OTL Map Thread Mk IV., 2014-

Ever tried looking up those territories in western Tibet that are still claimed by Bhutan? The so-called "Bhutanese enclaves in Tibet" are discussed in this article, which details the Bhutanese position that these Drukpa monasteries and villages (in the midst of Gelugpa Tibet) were - and are - sovereign Bhutanese territory. They are clustered around Mount Kailash (Cherkip Gompa, Darchen, Nyanri, Zuthulpuk Gompa) and along the main pilgrimage routes to the holy mountain (Dho (Dhogang), Dungmar, Gezon, Khochar (Khojarnath), Ringung, etc.)
They are really difficult to find, but the below map (NH 44-7, U.S. Army Corps of Engineers - Map Service) displays seven of them, with another exclave of Bhutan (Nyanri) literally just off the top of the map.

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The only ones I still haven't found are Gesur, Itse (or Iti) Gompa, Sanmar (or Sanmur) which I believe are all in regions north of Uttarakhand.

Note: Ladakh, which was also a Drukpa Buddhist state, likewise had a similar exclave, Minsar. The settlement of Minsar was - after Ladakh's union with Jammu & Kashmir - part of that state. This means this tiny Kashmiri settlement, in the middle of mountainous Tibet, is currently disputed territory between India, Pakistan, the People's Republic of China, the Republic of China (Taiwan) and the Tibetan gov't-in-exile. This makes it one of the most thoroughly disputed territories on Earth.
 
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A question, I am trying to find a detailed map of all administrative divisions of Apartheid South Africa, but I was unable to find them (only for South West Africa/Namibia), so for my large map I am simply using modern-day subdivisions but with only the four provinces highlighted as first-level divisions.

However, is this electoral map showing the second-level administrative subdivisions of Apartheid South Africa, or is it just an electoral map? do not even get start with trying to find maps of the internal subdivisions of the Bantustans, these seem to be the hardest of them all to find

684px-South_Africa_1992_referendum_results_by_region.svg.png
Don't know if you still need this but i think this might be what you were looking for
Also some higher resolution maps of districsts in 1911, 1961 and 1991 here at this link too
 

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Ethnographical maps of the Banat region of the Hungarian Kingdom, from the 1910 census. It goes without saying that the region was incredibly diverse (and indeed remains so, though somewhat reduced, today).

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A webfind from reddit:

poprigin5.png

(nitpick: it's more a map about in which mordern countries are the birthplaces of the Popes and not really a "Popes by country"-map)
 
Another webfind from reddit:

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Nothing in particular about this map but I find it cute that Wales is apparently an official size comparison unit.
 
In 2022 when Russia annexed the Kherson Oblast it also annexed parts of Mykolaiv Oblast, including the Kinburn peninsula and most of former Snihurivka Raion. Most maps on wikipedia and elsewhere show the borders of the annexed are of Snihurivka Raion to be the Snihurivka and Hrokhivske hromadas, but according to the decrees of the Russian-appointed governor, which are available on the official website of the pro-Russian government of the region, the annexed area actually corresponds to the pre-2020 Snihurivka Raion with the exception of the Chervona Dolyna and Kobzarsti hromadas in addition to the vilalge of Pavlo-Mar'ianivka of Vasylivka hromada.
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I have mapped out the two decrees detailing the borders of what the pro-Russian administration calls the "Snigiryovka Rayon" (in orange) and "Aleksandrovka Rayon" (in red). Thus this, along with the Kinburn peninsula, which was added to the re-established "Golaya Pristan Rayon" constitute the areas annexed by the pro-Russian administration of Kherson Oblast into the region, and now claimed by Russia as part of it's territory after it's annexation of the Kherson Oblast and the 3 other regions in September-October 2022.

I hope this helps anyone mapping the current situation with regards to determining the current borders of Russian claims. To reiterate they include all of Ukraine's Donetsk, Luhansk, Zaporizhzhia and Kherson regions in addition to this map and the Kinburn peninsula. And Crimea and Sevastopol too, of course.
 
So following my previous post I have decided that I'm going to map out all the administrative divisions of the 4 regions Russia annexed in September 2022 which were introduced by the new Russian administrations. There needs to be good maps of these for anyone mapping the current situation for their regional or world maps and even more so in the future when this is all over, and since no one one the Internet seems to have tried doing this so far I guess it's up to me as the only one who cares enough and has even noticed they've changed as most people seem to think they still use the Ukrainian divisions or just copy-pasted the old pre-reform ones.

So like I said I'll be doing all 4 regions from west to east, starting with the Kherson Oblast as I've already started and from then on I'll go to the Zaporozhye Oblast and the DPR which have undergone the most significant alterations and finish off with the LPR. So without further ado here's the administrative divisions of the Kherson Oblast according to the Russian-installed government:
OOCdE4I.jpg

It consists of 20 districts and 2 municipalities.

The list:
-Kherson Municipality
-Novaya Kakhovka Municipality
-Aleksandrovka District
-Alyoshky District
-Belozyorka District
-Berislav District
-Velikaya Aleksandrovka District
-Velikaya Lepetikha District
-Verkhniy Rogachik District
-Vysokopolye District
-Genichesk District
-Golaya Pristan District
-Gornostayevka District
-Ivanovka District
-Kalanchak District
-Kakhovka District
-Nizhne Serogozy District
-Novotroitskoye District
-Skadovsk District
-Snigiryovka District
-Chaplinka District


For comparison here is the old pre-2020 Ukrainian administrative division of the region on which the new Russian one is based on:
KMPIjyS.jpg

It consisted of 18 districts and 4 municipalities.

The new administrative division introduced by the Russians similar as the old pre-reform Ukrainian division, but with a few changes. These are:
-The Snigiryovka District created out of most of the territory of the former Snihurivka District of the Mykolaiv region, with the exception of the post-reform Hrokhivske hromada and some northern areas, and annexed to the Kherson Region with it's center in Snigiryovka (Snihurivka).
-The Aleksandrovka District created out of the territory of the post-reform Hrokhivske hromada and annexed to the Kherson region with it's center in Aleksandrovka (Oleksandrivka).
-The Kinburn Peninsula of the Mykolaiv region with it's 3 villages annexed to the Kherson region and added to the Golaya Pristan District.
-The Kakhovka municipality abolished and merged into the Kakhovka District.
-The Hola Prystan (Golaya Pristan) municipality abolished and merged into the Golaya Pristan District.

It's important to remember that currently the Russian administration does not control all of the region so some of these divisons are only theoretical. This includes the regional center of Kherson. Currently the city of Genichesk serves as the temporary seat of the Russian administration.

This post is not in any way political or an endorsement of anything.
Source: https://khogov.ru/deyatelnost-ukazi-gubernatora-2023/


Some other notes:

Some of you might have spotted that I have added a panhandle to the Snihurivka District that goes into the Velyka Oleksandrivka District. This is an unclear of the border which I have now changed my opinion on as to how to show it. Let me explain. Maps are quite inconsistent with this section of the border. Some show a straight border and some show the panhandle. Generally less accurate maps don't show it, like Arcgis which I'm using as a base here, while more detailed and reliable maps like OpenStreetMap show it, including maps from the Ukrainian government. So with this we can conclude that it exists. So why didn't I show it in my previous post? Well the panhandle itself includes a few fields and a tiny village called Bezimenne. Now the problem is it is not included in the decree provided by the Russian-appointed administration on the settlements included in the Snihurivka district. There is a settlement called Bezimenne included but it almost certainly refers to the slightly larger village next to Snihurivka itself. So with this I came to the conclusion that the Russians probably looked at one of those maps without the panhandle and assigned the settlement to the Velika Oleksandrivka District. But now when making this full map I read through the decree defining the settlements included in that district as well and guess what? It's not included in that one either. So essentially the only conclusion we can make here is the Russians also got confused and kinda forgot about this village. With this I have decided to go with the best we have, so the border as seen on Ukrainian government maps.
Another confusing situation is the tiny uninhabited Pervomayskiy Island, just north of the Kinburn spit. I couldn't find information on whether the Russians claim it or not. To decide tried searching up whether before the 2020 reform it was part of the Pokrovka rural hromada which encompassed the Kinburn Peninsula and it's 3 settlements or the Ochakiv urban hromada, but I also couldn't find anything. Since to my knowledge the Russians never controlled this island, at least not at the time of the annexation, I have decided to not include it.
The last thing I want to talk about is how the organization of the Snihurivka areas makes no sense. So as I mentioned the Russians annexed this area as the Snigiryovka and Aleksandrovka districts. This territory includes most of the former pre-2020 Snihurivka district, but not all of it, a few northern villages are not included. Now this is likely because the Russians never controlled them, but as we've seen from the annexations of the entirety of the 4 regions the Russians don't have a problem with annexing areas they don't control, so why did they go to the trouble of being conservative here? And the most outrageously illogical thing is the whole situation with splitting the former district into two. Aside from the recreated Snihurivka (Snigiryovka) district there is a new Oleksandrivka (Aleksandrovka) district, created out of the post-reform Hrokhivske hromada. This district is tiny, city sized, and includes only villages with not cities or even towns. Why create such an unviable rural district out of nowhere? Especially since, as you will see with my next posts, the new Russian administrations in the annexed regions, when making alterations to the old Ukrainian system when bringing it back, generally tend to merge districts rather than create new ones. Also for some reason they bothered changing the center from the small village of Hrokhivske to the small village of Oleksandrivka. So why did they split the former Snihurivka district into two? Well it's probably because when they occupied the territory they created an administration for the Snihurivka hromada and Hrokhivske hromada, as before the annexation the occupation administrations used the post-2020 administrative divisions. Now when they annexed these two into the Kherson region and then to Russia they probably just changed their status from hromada administrations to district administrations to be done with it. Now this would make sense but the post-2020 hromadas in the rest of the region also didn't quite match the pre-2020 districts so when they recreated those faithfully they had to merge and create some administrations. So why not here? I couldn't tell you. Also in connection with that while the new Aleksandrovka District follows the borders of the Hrokhivske hromada the new Snihurivka District does not (though on the clickable map seen on the website of the Russian administration it does, but that map is clearly wrong and probably made with whatever shapefiles they could find). A few villages in the north of the post-2020 hromada were not included (as mentioned earlier), but the western parts of the former pre-2020 district were included. This new Snigiryovka district is a Frankenstein-esque monstrosity with some parts removed and some parts added with no consistency. Maybe if the Russians ever recapture this area they'll fix this mess.
Also another interesting thing I've discovered while looking through the decrees of the Russian-appointed governor on which this map is based is that despite the Kherson region being being an oblast of the Russian Federation, thus meaning theoretically it should have Russian as it's sole official language, according to one of the decrees both Russian and Ukrainian are official languages of the region (though of course Russian is preferred). In addition in the Novotroitskoe and Genichesk districts the Crimean Tatar language is also official alongside them, mirroring the situation in Crimea.

Anyways that's all, do ya'll think I've gone insane yet?
 
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So some interesting things to add to my previous post.

First of all my IP address has recently been banned from accessing the website of the Russian administration of the Kherson region (khogov.ru). It just says "You've been banned" in English. Weird. I guess someone from there saw my post on here and didn't like it? I sure hope I'm not in the sights of some Russian government hackers now.

VPNs still work though. With this I can still access the site and here is the second thing, today on the front page of the website in the news section an article appeared in which the photo is of a government meeting with a map of the region on the wall. On the map however you can see the borders of the territories annexed to the region from the Mykolaiv region roughly drawn with a sharpie or something. It confirms they don't claim Pervomaiskiy Island, but what's weird is the border in the Snihurivka area is different from the one I've drawn. While, again, it's drawn a bit sloppily it seems to mostly match up to the borders of the pre-2020 district, so including the northern areas of the district that according the decrees were omitted from the annexation. It seems they can never make up their mind.
 
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So some interesting things to add to my previous post.

First of all my IP address has recently been banned from accessing the website of the Russian administration of the Kherson region (khogov.ru). It just says "You've been banned". Weird. I guess someone from there saw my post on here and didn't like it? I sure hope I'm not in the sights of some Russian government hackers now.

VPNs still work though. With this I can still access the site and here is the second thing, today on the front page of the website in the news section an article appeared in which the photo is of a government meeting with a map of the region on the wall. On the map however you can see the borders of the territories annexed to the region from the Mykolaiv region roughly drawn with a sharpie or something. It confirms they don't claim Pervomaiskiy Island, but what's weird is the border in the Snihurivka area is different from the one I've drawn. While, again, it's drawn a bit sloppily it seems to mostly match up to the borders of the pre-2020 district, so including the northern areas of the district that according the decrees were omitted from the annexation. It seems they can never make up their mind.
Wow! Eerie as frick!
 
Bit surprising that any pope wasn't from Austria.
Certainly any potential Austrian pope from before 1805 would've been counted as being from the Holy Roman Empire, and thus rolled into Germany. It's practically impossible to have had 7 popes from Germany since 1805. Or worse, 1871.
 
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