Old Maps, Expeditions and Explorations: Stained Glass Map, Massachusetts, 1998

Saturday, December 31, 2011

Stained Glass Map, Massachusetts, 1998

"Brightening with each swipe of a workman's cloth, stained glass in the Christian Science Mapparium in Boston, Massachusetts, shows political boundaries and coastlines charted after millennia of mapmaking."

—From "Revolution in Mapping," February 1998, National Geographic magazine

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Abkhazia

My favourite is the story of 19th century 'negotiations' between an up-coming Russia and a declining Ottoman Turkey in which Russia demanded the cession by Ottoman -Turkey of the province of Abkhazia. The Turkish delegates who had been summoned to the Czar's palace had little idea of their empire, where Abkhazia was or how big a loss it would represent to Ottoman Turkey. It's actually 8,600 sq kilometers, or 40% of a Wales for those who prefer more traditional area measurements. However there was a map of Abkhazia hanging on the Czar's palace walls, alongside a similarly-sized map of the palace gardens - no scale to either map, although the latter was probably at a somewhat larger scale. Based on these 2 maps the Ottoman delegation concluded they were ceding an insignificant piece of territory.- Dr Hillary Shaw