Summer Light Reading 2024

Here is another installment of what is becoming an annual summer tradition. Just like the light beach reading, here is some light map reading. Not much to comment about, just some maps and related items I like.

First of all since the Olympics are in Paris, a nice papercut map you can enjoy, or buy here.

A very colorful map from Wikimedia Commons showing the different sections of the Rhine River. As one reader pointed out it looks like a water quality map and probably is as river quality tends to get worse as more cities and farms downstream dump pollution into them.

A map of things to do in New England. I copied a portion and highlighted some of my favorites such as "loafing", "sleeping under blankets" and "doing nothing".

Transit map of Kaohsiung on Taiwan. There are some great station names like Dream Mall, World Games and Oil Refinery Elementary School.

A screen shot from Yahoo Japan that I like for no specific reason.

Finally, Tsunami Generating Earthquakes. I think this originally came from some social media site that was once known as Twitter. Maybe from the U.S. Geological Survey.

OK, back to your beach read.

Summer Light Reading

Here is a grab bag of maps I enjoy. I don't have much insight or commentary to add-let's just appreciate them!

SAS Airlines Map, 1965

via Airline Maps Tumblr

 

A "Belgocentric" map of Europe

via StrangeMaps

Melbourne Trams to the Beaches -Vernon Jones, 1930

available at the Transit Maps store

Vernon Jones was a printmaker who apparently did some work for the government of Victoria, Australia. I have not been able to find much information about him online the maps are truly a work of art. He used some really nice text styles too. Here is a detail from Trams to the Racecources, River and Zoo.

also from the Transit Maps store

New Jersey Lighthouses.

While on vacation at the Jersey Shore last year I took a picture of this map, hanging inside the Cape May Lighthouse.

Automobile Routes to Atlantic City sponsored by the Rudolf Hotel. I lost the original source of this one.

Hand drawn personal map of Detroit by 'jide Aje-not to scale! This is part of an exhibit/research project by Detroit Research.

via Detroitography

Walkway Over the Hudson - drawn by Maria Rabinky illustrating the bike/pedestrian rail trail bridge over the Hudson River in Poughkeepsie, New York.

The hand drawn cliffs are a really nice touch. Here's the whole map, complete with mountains and biplanes.

More to come....

Global Inflation

Inflation is causing economic stress here in the United States. It is often covered in the news as a failure of the US economy, but as this map shows, inflation is a global phenomenon and the United States is in one of the lower categories.

The map, via statista show projections from April, 2022. The countries with higher rates tend to be "developing nations" that are experiencing inflation as a consequence of economic growth. The highest rates are found in countries that are experiencing conflict such as Venezuela (500%*-ouch!) and Sudan. The accompanying article on statista, explains the inflation situation in much greater detail. 

Another map from statista, that is on Forbes, shows global gas prices.

The United States is in the middle category here but still gas is much cheaper here than in Canada, Europe, South and Eastern Asia and Australia. While this map is also a few months old, the current info from Global Petrol Prices still has the US in the same approximate position.

While looking for more information on statista, I found this interesting map showing ships are currently jammed up trying to get to the ports of Rotterdam and Antwerp. Delays in container shipping are one of the major stressors contributing to inflation.

* In looking at inflation trends I've seen other numbers for Venezuela that are around 250%. I imagine it's not easy getting accurate numbers given the political turmoil in that country.

Treaty of Versailles

This Friday, June 28th marks the 100th anniversary of the Treaty of Versailles. This treaty changed the borders of Europe, at a particular disadvantage to Germany. Here is a 1920 newspaper map "from book" via UCSB professor Harold Marcuse's web pages.

Another map, via Mark Callagher shows the German territorial losses much more clearly.

In addition to the widely mentioned losses to Poland, France and Denmark there are more obscure enclaves that I was not aware of. These include Eupen-Malmedy, a German speaking region of eastern Belgium.

Map via Wikipedia

Within this region was the jointly administered area of Neutral Moresnet. This was a neutral sliver of land between Belgium (originally the Netherlands) and Prussia that both countries were interested in because of a valuable zinc mine. Treaties after Napoleon's empire left the area neutral pending a future agreement. The region, along with the rest of Eupen-Malmedy was awarded to Belgium after the Treaty of Versailles. The region is shown in white on the postcard below.

Postcard via Wikipedia

There was also the brief existence of the Free State of Bottleneck. This bottleneck shaped area was leftover when the French and American post World War I circular zones of control did not meet

By Ziegelbrenner -.Source: Ravenstein Radwanderkarte, 1923

This region was cut off from the rest of Germany and was declared as a microstate in January, 1919. It was abolished in 1923. The state had about 17,000 people and printed its own emergency money featuring a map of the area.

Image via Wikipedia

La Jolla Map Museum - Maps of Historical Interest

Last month I visited the Map & Atlas Museum of La Jolla. They have an impressively large collection of original maps and many of them are of significant historical importance.

For example, here is one of the earliest recorded maps - baked onto a clay tablet.

Photo taken at the Map & Atlas Museum of La Jolla

It shows a parcel of land with ownership and dimensions in cuneiform. On the back are field measurements. This could be a legal document or may have been used as a teaching tool for surveying.

Here is a world map by Antonio Floriano (ca. 1555) using polar projections from the north and south poles. I took most of the following pictures on a phone so try to ignore the glare and reflections. Where possible I will provide links to better images online.

Photos taken at the Map & Atlas Museum of La Jolla

Each hemisphere is divided into 36 globe gores and therefore it was likely to have been designed for making globes. A better image can be found at The Vintage Map Shop. Here is some detail from the eastern Mediterranean.

A very different world map from a similar era (1581) is Heinrich Bünting's World Map.

Photo taken at the Map & Atlas Museum of La Jolla

This is a figurative map meant to represent biblical geography with the cloverleaf shape possibly reflecting the Trinity. A colored version can be seen here.

Leo Belgicus maps.

An example of a Leo Belgicus via Wikipedia

These maps represent the "Low Countries" of the Netherlands, Belgium and Luxembourg as a lion, partially because the most of the provinces of these countries featured lions on their coats of arms. I did not get a photo of the whole map so I used an online example above. I did, however get a nice detailed close up.

Photo taken at the Map & Atlas Museum of La Jolla

I love the way the Rhine and Meuse Rivers flow over the paw like blood vessels. The paw scratching at "Colln" (Cologne) is a nice touch.

Here is a detail from Map of the Caribbean (Spanish Main) by Peter Martyr, 1511. Martyr was a friend to Columbus and the other explorers of the era. This is the first printed map devoted to the Americas. Martyr was also the first to have used the concept of a "western hemisphere" though he was not sure whether the mainland areas of South America were attached to India or not. Derived from confidential Spanish sources, it was very accurate for the time and also may have landed him in some trouble. The same year, King Ferdinand outlawed giving maps to foreigners.

Photo taken at the Map & Atlas Museum of La Jolla

I love the exaggerated detail of the coastlines.

More to come in a future post - stay tuned!

Armistice and Occupation Map of Germany

A hundred years ago the armistice was signed ending World War I. One of the more interesting maps showing the situation at the time is from New Zealand History.

The front line on Armistice Day is shown in purple. The gray area to the east was evacuated by Germany after the Armistice was signed. Yellow areas are parts of Germany that were occupied by Allied Forces. Germany was given two weeks to evacuate the gray area and four weeks to withdraw their forces across the Rhine. Lands to the west of the Rhine were occupied as shown as well as three 30 km zones around the bridges at Cologne, Mainz and Koblenz. These areas were to be occupied for 15 years according to the Treaty of Versailles. However, the occupation was ended a little early,  in 1930.

The Christmas Truce-1914

A hundred years ago today the fighting stopped - temporarily. The Christmas Truce was a series of ceasefires along the Western Front. World War I had degenerated into a stalemate and trenches were dug along the front lines. Opposing trenches were often very close and after a couple of months of living in close proximity under miserable conditions, a degree of empathy arose between enemy combatants. Soldiers sang Christmas Carols to each other across the trenches and eventually emerged to help each other with burials, exchange rations and play football.

This map from Silent Night: The Story of the World War I Christmas Truce* by Stanley Weintraub shows the location of the front lines at the end of 1914.

Map image from Google Books

Many soldiers on both sides felt little reason to hate the enemy troops. Some of the Germans had worked in England before the war and many of them knew enough British culture to sing familiar songs to the "enemy" troops. Military and political leaders were deeply troubled by this lack of hostility and actively discouraged future truces, punishing those who attempted them.

If the truce was in part a protest by the troops about the futility of their situation, the map below (from a military history site) justifies their sentiments. It shows the Western Front in the summer of 1916, almost completely unchanged after a year and a half of suffering and death. The front lines changed little until near the end of the war, almost four years after the Christmas Truce.

*Much of the information above is also from Weintraub's book-link here.