|
|
Late Night Rambling
Posted by Stephen Green · 8 February 2005
It's close to midnight, I've got a cocktail in me -- and I've started a new project. Taking a few minutes away from it to jot down a few notes here on the blog. As is typical for a Late Night Rambling post, the explanation for what I'm doing is gonna be more than a little circuitous. I used to suck at history. In some subjects, I think in words - dialogues, actually. In others, I think visually. For me, history is one of those visual subjects. In Fifth, Sixth, and Seventh grades, I went to three different schools -- and missed taking geography at each one. So when I took my first serious history class in junior high, I was lost. I kept forgetting which peninsula was Spain and which one was Greece. Was shocked when I heard that the Biblical Tigris and Euphrates rivers really existed - yet still couldn't place them anywhere real. So even though I started the class with some enthusiasm, I eventually got (quite literally) lost and was happy to (barely) pass the course. That was Seventh Grade American History, but the pattern repeated the next two years in Western Civ I and II. Then I got shipped off to military school, which required I actually sit in my room at night and do homework. "Well, of all the nerve," I thought. "Now what am I going to do during 5th Period study hall?" Got bored, picked up an encyclopedia, and started to read. World War II caught my attention for reasons I'm still not clear on. But this time, I could follow the story – Britannica had maps, lots of them, and well-drawn. When their maps weren't good enough, I found the library also had a Goode's World Atlas from 1938. Not only could I read the war, I could read the maps from the year it started. Well, you can't understand WWII unless you read about WWI, so I did just that. And you can't understand WWI unless you've read about the 1870-71 Franco-Prussian War, so I did that, too. And the whole "Concert of Europe" thing they kept talking about didn't make much sense until you studied Metternich – so I read up on him. But Metternich doesn't come into focus without the Napoleonic Wars, so. . . you can guess what I did. By the time the semester was over, I had a pretty damn clear understanding of modern Europe. The guy who once thought a C was a primo History grade was suddenly aceing his exams. A love was born. And I absolutely fell in love with maps. Maps had proven the key to learning the first thing I ever studied in-depth all on my own. I owed them respect. Hell, I even stole that prewar Goode's Atlas. I still have it today, and on a shelf I can reach easily from my office chair. Since then, I've bought lots of atlases. I have an 1853 American geography primer. Several different editions of the indispensable National Geographic World Atlas. More historical atlases than I can count. And my all-time favorite atlases: Colin McEvedy's European history quadrilogy, covering from way-back BC to the eurozone. I read each one at least once a year. Every time I drag them out again, my bride looks at me funny. Jeebus, I do love maps. But no one to my knowledge has yet to publish the map I want to see the most. (Caution: Yet another tangent ahead.) The two authors I respect most are Robert D Kaplan and Ralph Peters. Each man has demonstrated, time and again, that nation-states aren't all they're cracked up to be. From South America to West Africa to Indochina, what the maps show us just ain't so. The maps show that one country ends at this line, and the next country starts on the other side of it – all in bright, easy to distinguish colors. But the facts on the ground are a lot more complicated. A lot. We have maps to show us the de jure political state of the world, but not the de facto. I aim to fix that. I'm keeping in mind that the real map of the world is in constant flux. I'm also keeping in mind that my Photoshop skills aren't the greatest. But there's a niche needing filling, and if nobody else will… well, then, it falls on me to do it, even if I have to do so in broad, unskilled strokes. I don't expect the results to be pretty, but I do expect the effort to be satisfying. Look for Steve's Map of the Real World sometime on Tuesday. Or as late as Wednesday if the cocktails hold out. Comments
I too have had a fondness for maps from a young age. Look forward to seeing yours. Here's a few sites that may or may not help. Europe: Asia (numbers more than map): Immigration: European Mathematicians: Scottish Distilleries: Historical (all over, all sorts): UTX has the best damn map collection I've seen available on the internet. If anyone knows a better one, please point. Posted by: chthus at February 8, 2005 01:28 AMSteven, I Absolutely agree about Colin McEvedy. His Euro-history atlases are outstanding. I'm also very partial to his "Historical Atlas of the History of the Pacific." I'm an international airline pilot who spends loads of time in Asia. You'ld be surprised how many times I wind up pulling it out of my brain bag and passing it over to my various co-pilots, who then devour the thing over the next few days, and then hand it back to me dog-eared at trips end, with a big thank you. Plus McEvedy is at times hilarious, and always entertaining, as is your website. Posted by: Daddy at February 8, 2005 01:58 AMAll you need to know about 19th and 20th century European wars is " He who controls the Hartland controls the Hinterland; he who controls the Hinterland controls the world." I do not know how involved you want to get into this but a wilkpedia type project would be outstanding, if you can keep the input to a few trusted comrades. A weekly update would be outstanding, with hyperlinks and such. Posted by: Blaine at February 8, 2005 07:13 AMMapping by ethnic/cultural identity? You're gonna have to update this map every 3 to 6 months, given how some areas are so chaotic. It would be interesting to take it one step further and turn it into an interactive program, where you could feed it datasets that organized the different populations regionally, and by time. Then, you could look at historical trends. Posted by: Gregory S. Hill at February 8, 2005 07:14 AMTry looking at a resource map of the world and line it up with the major wars sometime. It can be quite interesting. For example, even for all his bluster about Lebensraum, a good many of Hitler's campaigns were resource motivated. The Seudetenland contained the bulk of Czechoslovakias resources. His drive into the Balkans guaranteed him Romanian oil. He even may have sacrificed Moscow in 1941 because the Caucasian oil fields enticed him to split his thrust into the USSR. And we all know that Pearl Harbor was Japan launching a war for oil. I'm interested to see the Steve-projection map. Although if I see the word "Jesusland" anywhere I'm boycotting this site... Posted by: Mike M at February 8, 2005 07:15 AMOne can't grasp the first thing about politics if one is not well-grounded in geography, and it is shocking as to how many ostensibly well-educated people, with advanced degrees, are fairly ignorant regarding geography. Posted by: Will Allen at February 8, 2005 08:49 AMStephen the cartographer, what a pleasant surprise. I have been accused of being easily impressed and all, but Sir your breadth and depth continue to impress. Looking forward to this. Mark Monmonier has an excellent series of books on cartography. The one I have is Drawing the Line: Tales of Maps and Cartocontroversy. Recommended reading... Posted by: kimsch at February 8, 2005 10:35 AMMaps are really a great way to learn about things (is this a guy thing? Even when it comes to driving, my wife has a great sense of direction but hates maps, whereas I have no sense of direction at all but can find things by following a map). My 7-year-old son got into the whole election thing in large part through playing with those electoral college calculators on the web. Posted by: Crank at February 8, 2005 10:59 AMIf you don't have this one you should get it: Historical Atlas of the Jewish People, ed. Eli Barnavi You can get copies used on Amazon fairly cheap. Excellent charts and maps and photos showing migration patterns and population densities and archeological sites and spheres of influence and import-export disparities and everything else. 4000 years of global history through the lens of one people's wanderings.... Posted by: Yehudit at February 8, 2005 12:22 PMMaps are a vital tool in teaching history. When you look at a map of Gettysburg, PA in 1863 and see all the roads converging on that town, it's easy to explain how, if Gen. Lee had won the battle there, the city of Washington would be at his mercy. Mao Zedong taught that if you secured the countryside, the cities would fall into your hands like ripe fruit. This worked for him in 1949, and Ho Chi Minh followed the same strategy in Vietnam, and it worked eventually, even though he didn't live to see it. Sam Walton did it so well that his rivals didn't even notice Wal-Mart until it was a multi-billion dollar empire. In more recent times, we have the map of counties that went for Bush in the last election. Bonus question: how many Democratic leaders are saying, "Uh-oh?" Posted by: Bloodthirsty Warmonger at February 8, 2005 01:47 PMCrank, no, maps are not strictly a guy thing (c: I love my National Geographic world atlas, my Rand McNally road atlases (one at work, one at home) and my Thomas Bros. guides (one in the house, one in the 2002). Maps never fail to fuel my wanderlust. Posted by: A Recovering Liberal at February 8, 2005 02:44 PMMy dad bought me The Times Atlas of the World (big ass edition) when I was 10. I could hardly lift the thing. I haven't been the same since. Posted by: Fabian at February 8, 2005 08:07 PMno - maps are not just a guy thing. I worked for Rand McNally and have a collection of maps and atlases that makes my friends shake their heads. I wish I could start seriously collecting antique maps, but I haven't won the lottery yet! Borderlands... You aren't kidding, But what really drove in the lesson was dealing with Tyroleans. About 15 miles north of Trento was the border of Sud Tirol, an area historically Austrian which had been annexed to Italy by the settlement of WWI. The capital of Sud Tirol, a city named Bolzano/Bozen (Italian/German names) was a beautiful pleasing place but communication was difficult because they didn't speak Italian. Well most did but wouldn't speak it. After some difficulty I learned to begin in English. Once it was established that I wasn't Italian and didn't expect them to be I found that most of them were happy to speak in Italian - with me. The architecture of Bolzano was the most striking lesson in cultural imperialism. A very Tyrolian core surrounded by a Mussolini-era ring of newer city complete with grandious avenues, public buildings, houses, and apartment buildings. No other city in the Sud Tirol endured this treatment - and none were as difficult to deal with as the people of Bolzano. And no wonder - these people's ancestors had been under the bootheel and they were reminded of it every day. A visit to Alsaces is another example. Alsatians are neirther French (their nominal nationality) nor German, but some of both. I met a Jaques Schmidt, who ran a winery, and he was pretty typical. The culture was similar to that of the Rhenish areas of German across the Rhine River - but identical. Nor was it as clearly French as in Burgundy or Normandy. It was something in between. Posted by: Don at February 9, 2005 03:45 PMOkay Stephen, this is probably a dumb question, but I just barely started looking at maps, and I'm wondering what PROJECTION you like best. I like the idea of the Peters Projection because I like the idea of an area-accurate map, but apparently, real map makers think it's a joke. National Geographic Society uses Winkel, but I don't really understand why this is better. Can you help me clear this up? Posted by: Michael Duff at February 13, 2005 01:31 AM |
MDS - Give Until It Hurts Terror War Scorecard Watching America 50 Things American Cancer Ablation Center Buy VodkaPundit Stuff
"Even when he has nothing to say, I still like looking at his picture."
Ann Althouse
Across the Atlantic
American Realpolitik
Albion's Seedlings
Justene Adamec
The Argument Clinic
Todd A
Moe Freedman
Allah Is In the House
Body in Mind
Ben Domenech
Duck Season
Banana Counting Monkey
Ted Barlow
Eric Alterman
American Times
|
     |
