Isles are shown in their normal projection (north up) while Borneo is tilted (east up) to provide better shelter for the British Isles.

Welsh-born Alfred Russel Wallace (1823-1913) dedicated his book to “Charles Darwin, author of The Origin of Species (…) not only as a token of personal esteem and friendship, but also to express my deep admiration for his genius and works.”

Yet Wallace was quite an important figure himself in the field of evolutionary biology, as in anthropology and geographical exploration. While exploring the Malay archipelago, he discovered the Wallace line, dividing the Australian fauna from that of Asia. Also named after him are Wallace’s flying frog and the ‘Wallace effect’, the hypothesis that natural selection can contribute to the reproductive isolation of incipient species by encouraging varieties to develop barriers to hybridisation. Wallace proposed a theory of natural selection independent of Darwin, prompting the latter to publish his theory sooner than intended.

Although not the acknowledged progenitor of the evolution theory, Wallace is considered the father of biogeography, the study of the geographical distribution of animal species. In fact in biogeography, ‘Wallacea’ describes a group of Indonesian islands separated by deep water from Asia as well as Australia (i.e. Lombok, Komodo, Flores, Sumba, Timor, Sulawesi and the North Moluccan islands).

The Malay Archipelago was one of the most popular journals of scientific exploration of its time, kept continuously in print from its publication in 1869 into the second decade of the 20th century. Joseph Conrad (of Heart of Darkness fame) called it his “favourite bedside companion”. Despite his scientific importance, Wallace’s relations with other evolutionists were somewhat strained by his belief in spiritualism. He is sometimes labelled one of the ‘forgotten evolutionists’. Darwin successfully campaigned for Wallace to receive a state pension of £200 per annum so that he could overcome the endemic poverty he lived in at the time.

This map, placing Sarawak just off Ireland’s westernmost Dingle Peninsula, London on the Prime Meridian, slicing off Borneo’s south and the Shetlands touching Borneo’s eastern side, can be found here on papuaweb, a website dedicated to issues relevant to the Indonesian provinces of Papua and Papua Barat (formerly collectively known as Irian Jaya) for students, researchers, development workers, community leaders, government agencies and others.

168 - “Does My Brazil Look Big in This?”

 

This little piece of fashion cartography was made by Dutch artist Coriette Schoenaerts, based in Amsterdam and London. On her website, she explains why she went to the trouble to organize expensive clothing into the outlines of South America (here), the Netherlands (here) and Europe (here):

“The central theme of [Rails Magazine] was countries and borders. Contrary to the usual fashion photography, that shows off the newest clothes on a human body and wants to sell an ideal, I made still lives depicting maps and landscapes.”

One has to wonder, though, whether it wouldn’t have been better to compose the maps of clothing more ’suited’ to each map. But then again, maybe Coriette didn’t have enough tanga slips to fill out the whole of South America. It seems they’re rolled up to compose the Falkland Islands. Most of the South American countries are well defined, although Argentinians might object to that brown shawl representing the southern part of Chile, intruding too far into Patagonia. Also, Uruguay, Ecuador and the Guyanas will probably mind being left off the map, even if it’s a less conventional one.

Interesting and possibly unintended cartographic analogy: the folds in the bed cover resemble the latitudinal and longitudinal lines  on maps.

Thanks to George for providing the link.

167 - Gales in the Atlantic, Gaels in the North Sea

On 23 July 1977, this map appeared in Krazy Comic, a short-lived (Oct ’76 – Apr ’78) British comic magazine. Judging by the colours alone, this is pretty much your standard atlas relief chart, green being low-lying land and ever brighter colours indicating higher altitudes (and differing hues of blue showing underwater elevations). But it’s not an ordinary map. Something funny happened to the islands of Ireland and Great Britain. The largest two of the British Isles have switched place, supposedly after a gale swept the Gaels of Ireland over what is sometimes referred to as the ‘mainland’ and dropped the Emerald Isle in the North Sea somewhere between England and Holland. More has happened to the map – indicated by the mode of projection indicated at the top left hand corner of the map: comical, not conical.

• just about where Dublin should be is the fabled Leprechaun Leap, most likely a fanciful name referring to the shamrock-wearing ginger-haired magical midgets that populate Irish jokes, fairy-tales and stereotypes.
• The Irish Sea, normally located between Dublin and Wales, now is to be found between the Firth of Forth and the mouth of the Shannon.
• Off the coast of East Anglia, there are some suspicious looking Ink Blobs. Maybe just another oil spill?
• The Cap Gris Nez, at 34 km distance France’s closest point near Britain, is renamed Frogslegs Leap. Also note that Great Britain has been towed our further into the sea; no way that Dover is only 34 km from France.
• In southern England, the South Downs have been rebranded as the South Ups, to further distinguish them from the North Downs.
• A place called The Steppes can be found on the river Ouse.
• Near there is The Wash, for comical purposes accompanied by The Soap.
• The Mississippi winds its way north through the heart of England.
• The Wise and Morecambe Bay is renamed to include both comedians.
• The aforementioned Irish Sea is rechristened to give the Welsh their own body of water: the Welsh Sea.
• The place of Ireland is taken up by the Indian Ocean, making us wonder what may lie beyond the western confines of this map…

This map was kindly provided by Adrian Bailey.

166 - Neisse Border, If You Can Get One

After 1945, Germany lost about a quarter of its pre-1933 territory to Poland and the Soviet Union. The German-Polish border was established at the so-called Oder-Neisse Line, after the two rivers that separate both states today.

Although the border is not in dispute, its establishment remains a touchy issue: millions of Germans were driven westward from Prussia, Pomerania, Silesia and other regions where their ancestors had lived for centuries. They were replaced by Soviets (in the part of East Prussia that became the Russian enclaved oblast of Kaliningrad) and by Poles who were themselves displaced by the Soviets (as the Soviet-Polish border also moved west). Nobody sympathised with the displaced Germans’ plight at the time, and even now the attitude in most of Europe (and much of Germany) is: Germany started a brutal war of conquest and lost it; it’s only natural they should be punished for it, by losing territory.

And yet, Germany post-1945 could have been a bit bigger than it actually is nowadays. In March 2007, the German newspaper Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung (FAZ) published an article, detailing Stalin’s plans for the post-war eastern German border. It was accompanied by a map from summer 1944, recently found in the Russian State Archives. The Soviet dictator himself drew the proposed boundaries between Germany and Poland. According to this map, the whole of Lower Silesia (Niederschlesien in German) would have remained German, and the city of Breslau (presently Wroclaw in Poland) would have become a divided (or jointly administered) German-Polish city.

Bizarrely, this proposed border would also have been an Oder-Neisse-line: in this map, Lower Silesia is separated from Poland by the Glatzer Neisse, while the present-day border is composed of the Lausitzer (or Görlitzer) Neisse, 200 km to the west. In the FAZ, Polish historian Bogdan Musial gave some background to the shifting to the west (“westverschiebung”) of the German-Polish border.

At the Conference of Tehran at the end of 1943, Roosevelt (US), Churchill (UK) and Stalin (USSR) agreed in principle on moving the Polish-German border (and dividing Germany itself in a western and an eastern zone of influence). A border on the Neisse was agreed upon, without specifying whether this would be the western or eastern of both rivers.

Only at the Yalta Conference in February 1945 did Stalin insist on the western of both eponymous rivers – in part to compensate Poland for his insistance to include the ancient Polish city of Lwow in the Soviet Union. The western powers were adamant in their opposition to the western Neisse plan.

But in the summer of 1945, at the Potsdam Conference, Stalin pushed through his modified proposal. This push westward, hard to swallow for many Germans (and indeed not recognised by West Germany until 1970), gave Stalin additional leverage over Poland, the untouchability of its new, controversial western borders his army could be counted on to guarantee.

The new border also had a practical advantage: it was the shortest, and therefore easiest to defend border between Germany and Poland, only 472 km long. Finally, it should be noted that the present border is not the westernmost of all proposed borders: one plan called for the inclusion in Poland of areas west of the Lausitzer Neisse, i.c. the region around Cottbus and Bautzen, home of the Sorbs, a Slavic minority in Germany.

165 - Licking Europe: Asia As A Horse

Heinrich Bunting’s Itinerarium Sacra Scripturae (’Travels According to the Scriptures’), first published in 1581, contained accurate maps of the Holy Land, but also three maps of pure fantasy. Two of those have already been described on this site: the world in the form of a cloverleaf (entry #87) and Europe as a queen (entry #141). This is the third one.

The title of this map is Asia Secunda Pars Terrae in Forma Pegasir (’Asia, the Second Part of the Earth, in the Form of Pegasus‘). The winged horse of Greek mythology is the son of Poseidon and Medusa, was tamed by Athena and became the horse of the Muses. This obviously pagan origin of the image makes its appearance in a Holy Land travel book a bit of a mystery.

On this map, Pegasus is drawn realistically – i.e. Asia is adjusted to horse-shape.
• Asia’s front legs, touching Africa with the knees, constitute Arabia.
• Its head, licking Europe, is Asia Minor (present-day Turkey).
• The Tigris and Euphrates rivers run down its neck, on which is marked the area of Mesopotamia.
• Another river indicated, at the horse’s thigh, is the Ganges, with India Infra Gangem (‘India before the Ganges’) to the west and India Extra Gangem (‘India across the Ganges’).
• The horse’s behind is India Orientalis (’East India‘, which could be used for parts east of present-day India, e.g. Indonesia, formerly the Dutch East Indies).
• Both hind legs are inscribed with India Meridionalis (’South India’), which doesn’t at all reflect the single-peninsular nature of the Indian subcontinent.
• The wings are labelled Scythia and Tartaria, names often used to describe the vast unknown areas of Siberia.
• The body of water in between the wings and the horse’s body is the Caspian Sea.

This map found at the Cartographical Curiosities section of the Yale University Library Map Collection.

164 - A Cat’s Map of the Bed

For at least 10.000 years, the animal known to taxonomists as Felis silvestris catus has been among the dearest friends of Homo sapiens sapiens. Their tendency to hunt rats, mice and other vermin earned them the most-favoured pet status.

Contributing to their popularity with early farmers is the fact that cats are strict meat-eaters, passing over the precious harvest of grain and other vegetables. Cats are known to hunt over 1.000 different animal species for food. The Egyptians venerated the mythical cat Bast as goddess of the home and protector of the fields and home from vermin.

Nowadays, for many people, cats are even more familiar than gods: they’re full members of the household. Through thousands of years of domestication, cats have grown accustomed to people, and demonstrate certain pseudo-human traits. They’re pretty fussy eaters, for starters, sometimes starving themselves rather than eating food they don’t like. And they can appear rather lazy, sleeping on average 13 to 14 hours a day – sometimes even up to 20 hours. Not really a ‘cat nap’, is it?

Anybody who’s ever had a cat can testify to the fact that cats, while at times very friendly, cuddly and agreeable to people, in essence are solitary animals with an agenda of their own. To some exasperated owners, returning home after a hard day’s work to find the cat still curled up in the same place as when they left for the office, the question may arise: who is who’s pet? That’s sort of the attitude expressed in this cartoon map, which shows what cats really make of the bed of their ‘owners’. The map came from here.

To conclude this ‘Cat’s Map of the Bed’, here are 10 things you didn’t know about cats (unless you’re a cat fancier):
1. Cats don’t have a clavicle bone, allowing them to pass through any space no bigger than their head.
2. Cats move both legs on one side, and then both leg on the other, a trait they share with camels, giraffes and a select few other mammals. Nobody knows what the connection is, if any.
3. Typically, cat’s claws are sharper on the forefeet are sharper than on the hind feet.
4. Most cats have five claws on their front paws and four or five on their rear paws, but cats are prone to polydactyly. Famously, the cats hanging around Hemingway’s house in Key West are six-toed.
5. Cat’s night vision is superior to humans, but their day vision is inferior.
6. The official name for cat’s whiskers is vibrissae.
7. Due to an ancient mutation, cats can’t taste sweetness.
8. Blue-eyed cats with white fur have a higher incidence of genetic deafness.
9. Cats expend nearly as much fluid grooming as they do urinating.
10. Cats will almost never meow at other cats; that sound is reserved mostly for communication with humans.

And because you didn’t know this either, here are 10 famous cats from history:
1. Boche: cat found by Anne Frank’s family while hiding in the attic in Amsterdam (name is a derogatory French term for German, comparable with ‘Kraut’). Would always pick (and lose) fights with another cat, aptly named Tommy.
2. CopyCat: the first cloned cat.
3. Kaspar: wooden cat used to round out unlucky parties of 13 at the Savoy Hotel in London.
4. Oscar: hospice cat with uncanny ability to predict which patients will die by curling up with them hours before their death. Recorded in the New England Journal of Medicine in mid-2007, when he had been right 25 times.
5. Sir Isaac Newton’s cat: its incessant desire to be let in and out allegedly drove Newton to invent the cat flap.
6. Siam: a gift from the American consul in Bangkok to US president Rutherford B. Hayes, the first Siamese cat in the US (1878).
7. The Master’s Cat: belonged to Charles Dickens, and would snuff his reading candle to get attention.
8. Muezza: the Prophet Mohammed’s cat. He once cut off the sleeve of his robe when called out to prayer rather than disturb the sleeping cat upon it, or so it’s related.
9. Sizi: Albert Schweitzer’s cat when he lived in Africa; although he was a left-hander, he would write with his right when Sizi slept on his left arm.
10. Taki: black female Persian cat of Raymond Chandler, who considered her his ‘feline secretary’ – he would read out the first drafts of his murder mysteries to her.

163 - Europe Wipes Britain off the Map!

The Daily Mail is one of the UK’s more euroskeptic newspapers, so it must have been with much delight that they were able to present this map to their readers on September 4th, 2006. For it falls straight into the category of the “what the heck are those loony Eurocrats in Brussels cooking up now” category of stories. The Daily Mail wastes no efforts to underline this angle:

“For centuries the people of Kent have called their county the Garden of England. So they might find it quite a surprise that - according to the European Union at least - they are actually part of France. Along with next-door Sussex, Kent has been rolled in with the Calais area on a map drawn up for Brussels. The counties now belong to the ‘Trans-Manche region’.”

Kent, le jardin de la France? Good heavens! It was the Brits who defeated Napoleon, and not the other way round, wasn’t it? But it gets worse:

“Under the plans from German cartographers, the East of England has also been shoehorned into a new region, which includes (coastal areas of Belgium, Holland, Germany, Denmark, Sweden and Norway)”

Yes, you’ve noticed that word jumping out of the text: not European, but German mapmakers. No wonder cartography rhymes with Kartoffelbraten. Sneaky Gerry bastards! Did the British Empire kick your arse twice in the previous century for this? Oh, and nevermind that Norway isn’t even in the EU. The Mail goes on:

“The Western side of Britain has been lumped together with Ireland and the Atlantic coasts of France, Spain and Portugal.”

What happens to the extreme north of Scotland, apperently ‘lumped together’ with Iceland and the northern part of Scandinavia, is of less concern to the Daily Mail.

Naturally, the Conservative Party (or at least its euroskeptic wing) jumped on the story, accusing the EU of plotting to ‘wipe Britain off the map’. Tory local government spokesman Eric Pickles suspected a grand conspiracy: “I fear that there is an agenda to undermine national identities and impose a United States of Europe by stealth. Conservatives will fight these attempts to Balkanise Britain (…) Concervatives believe this is just the unwarranted interference that gives Brussels a bad name.”

I propose that rather it’s the unwarranted implication of anti-British conspiracies behind so many EU measures in papers such as the Daily Mail, which is only too happy to massage the latent continentophobia in the UK, that give Brussels a worse reputation than necessary.

For the real extent of these intranational regions’ powers is buried between two scare-mongering paragraphs: “The new regions have been drawn up for a project called Interreg, which wants to foster cross-border co-operation on issues such as tourism, trade, health and the environment.”

Key words: wants to. As similar regions across the rest of the EU prove, these ‘euregions’ have very little impact and even smaller authority, as they decide only by consensus of locally elected officials on ‘soft’ issues such as tourism. If their existence needs to be questioned, it is because they lack relevance, not because they would be too powerful. See post #85 on this blog for a view of cross-border euregions of Germany.

Sorry for editorialising about the thinly-veiled anti-European subtext in this article rather than just describing the map, but this kind of insinuation muddles the real discussion. The bureaucratic juggernaut that is the European Union is deserving of some harsh criticism – and the British voice in this debate would be a very welcome addition, if only it didn’t sound so shrill.

The original article and the accompanying map can be found here.

162 - The United States of Florida

“It takes a big state to absorb the entire North every winter,” the New York Times wrote on February 2 of this year. “Florida is pulling it off.”

In wintertime, the Sunshine State takes in ‘snowbirds’ from the rest of the country (and beyond). Interestingly, these cold-weather refugees seek out each others’ company according to their place of origin, creating a patchwork of sunkissed settlement areas reflective of their places of origin.

• Alabamians (but also Tennesseans) prefer the Panhandle, as it is closest to their home state.
• Georgians prefer the Jacksonville area for the same reason.
• The area just south of Jacksonville has attracted increasing numbers of Southern Californians, obviously not because of proximity or lack of sunshine in SoCal, but because the real estate is so much cheaper.
• People from the Carolinas prefer to relax in and around Daytona.
• Those from Upstate New York gather around the Cape Canaveral area.
• Palm Beach County is a favourite haunt of New Jerseyites.
• The large Jewish presence in and around Fort Lauderdale is down to the migratory links with Brooklyn (notice the Bagel Dough van hurrying south).
• Hollywood in the Fort Lauderdale area boasts two French-language newspapers, reflecting the tide of Québécois heading there.
• Miami is known as the ‘Sixth Borough’, because of the large number of New Yorkers wintering there. Manhattanites flock to Miami Beach.
• Minnesotans camp out on Sanibel Island.
• Retired GM executives were the spearhead of the Detroit invasion of the Naples area.
• Germans cluster in and around the Fort Myers area.
• New Englanders head for Sarasota.
• Holidaymakers from Buffalo in Upstate New York congregate in Tampa.
• Orlando attracts a wide variety of Europeans and Latin Americans. (‘United Nations’)
• Kissimmee and Davenport are home to many Britons.

Adam Bertolett alerted me to this map (found here, the accompanying article here)

161 - Map of the San Francisco Quake and Fire (1906)

On the night of April 17th in 1906, the world-famous tenor Enrico Caruso wowed San Franciscans at the Tivoli Opera House with his performance in Carmen. The next day would – unfortunately – prove much more memorable for San Francisco. That Wednesday morning, at twelve minutes past five, an earthquake with a magnitude of 7,8 on the Richter scale struck the Bay Area.

The quake lasted 42 seconds, causing severe damage. Ruptured gas lines (and the scarcity of water due to ruptures in those lines) caused city-wide fires that eventually were responsible for up to 90% of the total destruction. Additionally, since the insurance companies didn’t refund the actual quake damage, many people set fire to their own homes. The fires raged for four days and nights. By that time, 80% of the city was destroyed. Estimates of the damage range from $500 million to as high as $1 billion (equivalent to as much as $300 billion in 2005 money).

The army was brought in to control the fires (which they did with dynamite and even artillery barrages) and stop the looting. In all, 500 presumed looters were shot. Some destruction and loss of life occurred outside San Francisco, but the bulk of the 3.000 casualties were to be regretted in the Golden Gate city itself. Three quarters of its population of 400.000 were made homeless. Half of those fled across the Bay to Oakland and Berkeley, others took up residence in massive camps of shacks and tents at Golden Gate Park and the Presidio, among other places.

Some of those camps were still open in 1908, indicating the slowness of the rebuilding effort (the city wouldn’t be considered ‘rebuilt’ until the Exposition of 1915). Up until then, San Francisco had been the undisputed economic centre of the West Coast. Los Angeles profited from the diversion of trade, industry and population, and eventually overtook its rival to the north.

This map (found here) was drawn by H.M. Pettit for Leslie’s Weekly, a famous American illustrated news magazine founded in 1852 and operating well into the 20th century, when some of its covers were drawn by Norman Rockwell. As befits a news weekly founded by an engraver, (Frank) Leslie’s Weekly featured a fair share of maps, illuminating a contemporary news story. This map’s title and subtitle are of a charming, old school length and descriptiveness:
Destruction of One of the Greatest Modern Cities. Bird’s-Eye view of Stricken San Francisco, Showing the Burned District, Covering Twenty-Five Square Miles, With the Most Prominent Places and Buildings Carefully Indicated.

Oriented to the southwest, the map surrounds the Burned District with a dotted line, from the Union Iron Works at the left side of the map up to Twin Peaks in the centre of the peninsula, and then along Van Ness Avenue almost to the Bay, taking a right on Greenwich Street via Telegraph Hill to the water, sparing the area around Fisherman’s Wharf. In total, about 500 city blocks were destroyed. Some significant locations are spelled out on the map:

• Examiner Building. Collapsed.
• Call Building. Badly Damaged.
• Valencia Hotel. Collapsed, 17 Killed.
• Mechanics Pavillion. Used As Morgue and Refuge for Injured. Building Burned, Injured Removed, 200 Bodies Left Were Cremated.
• Presidio Reservation. Where 50.000 people Are Encamped.
• South San Francisco. Burning In Spots.

The Wikipedia entry for the Great San Francisco Quake of 1906, on which much of this article was based, mentions Caruso’s traumatic exit from San Francisco: “Clutching an autographed photo of President Theodore Roosevelt, (he) made an effort to get out of the city, first by boat and then by train, and vowed never to return to San Francisco. He kept his word.”

160 - The United Countries of Baseball

Although also very popular in East Asia and in other parts of the American continent, baseball is the quintessential North American sport, early in the 20th century even labelled the ‘national pastime’ of the USA. It remains so today: in the US, the words ‘ballgame’ and ‘ballpark’ automatically refer to baseball, not to any other sport.

To the disinterested outsider, baseball shares some vague similarities with cricket – not a coincidence, since baseball is an 18th-century development out of earlier bat-and-ball games popular with British immigrants, such as ‘rounders’. This origin is somewhat disputed: some evidence exists for a British game also called ‘base-ball’, as in British novelist Jane Austen’s ‘Northanger Abbey’ (written circa 1800), where some children play it on a village green.

Nowadays, professional baseball in North America is organized in Major League Baseball, composed of the National league (°1876) and the American league (°1901). Both are divided in to Eastern, Central and Western divisions. The game has – or had – a mainly eastern following: the first major league teams on the West Coast were ‘transplants’ from Back East: the Brooklyn Dodgers moved to LA and the New York Giants to San Francisco in 1958. In 1961, the first ‘original’ West Coast team was founded: the LA Angels.

This map, indicating all teams in the National and American sub-leagues of Major League Baseball, translates some of the American obsession with baseball into a representation of the supposed ‘countries’ of baseball. As with many other team sports, the fan base of baseball teams is to a large extent regional. Unless you’re of a contrary nature, you support the local team – barring of course that you move, and continue to support your home team as a kind of sentimental link with your place of origin.

Here’s an overview of the ‘countries of baseball’, first of the National League:

1. The Atlanta Braves (based at Turner Field in Atlanta, GA): Rule a large swathe of the Southeast.

2. The Florida Marlins (based at Dolphin Stadium in Miami Gardens, FL): Most of Florida, including the Panhandle, but excluding the area around Jacksonville (Braves territory) and the Rays’ country.

3. The New York Mets (based at Shea Stadium in NYC, NY): As far as I can tell, Long Island and northern New Jersey.

4. Philadelphia Phillies (based at Citizens’ Bank Park in Philadelphia, PA): Southern New Jersey, chunks of Maryland and only a limited amount of the Pennsyvlvanian hinterland.

5. The Washington Nationals (based at RFK Memorial Stadium, Washington DC): Most of the DC-surrounding area, and a surprisingly large part of the eastern seaboard to the south of DC.

6. The Chicago Cubs (based at Wrigley Field in Chicago, IL): A large country to the east and west of Chicago, completely surrounding the Chicago Sox’s land.

7. The Cincinnati Reds (based at the Great American Ball Park in Cincinnati, OH): A medium-sized nation, hemmed in by the Cardinals, Cubs, Tigers, Indians, Pirates and Braves.

8. The Houston Astros (based at Minute Maid Park in Houston, TX): All of Louisiana and most of southeastern Texas, including of course Houston itself.

9. The Arizona Diamondbacks (based at Chase Field in Phoenix, AZ): Most of Arizona, parts of New Mexico, bits of southern California.

10. The San Francisco Giants (based at AT&T Park in San Francisco, CA): A small coastal strip below San Francisco Bay, a large one north of it, all the way through Oregon to Seattle Mariners country.

11. The Colorado Rockies (based at Coors Field in Denver, CO): The only team in Rocky Mountain territory, therefore has a lot of expansion potential.

12. The San Diego Padres (based at PETCO Park in San Diego, CA): Occupies the small strip of southern California hugging the Mexican border.

13. The St. Louis Cardinals (based at Busch Stadium in St. Louis, MO): Rule a big part of the Midwest and South, including Arkansas and parts of Mississippi, Illinois and Tennessee.

14. The Pittsburgh Pirates (based at PNC Park in Pittsburgh, PA): Western Pennsylvania, through West Virginia into western Virginia.

15. The LA Dodgers (based at Dodger Stadium in Los Angeles, CA): Mid-California, from the coast into southern Nevada.

16. The Milwaukee Brewers (based at Miller Park in Milwaukee, WI): Wisconsin, the whole of Wisconsin and nothing but Wisconsin.

These teams play in the American League:

1. The Baltimore Orioles (based at Oriole Park in Baltimore, MD): The Delmarva peninsula and central Maryland.

2. The Toronto Blue Jays (based at Rogers Centre in Toronto, Ontario – Canada): Southern and central Ontario.

3. The Boston Red Sox (based at Fenway Park in Boston, MA): The map doesn’t show the extreme northeast of the US; one presumes the Red Sox rule the whole of New England.

4. The New York Yankees (based at Yankee Stadium in NYC, NY): Upstate New York and northern Pennsylvania.

5. The Tampa Bay Devil Rays (based at Tropicana Field in St. Petersburg, FL): A relatively small strip of Florida’s Gulf Coast, dipping into the interior.

6. The Chicago White Sox (based at US Cellular Field in Chicago, IL): No more than an enclave in Cubs country.

7. The Cleveland Indians (based at Jacobs Field in Cleveland, OH): Ohio, with a southern tail.

8. The Detroit Tigers (based at Comerica Park in Detroit, MI): The whole of Michigan, some of it ‘dripping’ out south of the state line.

9. The Kansas City Royals (based at Kauffman Stadium in Kansas City, MO): A good chunk of the geographical centre of the Lower 48.

10. The Minnesota Twins: (based at Hubert H. Humphrey Metrodome in Minneapolis, MN) Minnesota and most of the Dakotas.

11. The LA Angels of Anaheim (based at Angel Stadium in Anaheim, CA): Squeezed small by the Dodgers, Padres and Diamondbacks.

12. The Oakland Athletics (based at McAfee Coliseum in Oakland, CA): Almost denied coastal access by the Giants, this land surrounds the Bay and fans out further inland.

13. The Seattle Mariners (based at Safeco Field in Seattle, WA): Washington State, plus parts of Oregon.

14. The Texas Rangers (based at Rangers Ballpark in Arlington, TX): Oklahoma and Texas, minus Astros country.

I presume these countries of baseball are more parts fiction than fact. But it would be interesting to hear from fans which borders run true, which are false. This map was sent to me by Lee I. Garnett and can be found here on Flickr. No further information was provided. It looks like the picture was taken in a shop or in a museum. Any additional info on the map, including its location, is very welcome.