The weird thing is that in all their raging maximalism, they don't include Portugal and Brazil in their Spanish empire, even though the Iberian Union was a thing for 60 years.
I recognize almost everything of decent size in these mays, though I may disagree with quite a bit of it. (Why aren't Angola and Mozambique in the Portuguese empire picture?) The one that I'm really having problems with is British Africa (yes, that's what's below Australia and above Canada, South Africa is on the left). Is that the bounds of Sikes-Picot attached to that?
If you want to get picky, the Portuguese Empire is missing Angola & Mozambique (plus East Timor and a few minor islands). Doesn't change the measurement but looks odd given the way they've treated all the others.
It seems the creator tried to show the empires during their largest extension (for example Spain itself does obviously lack Spanish Sahara and Morocco) but indeed at least the coastal strips of Angola and Mozambique should have been shown for Portugal.
Yup. it's including Palestine (Trans)Jordan and Iraq. Likewise the French Empire includes Lebanon-Syria.
The Ottomans aren't here, we've got the Islamic (Rashidun) Caliphate instead. If Roman Mesopotamia is meant to extend to the Gulf, then I think we have a quad-overlap between Basrah and Baghdad. I think the only other possible triple is if the Caliphate juust extends into future-Soviet territory southeast of the Caspian.
Doesn't it quite clearly overlap with to-be-Soviet territory in Central Asia (Tajikistan, Uzbekistan, maybe Kyrgyzstan)?
Protectorate of the West strikes again. Also, I see Francia, Achaemenid Persia, whatever Central-East Europe is supposed to be, and the Russia's Triple Atlantropa project.
You're probably right. I was thinking "Rashidan caliphate" and remembering that it didn't extend North of Persia, but it looks like they're using the Wikipedia map for the Umayyads and they had a chunk of what is now Turkmenistan/Uzbekistan/Tajikstan, so definitely a triple there.
On a semi-serious note, that map is a shining example of how you can make a shaded map useless by picking shadings that don't follow any logical order. (Why do I think someone just took a B/W copy of a coloured original?) Anyone want to look at the first map and tell me which regions are in the "0.2-0.5" range and which in "16-41"? Or take a quick look at either map and tell me where the regions of highest incidence are?
I thought it was some crap abstract art personally ... ugly at that.. then I was like hey.. that's Europe.. hey.. look the English Channel has closed and Stockholm is underwater
Intriguing and also nightmare inducing thing to ponder....There’s nowhere else to put something like this (yet), so I’ll put it here. This is perhaps the first instance I’ve seen of this technology that is visually coherent and therefore worthy of mentioning. Part of me is surprised we haven’t seen algorithmic maps done yet. The concept of “coastlines” is an unchanging thing. An algorithm only needs to know to change the borders within the landmasses. Maybe “always leave this part alone and only ever change other things” is hard for it to understand. I don’t know. Anyway, here’s an algorithmically generated map of Europe where the person asked for "1914 borders.”
It’s terribly wrong, obviously. But it’s interesting. I expect within the next year or two we’ll have a thread here specifically for “AI” maps. Moreover, pretty soon we’ll be able to generate maps by merely telling the algorithm what you want the point of divergence to be and how many years later the map should show based on that POD.
Another fascinating aspect is that the algorithm generated visual “errors” that can reliably be categorized as normal map elements. Look at the border between Itainy and Rdwaaa. That color and thickness screams “demilitarized zone” to me. Occupation colors/borders are also distinguishable. Alt-Finland is invading E Ioah I. Tusia is obviously having its western lands occupied by German Y and its eastern and southern lands by… well, pick an orange state—either alt-Britain and Rsnan are likely. Speaking of alt-Britain, it’s occupying northern Butmin and perhaps a few other coastal regions. There seems to be an insurgent group in northern Bussy that has spilled over into alt-Austria.
In general, I don't think a maps showing irredentist claims necessarily count as Horrible maps, but I don't think I've ever seen one with Sakalin being Japanese, Alaska being Russian *and* Newfoundland being British (but giving Labrador in its entirety to Quebec). Also, though Russia wanted Finland, not to cause it to stop existing. (Similarly for Libya's claims to Sicily)
I wish we saw more of the key so I could tell what it's trying to say about Vancouver Island and eSwatini.
Maybe they just don't grow any tobacco in Alaska or Newfoundland? (My first thought on seeing that map was "They grow tobacco in Canada?!" - but apparently they do). But that would imply tobacco farms on Sakhalin and while I've found references to "production of tobacco products" ... yeah.
