Visualizing the Past (Part Three)

If you’ve been reading this blog for any length of time, you’ll know that maps and history are two of my favorite things. I love history because I love learning about the vast panoply of the human experience, the millions of twisting threads of time that created the world we live in today. And I love maps because I don’t think you can really understand the world without being able to picture it. Maps are such amazing tools, laying out in detail how the world functions, its geography and politics and topography, and the ways in which those change over time. It probably won’t surprise you, then, to know that I like historical maps quite a lot. Learning about how someone chooses to depict the world can tell you quite a lot about their point of view, and seeing the way in which people in different times make different choices about how and what to illustrate can show you how our perception of the world has changed. That’s what we’re going to do today. I have here a small collection of historical maps that I think are really cool. I’ve done something similar in the past for World War I, and now I’m continuing my cartographic voyage through the rest of time and space. There’s no real rhyme or reason behind the choices for inclusion beyond that I want to share them with you and talk about them and hopefully learn together something about our history. So, without further ado:

Previous Installments: WWI, Part One, Part Two

Visualizing the Past (Part Two)

If you’ve been reading this blog for any length of time, you’ll know that maps and history are two of my favorite things. I love history because I love learning about the vast panoply of the human experience, the millions of twisting threads of time that created the world we live in today. And I love maps because I don’t think you can really understand the world without being able to picture it. Maps are such amazing tools, laying out in detail how the world functions, its geography and politics and topography, and the ways in which those change over time. It probably won’t surprise you, then, to know that I like historical maps quite a lot. Learning about how someone chooses to depict the world can tell you quite a lot about their point of view, and seeing the way in which people in different times make different choices about how and what to illustrate can show you how our perception of the world has changed. That’s what we’re going to do today. I have here a small collection of historical maps that I think are really cool. I’ve done something similar in the past for World War I, and now I’m continuing my cartographic voyage through the rest of time and space. There’s no real rhyme or reason behind the choices for inclusion beyond that I want to share them with you and talk about them and hopefully learn together something about our history. So, without further ado:

Previous Installments: WWI, Part One

Visualizing the Past (Part One)

If you’ve been reading this blog for any length of time, you’ll know that maps and history are two of my favorite things. I love history because I love learning about the vast panoply of the human experience, the millions of twisting threads of time that created the world we live in today. And I love maps because I don’t think you can really understand the world without being able to picture it. Maps are such amazing tools, laying out in detail how the world functions, its geography and politics and topography, and the ways in which those change over time. It probably won’t surprise you, then, to know that I like historical maps quite a lot. Learning about how someone chooses to depict the world can tell you quite a lot about their point of view, and seeing the way in which people in different times make different choices about how and what to illustrate can show you how our perception of the world has changed. That’s what we’re going to do today. I have here a small collection of historical maps that I think are really cool. I’ve done something similar in the past for World War I, and now I’m extending my scope to the rest of time and space. There’s no real rhyme or reason behind the choices for inclusion beyond that I want to share them with you and talk about them and hopefully learn together something about our history. So, without further ado:

Visualizing The Great War

On March 21st, 1918, at 7:15 AM, a charge ignited deep within a monstrosity of steel and concrete buried into the hills of Coucy-le-Château-Auffrique. A 234 lb. shell launched, shredding the lining of the barrel as it punched into the atmosphere. Above the French countryside it rose, higher and higher, five miles, ten, fifteen, twenty-five. Then it fell, stooped like a hawk. At 7:18 AM, the shell slammed into the Quai de la Seine, a full 80 miles away from where it had begun. This was the Paris Gun, and the first man-made object to penetrate the stratosphere.

War had reached new new heights.

The way the history of WWI is taught really bugs me, because it’s nearly always so limited. Nearly everyone only learns about trench warfare on the Western Front, submarine raiding in the Atlantic, maybe the Russian Revolution. The Great War was fought at greater heights than any before, as well as greater depths. Geographically, fighting occurred near or on every continent. Culturally, the armies of the First World War were more heterogeneous than any war fought before the creation of trans-national empires could. On the Western Front alone, the Allied Powers fielded soldiers and laborers from France, Belgium, Italy, Ireland, Scotland, England, Russia, Portugal, Senegal, Algeria, Canada, South Africa, Rhodesia, the United States, Siam, Indochina, India, and China.

To attempt to help rectify this, I decided to try to create a visualization of the war, a map showing just how widespread and all-encompassing this conflict was. And to make this post slightly less self-indulgent, I included a selection of historical maps relating to the war I think help illustrate my point.

Click ‘View Image’ to Embiggen

Same As Above