As far as i know north and south sudan are two totally different countries, they separated because of the civil war.
The R-QBAM main thread
- Thread starter Tanystropheus42
- Start date
Rac isn't talking about the two Sudans being in a single federation, he's talking about both of them being federal in their internal structure.
The Raj patch isn't finished, but it's been long enough without any updates that I feel like posting a WIP. Progress has been slow for a variety of reasons, but it largely boils down to me wanting to do things properly damn it. Perfectionism can be both a blessing and a curse at times.
Progress on the historical geography patch took rather longer than I expected it to, largely as there are some really bloody old reservoirs in India. Hell, some of the ones in Sri Lanka were supposedly constructed in the 4th century AD. Logically it makes sense; the Deccan gets a lot of rain during the monsoon but not much through the rest of the year, providing a very strong incentive to just dam up a local stream and store water during the wet season to irrigate crops during the leaner months, encouraging the creation of notable storage reservoirs rather earlier than was the case in other regions.
The problem was that as there were a few early ones, I had to check when every damn reservoir was constructed to make sure it was after July 1914, which as you might expect took quite a while. It didn't help that not all of them had a wikipedia page that helpfully listed the date of completion - for many I had to spend ages poring over period maps looking for the presence or absence of the lake in question. All in all a very tedious, laborious process.
Having gotten that done, I didn't really feel up to re-drawing the Ganges delta straight away, so to do something different I got cracking on drawing the borders of the Princely States instead for a week or so. Earlier this week however, I finally knuckled down to finish the geography patches; I patched did the Indus delta on Tuesday (hasn't changed much, but enough to need a patch), the Ganges delta on Wednesday (as expected, a very big job indeed), then patched the upper courses of the Ganges and Brahmaputra to account for meanders over the last century yesterday.
While I'm quite pleased with the delta patches and the tweaks to the upper course of the Ganges, I'm still not entirely happy with the patches to the Brahmaputra. On the other hand, by now I'm well and truly fed up with doing historical geography patches, and while the Brahmaputra isn't perfect, it's good enough.
There's still a few more small things to do, most notably adding in Aksai Chin and its associated lakes and ice caps. At the time the territory was administered by Jammu and Kashmir, but as it's currently controlled by China (and disputed by India) it hasn't yet been added to the main map. I'm also a little uncertain on where the international boundaries in the Himalayas exactly lay back in 1914. On the other hand, considering all the work I've had to do to get the rest of the geography patch done, I feel like putting off working on it till I get to the Himalayas.
I'm posting this here now to prove I'm still working on things (albeit slowly). I'll try and spruce-up my current Princely States WIP covering southern India and post that at some point tomorrow.
Oh, and a quick note on sources before we get to the main map. About two weeks ago I stumbled on a series of collections of old surveyors maps of colonial India. It's an absolute motherlode of useful maps - some of the larger collections have literally thousands of highly detailed maps, generally produced between the 1910's to the 1950's, all free to view and download, and damn have they been useful. I can't link to individual maps (each page I'll link to is a long list of download links), but I will highlight a few notable sub-series.
The 32 miles per inch series provides good overview maps, the 16 miles per inch series provides decent regional maps, while the 4 mile per inch maps are incredibly useful for detailed work. The latter series is particularly useful as each map covers one degree of latitude by one degree of longitude, which combines perfectly with the 1 degree graticule I have lying around to take into account projection distortions. I've used all three series extensively as my primary sources for historical geography edits.
All that aside, here's my patch for the base geography of the Indian subcontinent in July 1914. Watch this space for the WIP political borders tomorrow;
Progress on the historical geography patch took rather longer than I expected it to, largely as there are some really bloody old reservoirs in India. Hell, some of the ones in Sri Lanka were supposedly constructed in the 4th century AD. Logically it makes sense; the Deccan gets a lot of rain during the monsoon but not much through the rest of the year, providing a very strong incentive to just dam up a local stream and store water during the wet season to irrigate crops during the leaner months, encouraging the creation of notable storage reservoirs rather earlier than was the case in other regions.
The problem was that as there were a few early ones, I had to check when every damn reservoir was constructed to make sure it was after July 1914, which as you might expect took quite a while. It didn't help that not all of them had a wikipedia page that helpfully listed the date of completion - for many I had to spend ages poring over period maps looking for the presence or absence of the lake in question. All in all a very tedious, laborious process.
Having gotten that done, I didn't really feel up to re-drawing the Ganges delta straight away, so to do something different I got cracking on drawing the borders of the Princely States instead for a week or so. Earlier this week however, I finally knuckled down to finish the geography patches; I patched did the Indus delta on Tuesday (hasn't changed much, but enough to need a patch), the Ganges delta on Wednesday (as expected, a very big job indeed), then patched the upper courses of the Ganges and Brahmaputra to account for meanders over the last century yesterday.
While I'm quite pleased with the delta patches and the tweaks to the upper course of the Ganges, I'm still not entirely happy with the patches to the Brahmaputra. On the other hand, by now I'm well and truly fed up with doing historical geography patches, and while the Brahmaputra isn't perfect, it's good enough.
There's still a few more small things to do, most notably adding in Aksai Chin and its associated lakes and ice caps. At the time the territory was administered by Jammu and Kashmir, but as it's currently controlled by China (and disputed by India) it hasn't yet been added to the main map. I'm also a little uncertain on where the international boundaries in the Himalayas exactly lay back in 1914. On the other hand, considering all the work I've had to do to get the rest of the geography patch done, I feel like putting off working on it till I get to the Himalayas.
I'm posting this here now to prove I'm still working on things (albeit slowly). I'll try and spruce-up my current Princely States WIP covering southern India and post that at some point tomorrow.
Oh, and a quick note on sources before we get to the main map. About two weeks ago I stumbled on a series of collections of old surveyors maps of colonial India. It's an absolute motherlode of useful maps - some of the larger collections have literally thousands of highly detailed maps, generally produced between the 1910's to the 1950's, all free to view and download, and damn have they been useful. I can't link to individual maps (each page I'll link to is a long list of download links), but I will highlight a few notable sub-series.
The 32 miles per inch series provides good overview maps, the 16 miles per inch series provides decent regional maps, while the 4 mile per inch maps are incredibly useful for detailed work. The latter series is particularly useful as each map covers one degree of latitude by one degree of longitude, which combines perfectly with the 1 degree graticule I have lying around to take into account projection distortions. I've used all three series extensively as my primary sources for historical geography edits.
All that aside, here's my patch for the base geography of the Indian subcontinent in July 1914. Watch this space for the WIP political borders tomorrow;
As promised, my current WIP for the Raj. It's a little rough around the edges, and for now only covers southern India (specifically, the southern half of the Bombay Presidency, Hyderabad and most of Madras), but it's good enough for now. Also, bear in mind that this is just the stuff that's finalised - I've got a fair amount of the modern Indian states of Chhattisgarh and Odisha done as well, but unfortunately that's nowhere near finished.
Later I'll see if I can whip up an alternate version that gives each small state a different colour, to show which enclave is who's, but for now I'm just too busy. I'll edit that map, and the appropriate colour key, into this point at some point later today or tomorrow once I have the time to make it.
But first, a very long digression - I lost nearly two days trying to confirm or reject what I'm now 95% certain is a case of Wikipedia vandalism, the almost certainly fictitious "Nimsod State".
The whole saga started when I noticed a state I hadn't seen before in a list on Wikipedia's article on the Deccan Agency, an overarching framework whereby the British government conducted relations with two dozen small states in what is today Maharashtra and northern Karnataka. Curious, I followed the link. I'll skip the two days of confused research as I tried to confirm or deny the existence of the "State", and instead focus on my conclusion - that the state never existed - and my evidence for that conjecture.
Firstly, period historical sources make no mention of any Princely State with a capital in the small town of Nimsod. The 1911 edition of the Encyclopaedia Britannica is available in full to search on wikisource; searching for "Nimsod" and "Nimsod State" yields no results, while other small states in the area, such as Aundh, Akalkot or Mudhol do have brief articles.
More notable is the absence of any mention of the "State" in the 1909 edition of the Imperial Gazetteer of India, handily digitised here. Every other small state in the southern Deccan gets a mention. In some cases two or three related States are lumped together in the same entry, but all are mentioned at least once by name, and even checking grouped entries, not once is the name "Nimsod" brought up. Trust me, I checked all of them, and have the links to prove it. The linked articles will often name-drop other states in the same general area, but again, reading through all of them, not once is "Nimsod State" mentioned. I also went to the place where it would be if there was an article on it, but there is nothing between "Nimrana" and "Nipal" (an old name for Nepal, get your mind out of the gutter).
While looking for something completely different I also stumbled on this site, which archives old Indian historical governmental documents. Once again, searching for "Nimsod" draws a blank, while searching for other small states in the same area does come back with some scant results.
Aside from the original wikipedia article (and various clones of the same article dotted around the web, a classic case of citogenesis) I can't find any mention of 'Nimsod State' predating November 2021, when the original article was first drafted. Links and references to the state have since been crow-barred into other articles on wikipedia (including the one on the Deccan Agency, where I would see it and begin my research), as can be seen by the absence of references to it in past versions of the relevant articles available on the Internet Archive. Older lists of Princely States conspicuously do not mention a state by the name "Nimsod", including the relatively comprehensive list of worldstatesmen.org, or this list, that includes not just Princely States but other forms of non-sovereign feudal landholders and even vassals of vassals.
In my mind however, the clincher comes from historical maps. I was first caught off-guard by the unfamiliar name because I didn't recognise it from the Hisatlas map of the Southern Deccan. Hisatlas is a very useful resource, and even if the free version of the site leaves much to be desired, fortunately somebody (can't remember who) posted a link on this forum to a google drive with the high-def versions of all the maps back in 2020. While I can't for the life of me find the original link, at the time I downloaded every map I could get my hands on, and I've been using them ever since (If somebody else has the original link, please post it here). The apparent absence of an entire state from an otherwise excellent resource was what first clued me on to the fact that something didn't add up here, kicking off the research chain summarised above.
So I got digging through as many historical maps as I could find to corroborate or disprove the existence of the state. In no period map I have yet seen is there a marked state or estate around the town of Nimsod. It was actually during my search for good sources that I I stumbled on the trove of old maps I linked to yesterday, and they provide the best cartographic evidence against the "state".
In particular, two maps stand out. Firstly, Sheet No. 47 Bombay (1915) in the 16 miles per inch series, which shows most of the small Deccan states including the area around Nimsod town (which isn't actually big enough to be found on the map - it should be just west of the small central road junction in Mayni). This both corroborates the vast majority of the states and enclaves shown on the hisatlas map, while once again shows no small state in the relevant area. Secondly, Sheet No. 47 K Poona (1918)(provisional) from the 4 miles per inch series, which shows a more detailed view of the relevant area. This map is detailed enough to actually show the small town of Nimsod (a little south of the centre of the map), and tellingly, it is not associated with a marked state or territory. There are several enclaves of other small states dotted around the map (most notably the capital district of Aundh, just to the west of Nimsod), but nothing marking the town as a state, or even in any way notable. In addition, that map, and the other maps in that series of that area of the Deccan, further corroborate the original hisatlas map, in greater detail.
So yeah. In summary; otherwise extremely accurate period maps don't show it, period records don't mention it, all evidence of the state's supposed existence appears after November 2021 and internet resources made before then also make no mention of it. Hence why I'm almost certain that article is a hoax.
As you can probably tell, that was a rant I really wanted to get off my chest. I put a lot of work into confirming or denying the non-existence of that tiny state, and I wanted to lay out in detail how I came to my conclusions somewhere, considering how much time I wasted researching it. At least I'm now extremely confident that it is indeed a hoax.
Anyway, extremely lengthy tangent aside, here's the promised map. I'll hopefully post the next WIP in a week or so;
Later I'll see if I can whip up an alternate version that gives each small state a different colour, to show which enclave is who's, but for now I'm just too busy. I'll edit that map, and the appropriate colour key, into this point at some point later today or tomorrow once I have the time to make it.
But first, a very long digression - I lost nearly two days trying to confirm or reject what I'm now 95% certain is a case of Wikipedia vandalism, the almost certainly fictitious "Nimsod State".
The whole saga started when I noticed a state I hadn't seen before in a list on Wikipedia's article on the Deccan Agency, an overarching framework whereby the British government conducted relations with two dozen small states in what is today Maharashtra and northern Karnataka. Curious, I followed the link. I'll skip the two days of confused research as I tried to confirm or deny the existence of the "State", and instead focus on my conclusion - that the state never existed - and my evidence for that conjecture.
Firstly, period historical sources make no mention of any Princely State with a capital in the small town of Nimsod. The 1911 edition of the Encyclopaedia Britannica is available in full to search on wikisource; searching for "Nimsod" and "Nimsod State" yields no results, while other small states in the area, such as Aundh, Akalkot or Mudhol do have brief articles.
More notable is the absence of any mention of the "State" in the 1909 edition of the Imperial Gazetteer of India, handily digitised here. Every other small state in the southern Deccan gets a mention. In some cases two or three related States are lumped together in the same entry, but all are mentioned at least once by name, and even checking grouped entries, not once is the name "Nimsod" brought up. Trust me, I checked all of them, and have the links to prove it. The linked articles will often name-drop other states in the same general area, but again, reading through all of them, not once is "Nimsod State" mentioned. I also went to the place where it would be if there was an article on it, but there is nothing between "Nimrana" and "Nipal" (an old name for Nepal, get your mind out of the gutter).
While looking for something completely different I also stumbled on this site, which archives old Indian historical governmental documents. Once again, searching for "Nimsod" draws a blank, while searching for other small states in the same area does come back with some scant results.
Aside from the original wikipedia article (and various clones of the same article dotted around the web, a classic case of citogenesis) I can't find any mention of 'Nimsod State' predating November 2021, when the original article was first drafted. Links and references to the state have since been crow-barred into other articles on wikipedia (including the one on the Deccan Agency, where I would see it and begin my research), as can be seen by the absence of references to it in past versions of the relevant articles available on the Internet Archive. Older lists of Princely States conspicuously do not mention a state by the name "Nimsod", including the relatively comprehensive list of worldstatesmen.org, or this list, that includes not just Princely States but other forms of non-sovereign feudal landholders and even vassals of vassals.
In my mind however, the clincher comes from historical maps. I was first caught off-guard by the unfamiliar name because I didn't recognise it from the Hisatlas map of the Southern Deccan. Hisatlas is a very useful resource, and even if the free version of the site leaves much to be desired, fortunately somebody (can't remember who) posted a link on this forum to a google drive with the high-def versions of all the maps back in 2020. While I can't for the life of me find the original link, at the time I downloaded every map I could get my hands on, and I've been using them ever since (If somebody else has the original link, please post it here). The apparent absence of an entire state from an otherwise excellent resource was what first clued me on to the fact that something didn't add up here, kicking off the research chain summarised above.
So I got digging through as many historical maps as I could find to corroborate or disprove the existence of the state. In no period map I have yet seen is there a marked state or estate around the town of Nimsod. It was actually during my search for good sources that I I stumbled on the trove of old maps I linked to yesterday, and they provide the best cartographic evidence against the "state".
In particular, two maps stand out. Firstly, Sheet No. 47 Bombay (1915) in the 16 miles per inch series, which shows most of the small Deccan states including the area around Nimsod town (which isn't actually big enough to be found on the map - it should be just west of the small central road junction in Mayni). This both corroborates the vast majority of the states and enclaves shown on the hisatlas map, while once again shows no small state in the relevant area. Secondly, Sheet No. 47 K Poona (1918)(provisional) from the 4 miles per inch series, which shows a more detailed view of the relevant area. This map is detailed enough to actually show the small town of Nimsod (a little south of the centre of the map), and tellingly, it is not associated with a marked state or territory. There are several enclaves of other small states dotted around the map (most notably the capital district of Aundh, just to the west of Nimsod), but nothing marking the town as a state, or even in any way notable. In addition, that map, and the other maps in that series of that area of the Deccan, further corroborate the original hisatlas map, in greater detail.
So yeah. In summary; otherwise extremely accurate period maps don't show it, period records don't mention it, all evidence of the state's supposed existence appears after November 2021 and internet resources made before then also make no mention of it. Hence why I'm almost certain that article is a hoax.
As you can probably tell, that was a rant I really wanted to get off my chest. I put a lot of work into confirming or denying the non-existence of that tiny state, and I wanted to lay out in detail how I came to my conclusions somewhere, considering how much time I wasted researching it. At least I'm now extremely confident that it is indeed a hoax.
Anyway, extremely lengthy tangent aside, here's the promised map. I'll hopefully post the next WIP in a week or so;
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I imagine you are talking about this? It's the only one I seen thrown around. Also, it was Hansarn on the OTL Map Thread of 2014 that posted it, it's the earliest I can find with search.
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I've marked the Nimsod State page for deletion and linked to the evidence you provided, hopefully they take it down.
Coming out of lurking for a second to say, AMEN. This dude is an absolute god and I have no idea how he manages to push through all of this, total respect.
Typing up the previous post debunking some wikipedia vandalism that nevertheless managed to throw me for a loop for a couple of days took four hours to finish. By the time it was done well enough, I had other things to do and had to cut the post a little short. The original plan was to edit the original post later, but while I've since added one or two extra details to the refutation, I felt there was enough extra stuff that needed to be said that it deserved a fresh post.
Also, some replies;
Yup, that's the link I was thinking of. It must've been reposted at a later date, as I only stumbled on it during the first COVD lockdown. Thanks for posting it.
I was hoping somebody with a wikipedia account would see this to get that article cleared up, thanks for flagging it.
... And now for a few notes on the map that I didn't have the time to mention earlier.
Firstly, I haven't mentioned it already, but while making this map I won't be showing vassals of vassals, (i.e., petty states that were in relations with/feudally obliged to another Princely State) largely because the quality of the sources is too inconsistent/fragmentary. Don't get me wrong, sources exist, but they're not consistent enough for me to hold everywhere to the same standard.
For example on this map, the state of Kolhapur in the southern Deccan had about a dozen minor vassal states that I decided not to show here in-line with the above decision, even though they are mapped fairly well by both hisatlas and the detailed survey maps I've linked to previously.
In the same vein I was able to track down some incredibly fragmentary references to a "Wadi Jagir" in the complex mess of enclaves between Kolhapur and Jath (that I had to substantially simplify to fit it on the R-QBAM). It actually poses an interesting counterexample to the Nimsod debacle mentioned previously, as after a little digging I was able to find some corroborating sources. While Wadi has no wikipedia article, and is not mentioned in the 1909 Imperial Gazetteer, I think that's because it was a vassal state of Miraj. It does appear on the Hisatlas Deccan map and I was able to find it on map No. 47 L/13 (1946) in the one inch per mile map series labelled as "Wadi Estate". The missing piece of the puzzle is provided by worldstatesmen, which has an incredibly brief link for the state, confirming that it was a vassal state of Miraj Senior but that it entered direct relations with Britain in 1932. I was also able to dig up a handful of government documents apparently attesting to its existence. As it was apparently still a vassal state of Miraj Senior in 1914 however, its single pixel is assigned to Miraj Senior under the 'no vassals of vassals' policy.
Another quick addendum, in 1917, the state of Daflepur was annexed to Jath following the death of the last member of the old royal family. I've also made a small patch for the post-1917 situation below;
And the main map, with showing ownership of territory;
And the key to go with that (aside from the individual residency states listed at the top, states are listed alphabetically);
Also, some replies;
Yup, that's the link I was thinking of. It must've been reposted at a later date, as I only stumbled on it during the first COVD lockdown. Thanks for posting it.
I was hoping somebody with a wikipedia account would see this to get that article cleared up, thanks for flagging it.
... And now for a few notes on the map that I didn't have the time to mention earlier.
Firstly, I haven't mentioned it already, but while making this map I won't be showing vassals of vassals, (i.e., petty states that were in relations with/feudally obliged to another Princely State) largely because the quality of the sources is too inconsistent/fragmentary. Don't get me wrong, sources exist, but they're not consistent enough for me to hold everywhere to the same standard.
For example on this map, the state of Kolhapur in the southern Deccan had about a dozen minor vassal states that I decided not to show here in-line with the above decision, even though they are mapped fairly well by both hisatlas and the detailed survey maps I've linked to previously.
In the same vein I was able to track down some incredibly fragmentary references to a "Wadi Jagir" in the complex mess of enclaves between Kolhapur and Jath (that I had to substantially simplify to fit it on the R-QBAM). It actually poses an interesting counterexample to the Nimsod debacle mentioned previously, as after a little digging I was able to find some corroborating sources. While Wadi has no wikipedia article, and is not mentioned in the 1909 Imperial Gazetteer, I think that's because it was a vassal state of Miraj. It does appear on the Hisatlas Deccan map and I was able to find it on map No. 47 L/13 (1946) in the one inch per mile map series labelled as "Wadi Estate". The missing piece of the puzzle is provided by worldstatesmen, which has an incredibly brief link for the state, confirming that it was a vassal state of Miraj Senior but that it entered direct relations with Britain in 1932. I was also able to dig up a handful of government documents apparently attesting to its existence. As it was apparently still a vassal state of Miraj Senior in 1914 however, its single pixel is assigned to Miraj Senior under the 'no vassals of vassals' policy.
Another quick addendum, in 1917, the state of Daflepur was annexed to Jath following the death of the last member of the old royal family. I've also made a small patch for the post-1917 situation below;
And the main map, with showing ownership of territory;
And the key to go with that (aside from the individual residency states listed at the top, states are listed alphabetically);
Wow, I didn't expect to see an Wikipedia rabbit hole unfolding here, well done @Tanystropheus42 and kudos in the India map development;
So well, life did it's things again, but I'm back, hopefully more constantly now, anyways here's how the current waterbodies Old World map:
Here's what have been changed:
- Great Britain, Anatolia, Levant Region, Caucasus Region, Don Basin rivers are fully complet,
- Chunks of the Volga Basin, Mesopotamia and Northern Iran rivers are partially done too,
- Some changes in Eastern Nigeria rivers, and that "missing" lakes I talked before where corrected,
- The canals in England, Crimea, Southern Russia and Konya Plain and Şanlıurfa (these 2 where painfull) are done too,
Well, I did started doing the Don Basin after I finish G. Britain, and when I notice I was doing North Iran insted of Russia, so I did just continue into the region, not gonna lie that the Konya Plain give an headcache defining if my source where showing an river or canal (in the end it was both... I guess?).
I still need to do the wetlands in Scandinavia and survive the cross-referecing in Nothern Russia, but yeah I'm getting this done and catch India... Eventually.
So for today that's all, see ya folks!
So well, life did it's things again, but I'm back, hopefully more constantly now, anyways here's how the current waterbodies Old World map:
Here's what have been changed:
- Great Britain, Anatolia, Levant Region, Caucasus Region, Don Basin rivers are fully complet,
- Chunks of the Volga Basin, Mesopotamia and Northern Iran rivers are partially done too,
- Some changes in Eastern Nigeria rivers, and that "missing" lakes I talked before where corrected,
- The canals in England, Crimea, Southern Russia and Konya Plain and Şanlıurfa (these 2 where painfull) are done too,
Well, I did started doing the Don Basin after I finish G. Britain, and when I notice I was doing North Iran insted of Russia, so I did just continue into the region, not gonna lie that the Konya Plain give an headcache defining if my source where showing an river or canal (in the end it was both... I guess?).
I still need to do the wetlands in Scandinavia and survive the cross-referecing in Nothern Russia, but yeah I'm getting this done and catch India... Eventually.
So for today that's all, see ya folks!
Map of Warsangali Sultanate & Ajuuraan Empire map, no idea what the timeframe is. Hope this can be useful!
Source:
After a week and a half, the next partial Raj patch is done, covering the small states of modern day Odisha and Chhattisgarh, plus the far Northeast.
There are quite a few things to mention regarding today's patch, but I'll start with the elephant in the room - Assam. It isn't really finished for a variety of reasons, but for now I'm moving on because trying to finish it properly was dragging on, and I have other things to get done. The reasons why it isn't finished largely stem from the far north-west and the nature of administration there. Basically, I can't find good maps for the situation in the area, sources are contradictory and everything is a massive mess.
I'll just state what I know. The McMahon Line defining the northern border of the modern Indian state of Arunachal Pradesh was first drawn in March 1914 (and is thus shown as a full international border on this map), but it doesn't appear as if Britain actually did anything to really administer the region until the 1940's. Showing the whole region as British is thus probably anachronistic, but that's just part of the problem. At some point in 1914 (I'm not sure when) a pair of 'frontier tracts' were created to "administer" this newly acquired mountainous region, but I can't for the life of me find good maps showing their borders on creation. All the maps I've found are vague, contradictory, incomplete or some mixture of the three, and after a certain point I just gave up trying.
I may come back to Assam to properly show the hill tracts, but by now it's become enough of a distraction that its holding back the rest of the project, so I'm just using the McMahon line as the northern border and calling the whole thing provisional for now, moving on to other things in the meantime. I may come back to it, but for now I'll just leave it as-is.
There were some Assamese troubles I was able to push through however. In particular, sections of the administrative border between Assam and Burma were ... extremely speculative. The Hill country separating the two provinces was largely uncharted and unadministered back in 1914 - the colonial officials knew that the border lay somewhere in the hills but not exactly where. I was able to use the modern border for the northern half of the boundary as it follows the watershed divide, but for the section through OTL Nagaland I had to approximate. Fortunately I was able to dig up a good enough period map from 1913 (Sheet No. 83 Bengal (1913) in the series I've linked to previously), showing where the colonial authorities thought the border roughly went, which is good enough for me.
This patch also shows the first example of something that will regrettably become more common in subsequent patches - having to represent multiple small states as a single unit where it is not possible to show them all individually - in this case merging the Khasi States. The core of what's now Meghalaya was during the colonial era a patchwork of 25 petty hill kingdoms (listed here)collectively referred to as the Khasi states that were all in some form of relations with the British government. Period sources are in agreement that there were 25 such states, but figuring out the inter-state borders proved challenging. There are one or two somewhat contradictory maps purporting to show borders of the Khasis states floating around on the internet, and my normally useful survey maps didn't actually show any borders. Map 78 O Shillong (1920) (downloaded here) does however provide labels for almost all of the listed small states in roughly the right place, to some extent confirming the number and rough location of the states. Combining my uncertainty over borders with the fact that it would be physically impossible to show that many states in such a small area anyway, led me to decide that showing them as a single unit was the best way forward.
I also have quite a few more notes on the Himalayas, starting with the largely unsettled nature of international borders in the region. While Nepal's southern border with India had been fixed for quite some time in 1914, the northern border with Tibet was nebulous, and would only be settled in its modern form in the 1960's. But the thing is, the modern border was settled based on a long-standing de-facto border following natural geographic barriers that largely corresponds with the modern one. All the 1961 treaty did was uphold the traditional border and define it officially for the first time. With that fact in mind, seeing the modern border (or at least a close approximation of it) crop up in earlier maps isn't that surprising; the earliest I've yet found is this map from 1927, but I wouldn't be surprised to find an earlier example. Thus I decided to just use the modern border, with the caveat that it was largely undefined at the time, because doing so is easier, simpler, and makes sense considering said border follows reasonable geographic barriers.
Further east, I've seen the modern northern border of Sikkim crop up in period maps so I think it had been properly defined by 1914, while Bhutan's northern border is still largely undefined to this day, so why not use the modern border?, and the McMahon line further on has already been mentioned.
Then there's the political situation the Himalayan states found themselves in. In short, I think Bhutan was at the time administered as a British protectorate as part of the Raj and is shown as such, while Nepal was an independent puppet state of the British Empire, hence its distinction from all the other states on the subcontinent. If someone has better sources than me for Bhutan then correct me if I'm wrong, but I'm pretty confident it was indeed considered part of the Raj at the time.
Aside from external border issues there isn't really that much else to say. I still think the borders of the small states in Orissa could do with a bit of work, but considering how long I've been tweaking them and that all my current efforts to fix the problem just make everything else worse, I'm settling with what I currently have as good enough. On another note, I was quite pleased over the weekend to see that wikipedia deleted the hoax article on "Nimsod State", plus a few other related articles. Hopefully that's the end of the whole debacle.
Anyway, with all that out of the way, maps. Two maps today - patches to both the base map and the territorial control map, plus an expanded colour key;
Political;
Territorial;
Key for the above;
There are quite a few things to mention regarding today's patch, but I'll start with the elephant in the room - Assam. It isn't really finished for a variety of reasons, but for now I'm moving on because trying to finish it properly was dragging on, and I have other things to get done. The reasons why it isn't finished largely stem from the far north-west and the nature of administration there. Basically, I can't find good maps for the situation in the area, sources are contradictory and everything is a massive mess.
I'll just state what I know. The McMahon Line defining the northern border of the modern Indian state of Arunachal Pradesh was first drawn in March 1914 (and is thus shown as a full international border on this map), but it doesn't appear as if Britain actually did anything to really administer the region until the 1940's. Showing the whole region as British is thus probably anachronistic, but that's just part of the problem. At some point in 1914 (I'm not sure when) a pair of 'frontier tracts' were created to "administer" this newly acquired mountainous region, but I can't for the life of me find good maps showing their borders on creation. All the maps I've found are vague, contradictory, incomplete or some mixture of the three, and after a certain point I just gave up trying.
I may come back to Assam to properly show the hill tracts, but by now it's become enough of a distraction that its holding back the rest of the project, so I'm just using the McMahon line as the northern border and calling the whole thing provisional for now, moving on to other things in the meantime. I may come back to it, but for now I'll just leave it as-is.
There were some Assamese troubles I was able to push through however. In particular, sections of the administrative border between Assam and Burma were ... extremely speculative. The Hill country separating the two provinces was largely uncharted and unadministered back in 1914 - the colonial officials knew that the border lay somewhere in the hills but not exactly where. I was able to use the modern border for the northern half of the boundary as it follows the watershed divide, but for the section through OTL Nagaland I had to approximate. Fortunately I was able to dig up a good enough period map from 1913 (Sheet No. 83 Bengal (1913) in the series I've linked to previously), showing where the colonial authorities thought the border roughly went, which is good enough for me.
This patch also shows the first example of something that will regrettably become more common in subsequent patches - having to represent multiple small states as a single unit where it is not possible to show them all individually - in this case merging the Khasi States. The core of what's now Meghalaya was during the colonial era a patchwork of 25 petty hill kingdoms (listed here)collectively referred to as the Khasi states that were all in some form of relations with the British government. Period sources are in agreement that there were 25 such states, but figuring out the inter-state borders proved challenging. There are one or two somewhat contradictory maps purporting to show borders of the Khasis states floating around on the internet, and my normally useful survey maps didn't actually show any borders. Map 78 O Shillong (1920) (downloaded here) does however provide labels for almost all of the listed small states in roughly the right place, to some extent confirming the number and rough location of the states. Combining my uncertainty over borders with the fact that it would be physically impossible to show that many states in such a small area anyway, led me to decide that showing them as a single unit was the best way forward.
I also have quite a few more notes on the Himalayas, starting with the largely unsettled nature of international borders in the region. While Nepal's southern border with India had been fixed for quite some time in 1914, the northern border with Tibet was nebulous, and would only be settled in its modern form in the 1960's. But the thing is, the modern border was settled based on a long-standing de-facto border following natural geographic barriers that largely corresponds with the modern one. All the 1961 treaty did was uphold the traditional border and define it officially for the first time. With that fact in mind, seeing the modern border (or at least a close approximation of it) crop up in earlier maps isn't that surprising; the earliest I've yet found is this map from 1927, but I wouldn't be surprised to find an earlier example. Thus I decided to just use the modern border, with the caveat that it was largely undefined at the time, because doing so is easier, simpler, and makes sense considering said border follows reasonable geographic barriers.
Further east, I've seen the modern northern border of Sikkim crop up in period maps so I think it had been properly defined by 1914, while Bhutan's northern border is still largely undefined to this day, so why not use the modern border?, and the McMahon line further on has already been mentioned.
Then there's the political situation the Himalayan states found themselves in. In short, I think Bhutan was at the time administered as a British protectorate as part of the Raj and is shown as such, while Nepal was an independent puppet state of the British Empire, hence its distinction from all the other states on the subcontinent. If someone has better sources than me for Bhutan then correct me if I'm wrong, but I'm pretty confident it was indeed considered part of the Raj at the time.
Aside from external border issues there isn't really that much else to say. I still think the borders of the small states in Orissa could do with a bit of work, but considering how long I've been tweaking them and that all my current efforts to fix the problem just make everything else worse, I'm settling with what I currently have as good enough. On another note, I was quite pleased over the weekend to see that wikipedia deleted the hoax article on "Nimsod State", plus a few other related articles. Hopefully that's the end of the whole debacle.
Anyway, with all that out of the way, maps. Two maps today - patches to both the base map and the territorial control map, plus an expanded colour key;
Political;
Territorial;
Key for the above;
Ok so, my PC just decide to run out of disk for no apparent reason for the last 2 weeks and that was not funny either workable,
Anyways, I know it's little but at least is something just to warn the chat:
- Iran and Iraq are fully done! Rivers and canals are complete, may latter I should check if X or Y river is an wadi or not but I'm pretty certain on the current configuration
The Mesopotamian canal system wasn't easy to define what was important canal or not to map out, but for now it's done
Anyways, I know it's little but at least is something just to warn the chat:
- Iran and Iraq are fully done! Rivers and canals are complete, may latter I should check if X or Y river is an wadi or not but I'm pretty certain on the current configuration
The Mesopotamian canal system wasn't easy to define what was important canal or not to map out, but for now it's done
Augment your PC with USB drives. I keep any important work on these, only backing up to the PC. That way I don't have to worry about losing work if/when PC goes loopy
