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  1. - Top - End - #1
    Barbarian in the Playground
     
    GnomePirate

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    Default History and Geography Buffs: Can you date this map?

    My wife bought a wall map of the world on Amazon because my children will be learning from home next year. I would assume that if you buy a map, it would be fairly recent. After we hung it, I noticed that the USSR was still on it. Looking closer, I realize its much older. I am interested if anyone can narrow the age down to a specific year based on names and boundaries. On this map:

    -China is listed as the "Chinese Republic" and includes Mongolia as "Outer Mongolia" in its borders. It also includes a small region called "Tannu Tuva" that is north of present day Mongolia.
    -Japan is listed as the "Japanese Empire" and includes the Korean Peninsula, half of Sakhalin Island and the Kurile Islands.
    -Taiwan is separate from China and says Taiwan (Formosa).
    -Phillipines are listed as "Phillipine Isles (United States)
    -Hawaii is listed as "Hawaii or Sandwich Isles (United States)
    -Cambodia, Laos, and Vietnam are listed as "French Indochina"
    -Indonesia and Malayasia are "Netherland East Indies"
    -New Zealand is the "Dominion of New Zealand"
    -India includes Pakistan (called "Baluchistan") Bangladesh, and Myanmar (called Burma). No reference to it being an English Colony though.
    -UAE is called "Tropical Oman" and is separate from Oman.
    -Lebanon, Syria, Palestine, and Israel are all called "The Levant States"
    -Libya is "Italian Libya"
    -Sudan, and South Sudan is called "Anglo Egyptian Sudan".
    -*****, Chad, Mauritania, Mali, Algeria, Morocco, are all "French West Africa" (The website is auto-censoring a certain country name that is located in west central Africa).
    -Zambia, Namibia, Zimbabwe, Botswana, Mozambique, South Africa are all "Union of South Africa".
    -Great Britain, including all of Ireland, is "The British Isles"
    -Latvia and Estonia is part of Poland but Lithuania is its own country.
    -Germany includes East Prussia, with a small piece of Poland between the two.
    -Guiana is divided into "Br", "Dut", and "Fr".
    -Canada is the "Dominion of Canada"

    There are many other differences, too many for this list. If you have a question about a country or boundary, please ask.

  2. - Top - End - #2
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    BlackDragon

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    Default Re: History and Geography Buffs: Can you date this map?

    It's definitely pre-WW2, from the sounds of it, but there are inconsistencies, see below. Best guess is 1920s, or else it's some hotchpotch fake map made later on and designed to look like an antique.

    - Tannu Tuva only existed as a separate nation between 1921 and 1944, and it was only *called* that until 1926 (it became the Tuvan People's Republic after that)...however, it was only recognised by the USSR and Mongolia, so a bit odd it would appear on any Western map.
    - Korea was annexed by Japan in 1910 and didn't regain its independence until 1945.
    - The Phillipines were under US sovereignty between 1899 and 1946.
    - French Indochina ceased to exist in 1954.
    - Technically New Zealand is still the Dominion of New Zealand and has been since it gained independence in 1907, but the term is rarely used today.
    - Pakistan became independent from India in 1947, including what is now Bangladesh at that time (which split from Pakistan somewhat later).
    - Italian Libya only existed between 1934 and 1943.
    - The Irish Free State came into existence as a separate country from the UK in 1922. However, the current Republic of Ireland is still part of the British Isles, because that's just the term for the group of islands including the British mainland, Ireland, and all the smaller islands around them, so them being labelled "British Isles" on your map doesn't count as conclusive evidence that Ireland is still part of the UK.
    - Latvia has not been under Polish dominion since the 18th century, and I don't believe Estonia has *ever* been so.

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    Barbarian in the Playground
     
    GnomePirate

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    Default Re: History and Geography Buffs: Can you date this map?

    Quote Originally Posted by factotum View Post
    - The Irish Free State came into existence as a separate country from the UK in 1922. However, the current Republic of Ireland is still part of the British Isles, because that's just the term for the group of islands including the British mainland, Ireland, and all the smaller islands around them, so them being labelled "British Isles" on your map doesn't count as conclusive evidence that Ireland is still part of the UK.
    My bet on the age of the map was sometime in the thirties but this is the one that threw me off. All parts of the the British Isles are the same color which, elsewhere on the map, would mean one country. For example: Spain and Portugal are separate countries with separate colors and are not labelled the "Iberian Peninsula". This is a very Eurocentric Map and it's weird it would get Great Britain wrong.

    Unless it was an English Cartographer who still regarded Ireland as part of the country.

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    Barbarian in the Playground
     
    GnomePirate

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    Default Re: History and Geography Buffs: Can you date this map?

    Quote Originally Posted by factotum View Post
    - Tannu Tuva only existed as a separate nation between 1921 and 1944, and it was only *called* that until 1926 (it became the Tuvan People's Republic after that)...however, it was only recognised by the USSR and Mongolia, so a bit odd it would appear on any Western map.
    Tannu Tuva is part of the Chinese Republic on this map. Was Tannu Tuva part of China prior to 1921?

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    Flumph

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    Default Re: History and Geography Buffs: Can you date this map?

    Yeah this map is weird.

    Ireland being part of the UK (if "british isles" is not just being used as a regional descriptor like "West Indies") wasn't a thing for a couple decades by then.

    Lots of interwar years markers otherwise.

    If I had to guess there may have been certain " our country doesn't recognize X nation so we will ignore it" and or we are look at some map just around 1948 where the map is changing a lot and someone just added the current changes they liked because so much was up in the air.

    Another option is that it is a map from an anglophone colony nation. That some locals grabbed a few world maps the brits had laying around and patched them together. Wouldn't have been a government effort or anything and more like the local printer looking to make a few bucks.

    Guyana being Guyana (British Guyana) Suriname (Dutch Guyana) and French Guyana (still and overseas territory of France today) is pretty normal though.

    That mozambique is included in the british South African colonies is also really weird. It was Portuguese....basically from the time Europeans first pulled the "No-Flag-No-Country" trick until 1975.
    Last edited by sktarq; 2020-08-24 at 10:13 AM.

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    Brother Oni's Avatar

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    Default Re: History and Geography Buffs: Can you date this map?

    Do you have a link to the Amazon page? It might be helpful if we have a picture as there may be other clues on it that you've missed.

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    Barbarian in the Playground
     
    GnomePirate

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    Default Re: History and Geography Buffs: Can you date this map?

    Quote Originally Posted by Brother Oni View Post
    Do you have a link to the Amazon page? It might be helpful if we have a picture as there may be other clues on it that you've missed.
    https://www.amazon.com/gp/product/16...?ie=UTF8&psc=1

    I hope this helps.

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    Brother Oni's Avatar

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    Default Re: History and Geography Buffs: Can you date this map?

    Looking up the product name, gives me the site of the original manufacturer, which lists that map as a political map, circa 1921: Stanford's General Map of the World 1921.

    Given it's a political map, it helps explains certain things, like Ireland being a part of Britain, but Guyana being separated by their colonial powers.

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    PaladinGuy

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    Default Re: History and Geography Buffs: Can you date this map?

    To add to the argument that they have taken a modern map and copied bits from a range of old maps onto it, the actual base map looks to be too accurate to me. Did we really have maps that accurate for the artic and antartic back then?

    Also, I have never seen a map with New Zealand on it twice before! (it often gets miss out, including once on an official ZG government issued map!)

  10. - Top - End - #10
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    Flumph

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    Default Re: History and Geography Buffs: Can you date this map?

    Okay this makes more sense.

    The really weird colonial errors or Mozambique being part of Southern British Africa isn't a thing (Mozambique is that green patch)
    and the British are again in colonial control of Malaysia (the pink patch on Borneo and S of Thailand)
    I'm also seeing all the Baltics (Purple Estonia, Brown Latvia, Green Lithuania)

    much more sensible. it also seems poorly labeled so it is pretty easy to take wrong information out of it.

    an interesting curiosity.

  11. - Top - End - #11
    Barbarian in the Playground
     
    GnomePirate

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    Default Re: History and Geography Buffs: Can you date this map?

    Quote Originally Posted by Brother Oni View Post
    Looking up the product name, gives me the site of the original manufacturer, which lists that map as a political map, circa 1921: Stanford's General Map of the World 1921.

    Given it's a political map, it helps explains certain things, like Ireland being a part of Britain, but Guyana being separated by their colonial powers.
    And that's how Amazon makes money. You can buy this map directly from the Stanford website for 3.99 pounds or $5.21. Or you can buy it from Amazon for $24.95.

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    Brother Oni's Avatar

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    Default Re: History and Geography Buffs: Can you date this map?

    Quote Originally Posted by Trafalgar View Post
    And that's how Amazon makes money. You can buy this map directly from the Stanford website for 3.99 pounds or $5.21. Or you can buy it from Amazon for $24.95.
    The Stanford site only does the 1920 version as a map - the closest size I can find to the Amazon version is this A1 sized map (33"x23") which runs to 19.99GBP or 26.12USD.

    The 1921 version I linked is actually wrapping paper.
    Last edited by Brother Oni; 2020-08-24 at 05:34 PM.

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    Default Re: History and Geography Buffs: Can you date this map?

    Tropical Oman is probably Treaty Oman or Trucial States, which means before 1971, while Mongolia became a breakaway Chinese territory in 1921-24. Italian Lybia means after 1912. The Polish corridor came to be in 1920. So it would be 1920, more or less. The Irish Free State was a British Dominion estabilshed in 1922, which might be why it isn't indicated.

    Maps do sometimes contain inaccuracies. This particular map must have been made after WW1, most likely with the Russian Civil Wars still ongoing, after the Irish war of independence, with the separate civil wars in breakaway Russian territories possibly still ongoing. But even maps made in peacetime do sometimes not take new things in account.
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    Ogre in the Playground
     
    Flumph

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    Default Re: History and Geography Buffs: Can you date this map?

    Quote Originally Posted by Brother Oni View Post
    The 1921 version I linked is actually wrapping paper.
    Worked in travel store....can say old maps make great wrapping paper. We did this with obsolete USGS 1:26K Topos that were otherwise slated to be destroyed. The heavier paper makes sharp folds and corners easy and so looks very professional. Highly recommend.
    as does basement cat

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    Ettin in the Playground
     
    Planetar

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    Default Re: History and Geography Buffs: Can you date this map?

    xkcd has a flowchart specifically made for you:

    https://xkcd.com/1688/large/

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    Default Re: History and Geography Buffs: Can you date this map?

    Quote Originally Posted by sktarq View Post
    Worked in travel store....can say old maps make great wrapping paper. We did this with obsolete USGS 1:26K Topos that were otherwise slated to be destroyed. The heavier paper makes sharp folds and corners easy and so looks very professional. Highly recommend.
    as does basement cat
    I recall when the local museum was going through a trunk of 'grandma's stuff' somebody donated and found several dresses wrapped up in the original surveying maps of the county. Created no little stir, what with sudden questions about allotment borders, water rights and just who happened to make a killing selling land to the railroad. The one question I wanted an answer to was never dealt with: How did grandma get the maps in the first place?

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    Default Re: History and Geography Buffs: Can you date this map?

    I mean, most likely, someone threw them away and she fished them out of hte waste paper bin since she needed a few large sheets of paper to wrap up old clothes?
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    ElfRangerGuy

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    Default Re: History and Geography Buffs: Can you date this map?

    Quote Originally Posted by Icewalker View Post
    xkcd has a flowchart specifically made for you:

    https://xkcd.com/1688/large/
    Love this one, especially since it also has a line for Discworld and others.

    As to the map, 1920-21 is probably accurate, as there was in Europe the Danzig corridor, Prussia still part of Germany and Poland stretching into what is now Belarus. Since all that only came into being after WW1, and with Ireland still part of the UK (so before 1922), it limits things to 1919-1922.
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    ElfPirate

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    Default Re: History and Geography Buffs: Can you date this map?

    Quote Originally Posted by Rogar Demonblud View Post
    The one question I wanted an answer to was never dealt with: How did grandma get the maps in the first place?
    We don't talk about grandma's little fling with the man from the surveyor's office....

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    Barbarian in the Playground
     
    GnomePirate

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    Default Re: History and Geography Buffs: Can you date this map?

    Quote Originally Posted by sktarq View Post
    Worked in travel store....can say old maps make great wrapping paper. We did this with obsolete USGS 1:26K Topos that were otherwise slated to be destroyed. The heavier paper makes sharp folds and corners easy and so looks very professional. Highly recommend.
    as does basement cat
    Any merchant mariner or anyone with time in the Navy or Coast Guard will tell you that Nautical Charts make excellent wrapping paper. You also have to replace them every year or two when the chart corrections start to add up so you usually can get them free from your ship.

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    Default Re: History and Geography Buffs: Can you date this map?

    Quote Originally Posted by Eldan View Post
    I mean, most likely, someone threw them away and she fished them out of hte waste paper bin since she needed a few large sheets of paper to wrap up old clothes?
    You never throw out survey maps. They have too much impact on property laws. They had a case in New England a couple years ago where they had to go back to the colonial archives for a survey map.

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    Ogre in the Playground
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    Default Re: History and Geography Buffs: Can you date this map?

    Quote Originally Posted by sktarq View Post
    Yeah this map is weird.

    Ireland being part of the UK (if "british isles" is not just being used as a regional descriptor like "West Indies") wasn't a thing for a couple decades by then.
    As a native Brit, of Scottish-Irish-English heritage, I can chip in on this with personal knowledge!

    "The British Isles" is still used by UK folks to refer to that North Atlantic archipelago which includes Ireland, Great Britain, and sundry tiny islands (from Rockall to the Isle of Wight, Skellig to Shetland, Lundy to Lindisfarne, and all dry rocks between). They think of it as a regional descriptor ... but -
    People of the Republic of Ireland can quite rightly take offence at that term, because the island of Ireland is not geographically part of Great Britain, even though it was once part of the United Kingdom (by conquest).

    Alternative names I've heard are Great Britain and Ireland (which upsets some people in Northern Ireland - too political to discuss here), the North Atlantic Archipelago, the British and Irish Isles, the Celtic Isles (me, I like this one, but it annoys the Sassenachs [Gaelic: "Saxons" = "English"] - including my Mum).

    All this can get politically very heated, so I'll leave it there.

    In any case, on your map, Ireland is shaded as part of the same country as Great Britain, so that suggests this map is from before the Republic.
    Last edited by Altair_the_Vexed; 2020-08-25 at 10:41 AM.

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    Default Re: History and Geography Buffs: Can you date this map?

    The principal contradiction appears to be between the (apparent) inclusion of Ireland within Britain, and the existence of Italian Libya, which only came into being in the 1930s. But there had been Italian colonies in Libya before that, before they were unified and given the name "Italian Libya", and a mapmaker might generically refer to them as such.

    Based on the subsequent research, the early 1920s seem to be the best bet. That would also, as noted, explain the strangeness around the Baltic: there were ongoing wars in that area following WW1 until about 1923 and which territories are marked as belonging to which country would probably depend on recognition more than nominal sovereingty.

    Though that doesn't explain South Africa. Zambia and Zimbabwe were never part of South Africa, being a separate colony called Rhodesia under colonial rule, while Botswana was another separate one called Bechuanaland. Namibia was, after WW1, so that would work with a 1920s dating - but Mozambique was never British. On the image shown, Mozambique looks to be green (matching Portugal and Angola) however and therefore not British.

    The other thing about Ireland, of course - while it gained independence in 1922 the Irish Free State was still a monarchy and therefore in principle part of the British Empire until 1936, so a contemporary mapmaker might still use pink for it in the same way as Canada, Australia, etc.

    The kicker looks to be Egypt. Given that that's green rather than pink, it suggests the map post-dates the declaration of Egyptian independence, which places it most likely in 1922 or at the latest early 1923. If it's dated 1921, that might be the first edition of which this was a subsequent one with a couple of pertinent updates.
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