Tag Archives: maps

This Way Up: When Maps Go Wrong (And Why It Matters), by Mark Cooper-Jones and Jay Foreman

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Second paragraph of third chapter:

If you have Spotify, snap the handy QR code below for a carefully curated playlist.

I confess that I wasn’t previously aware of the Map Men, who have a popular YouTube channel about the making of maps. This is one of their latest videos, including lots of (reasonably well pronounced) Dutch, about the making of the Netherlands:

Their book boils down sixteen cases of maps that were, are, or became incorrect, and has a jolly look at the history of each case. To be honest I prefer my history and cartography without extra tinsel, and in particular the fifty pages devoted to the story of the Donner Party dramatised as a debate between a fictional American and his high-school teacher seemed rather self-indulgent. (Not to mention the fictionalised debate between different parts of President Truman’s brain in the last chapter.)

However there’s some brilliant stuff here too. Chapter 5, on the UK’s ‘regions’ for Independent Television broadcasters, truly informs and entertains; I knew that the map was wonky, but I had no ide just how wonky, with King’s Lynn and Leeds getting the same ‘local’ news. Actually, let’s have a musical interlude in honour of the one UK region whose borders were pretty fixed, Ulster Television:

Chapter 14, on the development of the satnav and why we should not forget about more traditional ways of navigation, has lots of lovely details that I was unaware of. And despite the Truman’s brain joke, the final chapter, on the Marshall Islands, is tragic (I have some experience of that country).

Me and the Marshall Islands’ special climate envoy and equivalent of vice-president, the late Tony deBrum, relaxing at the Beer Factory on Place du Luxembourg in April 2013

Anyway, there’s much more here to love than to dislike. You can get This Way Up here.

This was the first book that I finished reading this year.

The Atlas of Unusual Borders, by Zoran Nikolić

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Second paragraph of third Unusual Border:

Brezovica Žumberačka has only a few houses, with thirty or so inhabitants, occupying an area of less than two hectares, but with the ‘neighbouring’ Slovenian village, Brezovica pri Metliki, it forms one place. Interestingly, it seems that the Croatian and Slovenian authorities are not entirely sure exactly where the border line is. It is even possible that there are currently a few more miniature enclaves and exclaves. Although this situation is less of an issue now that Slovenia and Croatia have entered into the European Union, a bizarre possibility is the fact that one house, together with the land around it, does not belong to either country. This would make it the so-called terra nullius, namely, no man’s land. This has created an opportunity for the proclamation of an independent country, which was exploited in a virtual way. A website for the newly formed Kingdom of Enclava emerged on the Internet, though it had nothing to do with the inhabitants of the house itself. After the Slovenian government officially declared it to be their territory, the Enclava moved to one of the disputed islands in the River Danube, on the border between Serbia and Croatia.

This is a very attractive book listing 47 cases of unusual borders around the world. As a map geek myself of many years’ standing, I was aware of most of these (and sorry that a couple of my favorites were missed, the Iliemi Triangle, the Drummully salient, and the now resolved case of the Chiṭmahals), but they are all sensitively explained and well illustrated. There is lots of potential for trivia here: where, for instance, is there a direct land frontier between the Netherlands and France? (In the Caribbean.) It would also be interesting to know what daily life is like in a situation like Baarle. Anyway, it’s a lovely production, and you can get it here.