Thirty Five maps that simplify world history

November 3, 2021 1:47 AM

Thirty Five interesting maps that explain different facets of world history. Shows the extent of the Roman, Viking and Mongol Empires. Other maps are on the slavery states, World War 2 and many other topics. Definitely worth a visit if you like browsing maps.

I normally only get four comments on my posts so you really are keen !, here's the link again if you missed it the first time.

posted by Narrative_Historian (28 comments total)

Your link is busted; you linked to the end of the slideshow instead of the beginning. Drop the #36 from the end of the URL.
posted by Harvey Kilobit at 2:28 AM on November 3, 2021

Mod note: Fixed that link.
posted by goodnewsfortheinsane (staff) at 3:19 AM on November 3, 2021 [2 favorites]

That lynchings map is ... horrifying. Not only because of the huge numbers, but also because of the wide geographic dispersion.
posted by chavenet at 3:46 AM on November 3, 2021

It's too bad they don't want me to read anything written on said maps... these seem super interesting otherwise!
posted by Grither at 5:14 AM on November 3, 2021 [13 favorites]

I'm not knocking the post – I like it! – but this should really be called "35 History Maps That Will Make You See The World Europe, its Conquests, and the United States In A Whole New Light".
posted by escape from the potato planet at 5:27 AM on November 3, 2021 [5 favorites]

I'm trying to love this link - I'm trying so hard - but fffffffuuuuuuuuuuuu so many of those maps are not only impossible to read but also impossible to fathom due to the lack of adequate legends. What do those colors mean in the map of the time-lapse Roman empire? What do they mean in the map of time-lapse Mongol empire? I gave up in frustration.
posted by MiraK at 5:52 AM on November 3, 2021 [5 favorites]

Grither - annoyingly the article doesn't seem to directly link but it does list the sources. If you search for the title of the map and its source, most can be easily found in higher-res more readable versions. For instance, the lynchings map is hosted by the Library of Congress here.
posted by Wretch729 at 5:52 AM on November 3, 2021 [2 favorites]

MiraK the Roman one was a little bit tricky to find but here is its original page and the map key. The Mongol one is here scroll down for the key.
posted by Wretch729 at 5:56 AM on November 3, 2021 [2 favorites]

That Countries That Were Never Invaded By The British map is pretty eye-popping.
posted by Thorzdad at 6:01 AM on November 3, 2021 [2 favorites]

Oh right, I remember when the British colonized Mexico. No,not really.

Oh wait, they did send a few troops to support the French who launched a full-scale invasion and installed a puppet Emperor.
Thats the basis of the entire country of Mexico appearing on that map.

I think most others are even more iffy. It all comes from the book "All the Countries We've Ever Invaded: And the Few We Never Got Round To" which is such a warm, funny title for a book about conquests and invasions, isn't it?
posted by vacapinta at 6:22 AM on November 3, 2021 [3 favorites]

That Countries That Were Never Invaded By The British map is pretty eye-popping.

I suspect that to some people, it looks like a to-do list. (Note: I am British.)

As that map suggests we have invaded/sent non-peacekeeping troops nearly everywhere at one point or another. But we only set up shop in about 1/3 of the globe.
posted by plonkee at 6:28 AM on November 3, 2021

I read somewhere (on Twitter?) a few weeks ago that the most commonly observed non-religious holiday in the world is independence from the British: 62 countries. So on average there's a country celebrating its independence from Britain approximately every two weeks.
posted by MiraK at 7:02 AM on November 3, 2021 [17 favorites]

Math?
posted by rdr at 7:04 AM on November 3, 2021 [3 favorites]

"only"

My last job had a pretty high percentage of 1st and 2nd generation immigrants (to Canada) and it was bizarre how many of us (my family was here before the British) have "The Brits came and stole our land" as a common narrative.
posted by Mitheral at 7:06 AM on November 3, 2021 [2 favorites]

That Countries That Were Never Invaded By The British map is pretty eye-popping

A few of those were things like the raids on Norway in WW2, which never really amounted to much. Likewise, in some cases (the US), the map represents the modern borders of a country that was originally much smaller when the British invaded.

Still...

"The war started because of the vile Hun, and his villainous empire-building."

"George, the British Empire at present covers a quarter of the globe, while the German Empire consists of a small sausage-factory in Tanganyika. I hardly think that we can be entirely absolved of blame on the imperialistic front."

"Oh, no sir- absolutely not!" [aside] "Mad as a bicycle!"
posted by TheWhiteSkull at 7:11 AM on November 3, 2021 [3 favorites]

Thank you for the links, Wretch279. Seems like most of these maps are from wikimedia commons and that makes me wonder if wikipedia has a master list of all its animated maps. Surely it must. I feel an incredibly strong urge to go hunting for that page but today I have several severe deadlines at work and fuck me, will somebody please yell at me if y'all see me hanging out on Mefi again today jesus christ I gtg.
posted by MiraK at 7:11 AM on November 3, 2021 [3 favorites]

My "favorite" British empire story is the one where BP whispered in America's ear that Mossadegh's new parliament had a couple of dirty commies in it, and got USA to invade Iran and reinstall the Shah, and then BP got back its old favorable terms for Iranian oil that Mossadegh had cut into. All without a single British soldier deployed.

(ok ok I'm going now.)
posted by MiraK at 7:14 AM on November 3, 2021 [2 favorites]

Love these. Fantastic starting point for research/discussions!
posted by widdershins at 7:20 AM on November 3, 2021

Some of the other maps are interesting, too. The one with the spread of Christianity in Europe doesn't really show how Roman Britain was actually mostly Christian before the pagan Anglo-Saxons turned up, who would then later be Christianized again. Likewise, it doesn't show that a number of the peoples across the Danube and Rhine frontiers were already Christian even before large portions of the Empire were. Many of the Germanic-speaking peoples who invaded Rome had already been converted by figures such as Wulfila and others.

That map of the firebombing of Japan is pretty stark, and probably doesn't even need labels. It's pretty safe to assume that every population center was firebombed by the US, with the exception of Kyoto, and two other small cities (and we know what happened to those).
posted by TheWhiteSkull at 7:22 AM on November 3, 2021 [1 favorite]

seems like most of these maps are from wikimedia commons and that makes me wonder if wikipedia has a master list of all its animated maps

It's not a master list, but here's Wikimedia Commons' overall animated maps category, which is further subdivided into maps by continent, etc. (Watching lots of maps animate like this is a bit mesmerising.)

I'm going to have to investigate the Roman borders map more carefully, as I'm pretty close to the limes marking the border between Roman territory and Germanic territory. (I'm just inside Roman territory, but it looks from that map like it wasn't actually Roman for all that long.)
posted by scorbet at 7:46 AM on November 3, 2021 [2 favorites]

If you like this sort of thing, check out r/MapPorn/ over on redddit. It's SFW despite the name. I've seen many of these maps on it, in much larger versions, e.g. that map of lynchings in the US.
posted by Bee'sWing at 10:21 AM on November 3, 2021 [2 favorites]

apparently, Romans liked to hide there loot on the coast(s) or along central roads of Britannia.
posted by clavdivs at 3:15 PM on November 3, 2021

I love maps, perhaps too much--I stared at atlases as a kid and they are both great and horrible for learning history. Great because they are accessible and easy to understand. But the horrible part is because it makes things--like borders on a political map--seem so definite when they are not.

I like a lot of these (and the bison map was so sad--I hadn't seen that) but I do want to indulge in some pedantry:

The Roman Empire "at its height" (2) includes Mesopotamia, which the Romans ruled for maybe 3 years at the end of Trajan's reign. Technically correct is not the best kind of correct: It's highly misleading--almost all maps I've seen exclude it or shade it differently.

"Countries invaded by the British" (9) is crossing some wires for me. All of the US is marked as "invaded" pink even though the last time they fought the UK they were just the Atlantic seaboard. OTOH, North Macedonia is pink presumably because it used to be Ottoman, a country that the British invaded but no longer exists. I assume the same logic applies to all of South America: Used to be Spanish, the British fought Spain. Definitely erring on the side of maximum pinkage in these inconsistent choices.

Serious side eye at the map of European control (10) description implying China was under "direct control." The legend on the map itself is fine ("partial control or influence.")

The "spread of Islam" map (14) should be labelled "the advance of Arab armies" or some such. Islam followed, but over generations.

The WWI peace treaty map (15) pointedly does not include Bosnia-Herzegovina as part of Austria-Hungary. They occupied it in the 19th century and annexed it in 1908. Could be a sloppy source, but having read the Talk pages on wikipedia it could be someone still grinding an axe a century later.
posted by mark k at 3:42 PM on November 3, 2021 [2 favorites]

Am I missing something? On my iPad they're just tiny, unreadable maps with a large caption field to the right. Trying anything to make the map bigger only advances to the next map.
posted by brachiopod at 5:04 PM on November 3, 2021

On Chrome on my Surface, the two-finger "expand" works fine, as does the right-click and "Open Image in New Tab" option. Not sure what the Safari/iPad equivalents are (though I'd assume the gesture is the same?)
posted by mark k at 7:15 PM on November 3, 2021

Indeed these are interesting maps, though the layout and resolution leaves something to be desired. Why exactly are the captions taking up a full 1/3 of the screen, making the already difficult-to-read map text all the more difficult?
posted by zardoz at 1:21 AM on November 4, 2021

These definitely work better on a laptop or desktop, but they are a really great conversation starter - even the misleading ones like the British occupation map. The US expansion one really highlights how we pushed Spain and then Mexico out (of course the Native Americans were pushed out/genocided starting even earlier). It informs the immigration debate. We have some balls taking California and Texas (to keep slavery in the latter case once Mexico outlawed it) and then not wanting people from Mexico coming over. We’re just another imperial power and Trump’s wall was an attempt to clarify the boundary. Bleah.
posted by freecellwizard at 8:50 AM on November 4, 2021

"We Didn't Cross The Border, It Crossed Us"

We have some balls taking California and Texas (to keep slavery in the latter case once Mexico outlawed it)

Texas: 1-1 in wars in defense of slavery.
posted by kirkaracha at 9:36 AM on November 4, 2021