Yesterday I wasn't really in the mood for a long-winded write up. I realised on Friday that with one final push I could get Canada finished entirely, which is exactly what I did over the next two days, mostly finishing off the patch on Friday, then spending yesterday double checking and revising several areas I wasn't really happy with. The plan was to give everything a double-check, considering this was the final Canada patch and I want to put the fractal lakes behind me for now, however after ploughing through Baffin Island and Quebec I realised that there wasn't much point. I had already done so many double-checks and sweeps for mistakes that there weren't many to find anymore, and as such I was sinking an awful lot of time into tweaking a handful of pixels, which didn't feel worth it.
At 11pm I realised what the time was and that I should probably go and do dinner, so I cut short the complete double check, and turned instead to sprucing up what I had and making it look presentable. There were a few things I wanted to say alongside the patch, but I was hungry, and kinda low-key burned out from the final push, so I left it at that and posted just the map.
There were no major geographic hiccups that need commenting on. I think a couple of maps incorrectly identify the
Ward Hunt Ice Shelf as land, when it's actually a chunk of Glacial ice resting on bedrock below sea level, but that isn't really the biggest deal. I could go into further detail about the fact that the area in question is home to a total population of approx 400 people spread across
just three settlements, or that
Devon Island (the largest uninhabited island in the world), is occasionally used by NASA to train astronauts in the recent-ish exposed at the surface
Haughton impact crater, but right now I don't really feel the need to. I was unsurprised to learn however that a similar bunch of nationalistic explorers named plenty of places and locations on Ellesmere Island, hence the existence of the
United States Mountain Range right next to the
British Empire Range, because unimaginative names are apparently communicable.
Next up, Northwest Argentina, which is already coming along well and shouldn't take too long to throw together, then Alaska to finish off North America before pushing on to finish South America. But first, the replies I teased yesterday.
Also just noticed but it is awesome to see the new reservoir in Ethiopia
While I will occasionally miss some recently filled reservoirs, the GERD dam caused enough of a fuss in neighboring countries over the wider ramifications of damming the Nile that I couldn't miss it. Interestingly enough, the version of the reservoir on the current R-QBAM is actually outdated, however that's intentional considering the map is set on January 1st 2022 and the reservoir has been slowly being filled over the last four years.
It's rather larger now,
but it's exactly right for when the map is set, which is something to remember when I upgrade the map for 2024.
Marvelous!: Btw what's up with the Parana river? Why does it shares the same color as the coasts?
It's wide enough there to count as a pixel of water, same with many other rivers in the map (Pechora, Mackenzie, Saint Lawrence...)
Honestly that was a big reason the last Argentina patch dragged on longer than I'd like, as I was unsure on whether the Rio Grande is big enough to be shown at this scale or not, and I kept modifying the map every time I changed my mind. Don't be surprised if it gets removed with the next Argentina patch, possibly alongside a few more rivers around the world that I'm equally uncertain on.
@Tanystropheus42
Concerning India, there appears to be a state called "Jeypore" around modern Orissa. On the wikipedia page, it says that the kingdom was vassalized in 1777 by the British, but existed until 1947. However, I've seen some other maps have it be annexed sometime between 1798-1802. It's a pretty big Kingdom. Since you've done some research into Indian princely states for the raj patch, do you know what the situation is with this kingdom?
Here's the article:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jeypore_Estate
I actually mentioned Jeypore a year ago, but it was part of a blink-and-you'll-miss-it tangent buried in
an already long post covering the messy Princely States of Central India. To paraphrase what I said back in April last year, just because a region was British administered, that didn't mean they owned the land. Often it was still in the possession of the pre-Raj feudal or semi-feudal landholders, usually holding the title "
Zamindar" or a local equivalent, and possessing some property rights regarding the administration of their land. This was in contrast to the Princely States, that on paper had their own full governments and rights (though usually curtailed somewhat by the various protectorate agreements).
Most of what made a Princely state wasn't wealth or power or influence, it was if the British authorities thought that a place was a Princely State. Hence you had some quite rich and powerful landholdings like Jeypore that were nevertheless not considered states and were ultimately British administered, while on the other hand the hundreds of fly-speck villages in Gujarat were somehow considered states.
The Zamindars were still ultimately under British suzerainty, and period maps and documents reflect this. The 1909
Gazetteer for example
calls Jeypore an estate, and none of the lists of states that I spent so long perusing last year even mention Jeypore. A few, really detailed maps from the
Survey of India actually do show the borders of important Zamindars, but are also pretty clear in displaying that while these areas were different from the fully British territories, they were ultimately British administered and governed, while the full Princely States are shown much more distinctly. You really have to squint to see some of the Zamindari borders, even when neighboring Princely States are demarcated as plain as day.
But here's the thing; sometimes the British government changed their mind, and this can really confuse things.
Benares State was only elevated from Zamindari estate to full state in 1911 (
and is thus conspicuously absent from maps and state lists compiled before this),
but had a long history as a semi-feudal estate before it got upgraded, hence why
its wikipedia article has a founding date of 1740.
Benares isn't a one-off. For another example, I'm pretty sure from some incredibly spotty sources that most of the states of modern Chhattisgarh only became Princely states in the 1860's and 70's. They started out as feudal landholders that were conquered by the
Nagpur Kingdom, first as part of the Maratha Empire then as part of Nagpur State once the Marathas lost to the East India Company. When Nagpur State was annexed by the Company in 1853, the local Zamindars went from being part of Nagpur to being British administered. A few of them would later be upgraded to full states in the 1860's, while the rest remained landholders on British colonial territory, however you can still find information on them if you really dig through old maps and documents.
For example
this hisatlas map showing India in 1853 (I'm linking to the low-res free version, but I have seen full versions floating around on the web in the past), shows several states in the area of Chhattisgarh that I didn't recognise, such as 'Nowgudda', 'Kerial' and 'Phuljhar'. For the longest time they had me stumped, until I stumbled on
this map, ostensibly from 1861 but which I strongly suspect was compiled during the 1850's and only published later, which is itself a fascinating source. It is somewhat inaccurate, which is to be expected for a mid 19th century source, while also going into a surprising amount of detail for other areas, even showing several states that had been annexed by the Company in the aftermath of the Indian rebellion in 1857, such as
Jhansi and
Ballabhgarh. It also notably shows several states in the Chattisgarh area that don't appear in later maps and appear to correspond to those shown on the hisatlas 1853 map under variant spellings; 'Nawagarh', 'Karial' and 'Phulgarh', which gave me something new to work off. I was able to spot the barely demarcated borders of the Zamindar estates on later Survey of India maps, and dig up some
primary sources for all of them in
this District Gazetteer from 1906.
From context, a pattern emerges. The EIC was apparently fairly sloppy in their administration of the area, and once they annexed Nagpur, several Zamindari estates formerly under Nagpur were powerful enough to exert some independence in the squiffy period that ensued, which the company apparently went along with. This lasted till the British government nationalised the Company in response to the Rebellion in 1858, formalising the often informal agreements that the company had previously run on during the 1860's. Some Zamindars made the cut and were recognised as full states, such as
Sarangarh and
Nandgaon. The others remained powerful local lords, but were ultimately under British administration, such as Nawagai or Khariar (which I think had the same borders as the modern
Nuapada district of Odisha).
[This is a bit of a tangent I know, but I could never find a way to work it into the main India patch notes, so I'm writing it out now.]
Something similar apparently happened to
Jeypore.
They were brought under the influence of the EIC at the end of the 18th century, but apparently functioned highly autonomously as a de-facto Princely state during this time,
being mentioned in sources and
showing up on period maps up until the 1860's. Following the nationalisation of the EIC and the imposition of direct British rule, the new government apparently decided to treat Jeypore as an estate and annex it to their more direct holdings, hence why it doesn't show up as a Princely state after this time, though it is still an important enough estate to be discussed and highlighted occasionally. The reason it was abolished alongside the Princely states in 1947 was because the newly independent India abolished feudalism in general, not just the Princely states. The various titled landlords and Zamindars also had their titles and rights revoked alongside the rulers of full Princely States, even though their rights were much fewer.
TLDR; Jeypore was a feudal estate not a state, but the line between the two was blurry during the 19th century, and it probably functioned as a de-facto Princely state under the EIC but not after the imposition of direct British rule. Such Zamindari estates could be upgraded and states could be demoted on the whim of the British government or the Company before them, and this happened quite a lot during the 19th century, particularly during the era of Company Rule, which nobody really took accurate records of.Trying to look into to results in a bit of a confusing mess, which I didn't research as deeply as I could have done as I was focusing on the early 20th century for the Raj map.
