Main ethno-linguistic groups in Europe (1899)

Main ethno-linguistic groups in Europe (1899)

1152 x 1166

‘As a berber, what made me relief is that the map depicted North Africa accurately, ethnic arabs are a microscopic minority here, there are arabized berbers who kept berber customs to an extent, and berbers who kept speaking their languages, the idea of arab north africa started in the 30s with the rise of panarabism, and the arabization policy done by algerian and moroccan governments to erase berber identity’

Japanese pictorial map of Europe from 1924

Japanese pictorial map of Europe from 1924

6992 x 7616

‘The Japanese writing here is really unique.

Japanese can be written horizontal or vertical. Traditionally, it was written vertically top down, each column right to left. However, in order to make it easier to include words and passages from western languages, it began sometimes being written horizontally. It wasn’t immediately clear if it should be right to left to be reminiscent of the traditional way, or left to right to better match most of the other languages they were coming into contact with. Left to right eventually won out, and Japanese is still written both horizontally and vertically almost equally.

All the horizontal writing on this map is right to left. That made it pretty confusing at first, but also uniquely dates this map to the early 1900’s. So 1924 checks out’

1791 map of Europe

1791 map of Europe - by William Faden

8234 x 6559

‘Italy wasn’t even united in 1791, at that time there was a lot of major and minor states in the peninsula, even more these border seems more the border from 1871 to WWI so almost 100yr later, why the England Royal Geographer made this “mistake”? There is a reason behind it?

It’s not a mistake and it’s super common in almost all old maps. The colors do not represent de facto political divisions or “countries” as we know them today but rather broad regions and “realm”.

Germany was unified at the time within the Holy Roman Empire (of which we see the borders on the map). The HRE was a very very loose political entity, but it was a political entity recognized by all its members nonetheless. Modern historical maps tend to try to represent actual political authority so they will show the hre as broken between various polities, but for the people of the time, it was one realm.

Likewise with Hungary. Modern historical maps would have shown it united with Austria as both were under Habsburg control and could be seen as forming a single political bloc. However they were two different realms which were just ruled by the same person, hence the two different colors.

It’s similar for Italy. It wasn’t “unified” as a single polity, but the broad idea of Italy existed and the region was seen as its own realm of Europe.

I think a lot of this is because we apply modern concepts of federalized governments and the rule of law onto historical time periods. In many ways, in the 1700s, most countries in Europe did not have centralized governance and were closer to loose confederations of various fiefs than they were to modern nation-states. The concept of the nation-state really emerged as a result of the (at the time this map was made) still-ongoing French Revolution.

There weren’t even really ‘borders’ in the way we think of them today, a line that demarcates where some laws stop applying and others start. Law enforcement mostly faded to nothing in much of the countryside, so the actual limits of arbitrary political divisions mattered much less.’

Theater of war in Europe, Africa, and Western Asia - National Geographic Society (1942)

Theater of war in Europe, Africa, and Western Asia - National Geographic Society (1942)

7274 x 8561

‘I’m in love with the way Ireland is represented on this map

According to Wikipedia, the Brits and Irish were disputing the name of Ireland, starting in 1937. Then, the Irish wanted to call it Éire in Irish but Ireland in English; the Brits wanted to call it Eire (no accent) in English to better separate it from Northern Ireland. There was mention of an Irish politician who was ambivalent to that fact; he appreciated the nation being called Eire but also knew that calling it Ireland would cement its claim to the whole island.

It’s hard to say what the NatGeo map makers were thinking when they made this. Maybe they were following the British state’s example; maybe they were opting for a more nativist representation of Ireland. Probably, they just picked what would best represent the country to those reading the map and didn’t give it much thought’

Central Europe during the time of the Hohenstaufen Emperors (1250)

Central Europe during the time of the Hohenstaufen Emperors (1250)

7462 x 9714

‘Wow, I thought Italy was fragmented at that time, but I didn’t know that Western Germany was even more! I wonder whether some Northern or Central Italian cities which were still fairly independent in XIII century, such as Bologna, should have been shown as separated entities from the territory around. In any case, very interesting map. Greetings from Kirchenstaat!’

All types of vegetation and urban/built-up areas of Europe

All types of vegetation and urban/built-up areas of Europe

5000 x 3532

‘I am a norwegian who loves nature and I remember I had plans to travel around europe and see all the nature then I looked at google maps and got really dissapointed. Where is all the nature left in europe?? It’s just a few patches of woods surrounded by farms and cities. It seems you can’t get lost in nature because if you walk just a little it ends..’

1910 Languages of Central Europe (without borders)

1910 Languages of Central Europe (without borders)

4140 × 3700

‘Reddish hues are Germanic languages, bluish ones are Romance, green Slavic.

The big light pink blob in the center is High German. To the north of it, darker pink, Low German and, further north and darker, Danish. The reddish hue on the border between Danish and Low German, and also in the Netherlands, is Frisian. Continuing counterclockwise you have Dutch, French, Italian; then purple is probably Friulian, which here is counted as a separate language while things like Lombardian are grouped as dialects of Italian.

Next comes Yugoslavian, including Slovenian and Bosnio-Croat-Montenegro-Serbian. Brown is Hungarian, light green is Slovakian, the green almost entirely surrounded by German is Czech, the green entirely surrounded by German is Sorbian, the green with lots of small German enclaves is Polish. The yellowish tone in the northeast is likely Lithuanian’–eukubernetes