Alex Richards
Donor
It's unzoomed on the map above. The only reason I zoomed in was to be better able to label the map.
The problem is it's very misleading. There's a huge difference between the situation with the de facto independent states in the south of the Gwandu Empire (which are small but distinguishable on this stage) and the Shan States (which had 20 states recognised as having the rank of King by the Burmese and at least that number lower in rank). One is a collection of states which might look a bit crammed on this scale but, fundamentally, can be drawn even if it's not the neatest look in the world, another is an area where I suspect the QBAM would have difficulties.
There is no actual state (as opposed to area of minor statelets) in the Great Lakes with less pixels of coloured area than Qatar (and in fact only Ankole is smaller than Kuwait). There are only 4 in the Sokoto Caliphate, 3 of which are next to each other. Theoretically you could use statelets for that area, but you'd need to do statelet+outline anyway (otherwise it would look like a single vassal), so you're not saving much there. For Gwandu there's one vassal with less pixels than Qatar, and the only other ones in the area that are smaller are independent.
On the other hand, nobodies complained about India being too detailed before (or indeed the complete reworking of the Dutch East Indies I did), so it's a pretty good statement of the precedent.
There's sacrificing completeness for clarity, and then there's presenting a situation roughly analogous to the Balkans in terms of state size, variation and complexity as being either a single state or using a colour which we also use for areas where the state structure doesn't extend beyond city states.
First time I've heard this. Contrarywise, India as current clearly indicates the difference between an area like Gujarat which was lots of small princely state or the south which was several larger ones.
But the statelets colour is very misleading in this case- colour all those Sokoto vassals in statelets and the first impression is that they're little chieftans and tribes like the Shan States or Kachin Hill Tribes rather than quite significantly sized states.
One reason I've used undefined borders there is that it's just as facetious to say that there was a hard border between the area of the Waddai Empire proper and her vassal in Dar Runga as between the Waddai and the Egyptian territories in Sudan.
Well, apart from the fact that checking things I've found that the Toro Kingdom should be part Bunyoro at this point rather than fully independent there's three chief issues here:
1. You lose the distinction between the centralised kingdoms (Buganda, Bunyoro, Ankole etc.) and the 'Kingdom' of Busoga which was a collection of 11 statelets barely drawable on the QBAM (and I've not even found a border for the minor statelets on the lakeside coast next to Ankole)
2. There was actually a bit of back and forth between Buganda and Bunyoro for dominance in the area until Buganda won out under the British- it's not an issue for this map, but making statelets the precedent means you can't show this at all (I'm not advocating a colour though, the scales enough there here it is best to simplify as single states rather than try and show complicated vassal relationships).
3. Apart from possibly the Buganda-Busoga border, every single one of these borders will be a colonial frontier at some point. The British expansion into Uganda was a long, drawn out affair spanning a decade initial agreements with Buganda in 1892, through to the final inclusion of the Kingdom of Ankole in 1901 (it should, in fact, be independent in the 1900 map). Combine that with the colonial administration using these borders (save for a loss of territory by Bunyoro after it attempted to break away in the late 1890s), and it would be very beneficial to see where these borders are coming from as they're not just Europeans randomly carving up this bit of the continent.
Well, as for the names I've had to use this map near-exclusively (albeit with document/online text cross-checking) because most online information is this as best (and frankly that's a pretty exceptional example). As such I'm translating from mid-19th century European interpretations of African names. In German. Further research means I've managed to track down that 39 is actually the Ilorin Emirate (Ilori on the map) and that 25 was indeed the Suleja Emirate (also called Zaria or Zazzau). A lot of these vassals were semi-independent and it might be more accurate to indicate more of them as being only nominal vassals (Suleja is reffered to as an independent Hausa refuge at times, though I think that's only in the early stages of the Fulanji Jihad or might be referring to being independent from another vassal).
Well, borders runs into the same issue I mentioned earlier with internal borders between vassals being hardly more defined than external ones between nations, though it could be worth a shot.
You definitely can't lump the northern ones together though- that's actually the area where I have the most confidence that these are highly autonomous vassals (Kano at least was one which the Caliphs had to shed a lot of blood to keep hold of). It's the southern ones where I've had difficulty tracking down information on how autonomous they were.
Potentially, though I've also just realised I accidentally erased the Imamate of Futa Jallon from an earlier draft by mistake so it would make a needed distinction there.
I'm going to search around for any clarity on some other areas before posting the updated map.
