I am indebted to Bayou Renaissance Man for posting a link to the map below. It is a map of Europe from 1444 A.D.:
If you click on the link here, it will take you to the map where you can actually expand it to the detail level.
Strangely enough, this map fascinates me for what it represents. In 1444 A.D., the Byzantine Empire still existed and the New World had not been discovered yet (well, not by most of Europe - The Icelanders knew better). Spain, Germany, France - all are still a patchwork of counties, countries, and kingdoms. The Islamic Caliphate of Granada still exists.
The nation-state as we know it is continuing to evolve during this time, but there are still large remnants of a fragmented empire (look at how much of that territory was, at one time, controlled by a single entity, the Roman Empire).
Wistful is not quite the feeling I get when I see look at the map. Just a sense of a long ago now vanished, of which we hear the vaguest of echoes.
Reading this post makes me wonder if someone centuries from now will look at a map of North America circa 2023 and wonder the same about the USA.
ReplyDeleteNylon12, one of the things I remember from Political Geography is that governmental structures always push towards central forms of control and depriving localized power structures, essentially hollowing out them out but leaving them as shells.
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