179 – The Free State of Bottleneck

In the 20th century, Allied forces occupied Germany not just once, but twice. The better-known (and longer-lasting) occupation took place in the decades after World War II. The lesser-known one occurred after World War I. For a few years after 1918, British, French and American forces took up positions in the Rhineland, wholly occupying the area west of the river Rhine – but eventually also some areas on the Rhine’s right bank.

One of the unintended consequences of that expansion of Allied military sovereignty over the Rhine was the creation of the so-called Freistaat Flaschenhals, literally translated: the Free State of Bottleneck, after its geographic shape. This miniature quasi-state existed for just a bit over four years, from 10 January 1919 until 25 February 1923.

Flaschenhals came into being after the Allies extended their jurisdiction in a 30 km radius from the Rhine-side cities of Cologne (UK), Koblenz (US) and Mainz (France). Because of the proximity of Mainz and Koblenz, the US and French ‘circles’ of occupation across the Rhine didn’t quite overlap. The resulting bottleneck-shaped area between both circles contained the Wisper valley, which comprises the towns of Lorch and Kaub, and the villages of Lorchhausen, Sauerthal, Ransel, Wollmerschied, Welterod, Zorn, Strüth and Egenrod.

The Wispertal wasn’t just hemmed in on two sides by the American and French zones of occupation, but also cut off from the rest of unoccupied Weimar Germany by the Taunus mountain-range in the east. Thus effectively left to fend for themselves, the approximately 8.000 people of the Wisper Valley declared their independence in early 1919, declaring Lorch its capital and electing the mayor of that largest city in the valley its president. Herr Präsident Pnischneck oversaw the administration of the ministate, which even produced its own stamps, currency and passports.

Since transportation by land, air and water was impossible and trains were not permitted to stop in Flaschenhals, the main source of income of the ministate was smuggling. At one time, this even involved hijacking a French coal train in nearby Rüdesheim and driving it to Flaschenhals, where the contents were distributed among the population.

Flaschenhals felt confident enough to draw up plans for an embassy in Berlin. The Free State was abolished before this could happen. Following the French occupation of the Ruhr area in 1923, Flaschenhals was eventually reincorporated into the Prussian province of Hesse-Nassau.

The history of the Flaschenhals may not be widely known outside the area itself, but there it is an added tourist attraction, mainly in the towns of Lorch and Kaub. Not that tourists are scarce in the area, which is part of the Unesco World Heritage Site of the Rhine Gorge.

The information for this text came from the wikipedia page for Flaschenhals, which also shows a stamp issued by the Free State – in very poor resolution, unfortunately. This slightly higer resolution image comes from here; anyone who has a better image is very welcome to submit it.

178 – The Kentucky Bend; or Bubbleland, Not Far From Monkey’s Eyebrow

Half man-made, half the Big Muddy’s work – a 45,5 sq. km (17,5 sq. mi) sized enclaved border irregularity bounded on three sides by a hairpin turn in the Mississippi and in the south by Tennessee is known as the Kentucky Bend, but is denomination is as fixed as the river that created it. Alternate names are: the New Madrid Bend, the Madrid Bend, the Bessie Bend, and even ‘Bubbleland’ (*) – quite an image-provoking epithet; one involuntarily pictures Michael Jackson’s monkey’s own version of ‘Neverland’.

The US Census doesn’t count monkeys, however. According to the latest census poll in 2000, Bubbleland was home to 17 Kentuckians, cut off from the mainland of their state by Missouri and Tennessee. Formally, their home is an exclave of Fulton County in Kentucky’s extreme southwest. It is only reachable via Tennessee State Route 22.

The event that created Bubbleland was the New Madrid Earthquake, actually a series of earthquakes in late 1811 and early 1812 that each may have registered 8.0 on the Richter scale, making them the largest quakes in the contiguous USA. Not only flattening most of the town of New Madrid nearby in Missouri, the tremors – felt as far away as Connecticut – also shifted the course of the Mississippi.

This confounded the work of early surveyors plotting out the line that would mark the border between Kentucky and Tennessee. By 1812, they hadn’t made it as far as the Mississippi. Later, it turned out their line cut right through the loop in the Mississippi created by the quakes, crossing the river twice.

This led to legal wrangling between Kentucky and Tennessee; for Kentucky had secured the Mississippi as its western border and thus claimed the westernmost point on the line. Tennessee held that it nevertheless had rights on the land contained in the loop. In fact, Tennessee administered Bubbleland as part of its Obion County until at least 1848, but eventually dropped its claim.

Much to its regret, one can imagine, as the fertile soil inside the loop proved extremely fertile cotton-growing land. The 1870 Census tallied more than 300 residents, mostly cotton-farmers. Interestingly, Bubbleland has two other claims to fame:

• From February 28 to April 28, 1862, the area was the location of the Battle of Island Number Ten between Union and Confederate forces in the American Civil War. The battle, which involved ironclad ships, was won by the Union side and opened up the Mississippi further south, eventually leading to the capture of Memphis by northern troops. Island Number Ten has since eroded away (although Island Number Nine still remains).

• In ‘Life on the Mississippi’ (1883), Mark Twain describes a vendetta lasting 60-odd years between the Darnell and Watson families living in Bubbleland: “Both families belonged to the same church … They lived each side of the line, and the church was at a landing called Compromise. Half the church and half the aisle was in Kentucky, the other half in Tennessee. Sundays you’d see the families drive up, all in their Sunday clothes, men, women, and children, and file up the aisle, and set down, quiet and orderly, one lot on the Tennessee side of the church and the other on the Kentucky side; and the men and boys would lean their guns up against the wall, handy, and then all hands would join in with the prayer and praise; though they say the man next the aisle didn’t kneel down, along with the rest of the family; kind of stood guard.”

Whether this blood feud is in some way responsible for the thinning of the population of Bubbleland could not be ascertained.

*: of course so named because of its shape, although the nearby Kentucky hamlet of Monkey’s Eyebrow leaves some wriggle-room for other explanations.

This map, and much of the information on which this text was based, can be found here in Wikipedia.

177 – A Map of Russia’s Third Empire (2053)

It’s the year 2053, and the world looks very different from today. There are no more than 5 superstates left on the face of the planet:

• an American Federation, covering the whole of North and South America;
• an Indian Confederation, consisting of present-day India and Birma/Myanmar (Bangladesh seems to have disappeared under the sea);
• an Asian republic dominated by China, further composed of Mongolia, Japan, Papua New Guinea, Australia and New Zealand;
• an Islamic Caliphate, occupying the whole of Africa, the Arabian Peninsula, Syria, Iraq, Iran, Armenia, Turkmenistan, Uzbekistan, Pakistan and Indonesia;
• and the Russian Empire, uniting Russia, Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan, Tajikistan, Azerbaijan, Georgia, Turkey, Lebanon, Israel, Jordan, all of Europe and Greenland.
• all states except the Russian Empire own a slice of Antarctica (I suppose that in exchange, Russia rules the North Pole all by itself).

That’s the thesis of Third Empire, a recently published futuristic novel by Mikhail Yuryev. In the book, Yuryev predicts that the Russian Empire will be re-created in a few decades’ time. This ‘Third Empire’ (I presume Tsarist Russia and the Soviet Union were the first and second) will obliterate the three Baltic states in 2015 and defeat the USA in the nuclear exchange that many feared for most of the second half of the twentieth century but was thought unthinkable after the end of the Cold War in the 1990s.

Mikhail Yuryev is a Russian businessman, the former chairman of the Russian Government’s Council on Economy and Entrepreneurship (1993-1995) and formerly a deputy speaker of the State Duma (1995-1999). He is an ultranationalist, hoping to create a strong Russia which bases itself on Christian Orthodox values. Some quotes from an article by Yuryev, titled “Identifying Russia’s Foes” and published on 6 November 2004 in the Komsomolskaya Pravda, may elucidate his stance:

“Russia is a great state and must remain as such. This means that our existence as Russians inside Russia, not as nationals of a different country living in this country, however affluent and free it may be, is a value of the highest order.”

“Developing and consolidating the Russian nation and Orthodoxy, and fostering their interests, which in fact are one and the same thing, constitute the major goal for Russia. It has greater significance for us than the interests of other peoples, or religions in Russia.”

“Russia must retain the status of an imperial country.”

“Russia must be a common home to all Russians who live here and abroad; the conditions of our compatriots in other countries is our concern.”

“The people who allege that Western countries and monetary funds of various colors offer the only right methods for building Russia’s national economy and policies are foes.”

“Those who insist that the state has no right to introduce the basics of religion into school curricula on the basis of Orthodox teaching are foes.”

It may be small wonder, then, that a reader of the online edition of The Times of London – not coincidentally from one of the Baltic republics – on May 16, 2007 replied thus to an article about Russia’s Einzelgang in foreign policy matters:

“Just a couple of months ago, a former vice-chancellor of the Russian Duma Mikhail Yuryev published a best-selling novel “The Third Empire.” (…) The present advisor to president Putin, Alexander Dugin, states on the back-cover of the book: ‘This is Russia that one should kill and die for’. It is clear to anyone who lives near the border of this former bloody empire that we are dealing with the real sentiments and attempts at the resurrection of the ‘Third Russian Reich’ . So please don’t tell the Balts about forgetting ‘their historical garbage’. Putin’s Russia is a threat to all the democratic world.”

I was notified of this book, and the intriguing map that accompanies it, by Michael Rovinsky. The book cover shows part of the map; both the cover and the entire map can be found in full here. I have no further information about the plot line of the book, but would like to hear more about it. I don’t suppose it’s out in English translation. Did anyone read it in Russian? Also, can any Russian-speakers help me with the exact translation of the ‘Chinese’ empire’s name?

176 – Wallonie-sur-Mer

It’s more than three months now since Belgium held a general election, and the federal kingdom by the North Sea is still without a national government. The impasse following the June 10 ballot is due to the seemingly insurmountable differences between Flemish and Walloon politicians.

Belgium has always been a difficult proposition with semi-continuous linguistic strife between Dutch-speaking Flemings (roughly 60% of the population) and French-speaking Walloons (almost 40%) ever since its inception in 1830. The gap between both sides has widened considerably since the start of a gradual process of federalisation in the early nineteen seventies.

To offset the oppositional nature of this essentially binary federation, the Belgian federal system is extremely intricate, balancing territorial and personal definitions of citizenship. The result is no less than six governments:
* one for Wallonia (dealing with territorial aspects such as land management);
* one for the French-speaking community (competent in personal matters such as education and health care);
* one for Flanders (which merged the personal and territorial competences);
* one for Brussels (territorial; as Brussels is officially bilingual, the Flemish and Francophone governments both exert their personal competences there);
* one for the tiny German-speaking minority in the east of Wallonia (personal, since the Walloon government is territorial);
* and the federal government, to be composed of equally many Francophone as Flemish ministers. The prime minister, although necessarily either Dutch- or French-speaking, must be considered as a linguistic eunuch.

All this can’t hide that the main problem in Belgium remains the fact that Flemings and Walloons (or at least their politicians) can’t get along. In the best of times, Flanders and Wallonia co-exist by ignoring each other, in the worst of times they clash because they have two different outlooks on what Belgium ought to be. Flemish politicians insist on further institutional reforms, delegating more power to the sub-nations, to improve good governance. Francophone politicians see this as creeping separatism and vehemently oppose any reform that could be seen as damaging the Belgian state (or Francophone interests).

The resulting gridlock for some observers indicates that Belgium has reached the end of its tether. Although the present impasse seems to meet with apathy from the general public, this is not an improbable proposition – were it not for Brussels. The capital of Belgium isn’t just also the capital of Europe: it’s also the capital of Flanders, which maintains its parliament there. But 85% of the bruxellois are Francophone, and thus not inclined to think kindly of incorporation into Flanders. Annexation by Wallonia is rather impractical, as Brussels is completely surrounded by Flemish territory.

Maybe an international task force of chess grand-masters and Nobel prize winners under the auspices of the Dalai Lama could find a solution everybody could live with. Barring that, another possibility would be to let nature take its course: if global warming will indeed lead to higher sea levels and if Belgium could wait another couple of thousand years for its next government, that is.

This map outlines the latter solution to the Belgian conundrum: just wait until almost all of low-lying Flanders is submerged, leaving only some of its higher parts above water, i.e. the Heuvelland (‘Hill Country’), the Ile de Grammont (the ‘Isle of Geraardsbergen’) and bits of and near Limburg, the Flemish province furthest from the coast (with ‘Hasselt-sur-Mer’ and ‘Tirlemont-les-Bains’). That this map probably is the work of a Francophone Belgian, can further be deduced from the fact that Brussels is not submerged, but connected to Wallonia via a land corridor…

This map was sent to me by Bruno Pragnell, who could not vouch for its origins and who finds the joke “probably a bit too cruel” to be suitable for this website. Not at all, Bruno! I’m hopeful Flemings have enough sense of humour (or swimming skills) to not be insulted by this cartographic cartoon.

175 – Synthetica, A New Continent of Plastics

“On this broad but synthetic continent of plastics, the countries march right out of the natural world – that wild area of firs and rubber plantations, upper left – into the illimitable world of the molecule. It’s a world boxed only by the cardinal points of the chemical compass – carbon, hydrogen, oxygen, nitrogen.”

• “It floats upon a Sea of Glass, one of the oldest plastics known.”
• “New countries, like Melamine, constantly bulge from its coastline.”
• “The Alkyd country, a great swamp of height, impervious plastic paints, varnishes, and lacquers, creeps out like an implacable sargasso.”
• “Great chemical river systems, like the Acetylene, feed many countries. And boundaries are as unsteady as the maps of Europe.”
• “Lignin, the dark forest in the North, gives forth a new plastic made of the adhesive matter holding cellulose fibers together in wood.”
• “Petrolia is the land of the new synthetic rubbers.”
• “Cellulose is a great state, something like Texas, with many counties, all of which grew out of old Nitrocellulose (Celluloid).”
• “Rayon is a plastic island off the Cellulose coast, with a glittering night life.”
• “Vinyl-land, a fast-growing new country of safety-glass (…) and rubbery plastics, will probably subdivide soon.”
• “The Crystal Mountains of Acrylic (price elevation: 52,50 a pound) rund down into the Crystal Hills of Styrene – both brilliant new plastics with glandlike properties.”
• “The greatest plastic country of all – a heavy industrial region of coal-car chemicals led by Formaldehyde River – is Phenolic. Its hard-working plastics, in a sober Quaker dress of limited colors, go into most of industry. Capital: Bakelite, ruled Union Carbide & Carbon Corp.”
• “To the south is Urea, related to the (…), but a more frivolous and color-loving state. Its main industries are buttons, tableware, light globes.”

This remarkable map appeared in the issue of Fortune Magazine for October 1940. Slightly resembling South America, a continent of fictional lands each symbolising different aspects of the then still new and exciting world of plastics is shown, floating on a sea of glass. The map was found here at an intriguing collection of maps and other graphical work, called www.fulltable.com.

174 – The Nine Nations of North America

Forget about the United States of America, forget about Canada and about Mexico. North America might be divided into these three states, but the northern half of the American continent is actually made up of nine nations. Those weren’t on any map until 1981, when Joel Garreau published ‘The Nine Nations of North America’.

In this book, Garreau argued that those nine regions demonstrate such distinctive cultural and/or economic features, that they are a more relevant way of dissecting North America than the traditional (Canadian) provinces and (US and Mexican) states. Those Nine Nations are:

• New England (or New Britain, or Atlantica): comprising not just the six traditional New England states (Maine, New Hampshire, Vermont, Massachusetts, Rhode Island and Connecticut), but also the Canadian provinces of New Brunswick, Nova Scotia, Prince Edward Island, Newfoundland (including Labrador). Its capital would be Boston.
• The Foundry: the (formerly) industrial heartland of North America, covering the US and Canadian sides of the Great Lakes region and including much of the US northeast. Capital: Detroit.
• Dixie: The cultural area more or less corresponding with the secessionist Confederate States of America (1861-1865), but for example excluding western Texas, the southern tip of Florida and including southern Missouri, Illinois and Indiana and southeastern Oklahoma (known as ‘Little Dixie’). Capital: Atlanta.
• The Breadbasket: includes most of the Great Plains states (in the US) and part of the Prairie provinces (in Canada). To wit: Iowa, Kansas, Minnesota, Nebraska, North and South Dakota, Oklahoma, parts of Missouri, Wisconsin, Colorado, Illinois, Indiana and Texas; and on the Canadian side parts of Ontario, Saskatchewan and Manitoba. Capital: Kansas City.
• The Islands: basically a federation of the Carribean – the islands and their people. I.e. also the Greater Miami area, heavily Cuban by now, and the Florida Keys. Could stretch all the way across the Caribbean Islands to include parts of Venezuela. Its capital would be Miami.
• Mexamerica: those areas in which ‘tex-mex’ culture is prominent, i.e. most of northern Mexico, and a large area in the south of the US – most of New Mexico and parts of California, Arizona and Texas. Its capital could either be Mexico City or Los Angeles. Some later maps include all of Mexico in this Nation.
• Ecotopia: A big chunk of coastal Northwest America, from Alaska via British Columbia through Washington State and Oregon to California. Capital: San Francisco.
• Québec: the only part of North America that is institutionally non-Anglophone. Capital of this French-speaking enclave would be Québec City.
• The Empty Quarter: All the other, sparsely populated areas of North America, from Northern Canada down to Utah. The name refers to the desert of the same name, occupying the lower third of the Arabian peninsula (Rub’ al-Khali in Arabic). Capital: Denver.

Garreau’s subdivision of the North American continent is the best-known example of what one might call bioregionalism or ‘ecoregionalism’. This term, first emerging in the 1970s, puts great value on the ‘politics of place’. Which means that the basis for policy and analysis are geographical areas, defined by their natural or cultural – but in any case ‘organic’ – boundaries (such as watersheds or prevalent type of industry).

It must be said that Garreau’s subdivision doesn’t necessarily correspond with other bioregionalisms, such as those in Cascadia (a bioregion covering parts of the US and Canadian Pacific coastal areas, but rarely as extensively as in Garreau’s Ecotopia) or Katuah (in the Southern Appalachians). Furthermore, as his ‘Nine Nations’ are by now more than 25 years old, it would be interesting to see whether they need updating – have their ‘contents’ or borders shifted?

Joel Garreau (°1948) currently works as journalist, editor (at the Washington Post) and policy wonk (at the School of Public Policy at George Mason University). His best-known work still is the ‘Nine Nations of North America’ (1981). His latest major book is ‘Radical Evolution’ (2005), describing the human race’s possible evolution, via emerging bio- and other technologies, into something post-human. Garreau maintains a website at www.garreau.com.

This map was suggested to me by many readers, among whom Steve Stackhouse, the stapler, paulbeard, LJ Faucher and James L. Erwin. I’ve held off publishing this map while I was on the lookout for an original map (i.e. on the cover of the book) with higher resolution than this one. But maybe this way somebody who has one might be prompted to send it in...

Update: thanks to Paul Attinello for the hi-res image!

173 – The Hungry Gulf Crocodile

When historians look back on the current conflict in Iraq, they might very well call it the Third Gulf War. The first one would have been the Iran-Iraq War (1980-1988), considered by many to be the longest conventional war of the 20th century. The second one, then, would be the reconquest of Kuwait by the US and its allies following Kuwait’s invasion and annexation by Iraq (1990-1991). The third one, started in 2003 by the US-led invasion of Iraq proper, is still ongoing.

Some commentators, however, only refer to the second conflict as the First Gulf War, making the present one the Second. Naming stuff is an explosive subject in the Gulf region. In fact, whether it should be called the Persian Gulf, the Arabian Gulf or the Arabo-Persian Gulf is a hotly contested matter, leading most commentators to refer to it simply as ‘the Gulf’.

This cartoon map, nicely morphing the shape of the Gulf into the threatening mouth of a crocodile, is the work of John Wagner, who sent it to me, explaining that it was “created for a newspaper story regarding the perils of US intervention in the Persian Gulf before the First Persian Gulf War. The story, and hence, the art exhibit considerable prescience in the light of current events, although the scope of those under threat in the years since includes many, many others besides a US missile frigate and an oil tanker.”

Because of the confusion explained here, I’m not sure whether Mr Wagner refers to the (1980-1988) or the (1990-1991) conflict. In any case, the cartoon nicely depicts the dangers of navigating and policing a body of water that at the same time was and remains crucial for oil transports and had been mined, and could have been closed off quite easily by blocking the Strait of Hormuz.

172 – A Texan’s Map of the United States

At 678.051 km² (261.797 sq. mi), Texas is the largest of the 48 contiguous states. With a population of over 23 million, it’s also the second most populous, after California. And there’s more that sets Texas apart:

almost unique among US states, it was an independent republic for almost a decade before it joined the Union in 1845. (Tiny Vermont also was independent for more than a decade, and California too, if only for a mere month).
Texas grade school students also daily pledge allegiance to the state flag, the recitation being: “Honor the Texas flag; I pledge allegiance to thee, Texas; One state under God; One and indivisible.”
The first word spoken from the Moon on July 20, 1969 was “Houston”.
The King Ranch in Texas is bigger than the entire state of Rhode Island.
The dome of Texas’ state capitol in Austin is 7 ft. higher than the one in Washington DC.

No wonder the state tourism slogan is: “It’s like a whole other country”. Or that people from the Lone Star State like to state that “Everything’s bigger in Texas.” But apparently not big enough, according to this postcard map. A supersized Texas expands to fill out the central part of the US, leaving the other states diminished in size with rather disparaging alternate names:

Washington: Wash Tin
Oregon: All Gone
California: uninhabitable
Idaho: Hi Ho
Utah: You Saw
Nevada: Never Add
Arizona: Arid Zone
New Mexico: New Mix (Hiccup)
Montana: Mount Annie
Colorado: Color Radio
Wyoming: Why Home In
North Dakota: North Colder
South Dakota: The Cold (South)
Nebraska: Knee Grass
Kansas: Can This
Oklahoma: Okay?
Minnesota: Mint Soda
Iowa : Out-A-Way
Missouri: Misery
Wisconsin: Wise Cousin
Illinois: Ill Noise
Michigan: Miss Again
Indiana: Indian Annie
Arkansas : Arch Insult
Ohio: Old High
Kentucky: Canned Turkey
Tennessee: Ten Seeds
Louisiana: Lousy Annie
Mississippi: Miss-Is-Yippi
Alabama: All Mammy
North Carolina: North Carol’s Line
South Carolina: South Carol’s Line
The New England states (plus NY, NJ and PA – and a big part of Maritime Canada): “Damned Yankee” Land
West Virginia: West Gin
Maryland: Snafu
Georgia: Judgy
Florida: Swamp Land

The Great Lakes are ‘Few Puddles’. I’ve no idea what year this postcard map is from, but by the looks of it, it’s somewhere in the nineteen fifties.

The postcard was found here at www.cardcow.com.

171 – John Bull Bombarding France With Bum-Boats

“I fart in your general direction,” a haughty Frenchman (played by John Cleese) shouts at a not so merry band of Englishmen looking for the Holy Grail in the Monty Python movie of that name. That insult could have been inspired by this hand-coloured etching, although the ‘leavings’ are aimed in the opposite direction.

This caricature, dating from 1793, is called ‘A New Map of England and France. The French Invasion; – or – John Bull Bombarding the Bum-Boats’. It deals with the then very acute British fear of a French invasion. At that moment in time, France was raging with a revolutionary fervour, perhaps comparable to Iran at the height of its Islamic revolution, vis-à-vis the threat that emanated from it towards the surrounding established regimes.

One could call this caricature a fine example of scatological cartography, since George III “craps vigourously on the coast of France, dispersing a number of tiny gunboats (…) The image is gross, but the King’s evacuations are heroic, patriotic and contemptuous, expressing the feelings of the brutish but uncensored John Bull, whom he here embodies.” George III indeed literally embodies England, with Northumberland as his nightcap, Kent and Cornwall as his feet and the ‘bum-boats’ fanning out from his bottom-cheeks, situated somewhere between the busy ports of Bournemouth and Portsmouth. “The ‘British Declaration’ (also) emitting from John Bull’s backside refers to a royal promise that the port of Toulon, then occupied by the British, would be ceded to France on the restitution of its monarchy.”

Both preceding quotes were taken from a catalog accompanying an exhibit at London’s Tate Museum in 2000, entitled: ‘James Gillray: The Art of Caricature.’ This James Gillray (1757-1815) etched bitingly satirical caricatures of contemporary political and social issues. Most of his baroque-ish, Rubenesque work was published between 1792 and 1810. He is considered a major influence on caricaturists to this day.

Gillray started out as a letter-engraver and spent some time wandering in the company of ‘strolling players’ before being admitted to the Royal Academy. From then on, he supported himself by producing caricatures – often against George III who, fortunately perhaps for Gillray, once proclaimed upon seeing some: “I don’t understand these caricatures.” The grand total of Gillray’s caricatures stands somewhere between 1.000 and 1.700.

As with many British, Gillray’s initial sympathies for the French Revolution turned anti-revolutionary and conservative in response to its excesses. This map falls into the category of his Anti-Jacobin caricatures, glorifying John Bull – although that British archetype is equated here with George III, much-berated by Gillray. Although he mostly toed the Tory party line, his instincts as a free-lancer ensured that his wit lashed out at an oecumenical selection of political targets.

The end of Gillray’s career was brought on by failing eyesight, which encouraged desperation, drink and eventually madness. He died in 1815 – just 17 days before Napoleon’s defeat at Waterloo – and is buried in St James’s Church in Piccadilly.

This map was sent in by Gary Ostroff, a self-avowed Gillray fan, who recommends Vic Gatrell’s ‘City of Laughter: Sex and Satire in Eighteenth-Century London’ as a good book to grasp the content and context of Gillray’s prints, and this page at the New York Public Library, a thorough treatment of Gillray’s life and works.