Mapping the Paris Peace
This week marks the hundredth anniversary of the Treaty of Versailles, signed on June 28, 1919. From January to June, the great powers met at Paris to replace the imperial...
thematic maps Posts
A History of America in 100 Maps
I’m proud to announce that my new book–A History of America in 100 Maps–is now available in the US! It is co-published by the British Library Press and the University...
The Coast Survey maps of slavery: new discoveries!
In April I was privileged to deliver the Vorhees Lecture in the History of Cartography at the Library of Virginia. Our theme was Civil War mapping, and the Library organized...
Maps of Gilded Age San Francisco, Chicago, and New York
From the mid-1880s through the 1890s, reformers in San Francisco, Chicago, and New York experimented with maps to make sense of an exploding immigrant population. Considered together, what might these maps tell us about...
Sherman’s Christmas gift to Lincoln
On December 22, 1864–150 years ago this week–Sherman telegraphed President Lincoln a brief but powerful message, “I beg to present you as a Christmas gift the City of Savannah.” Sherman...
How Sherman’s march helped Lincoln win in 1864
We’ve just survived another election season, with the attendant (and often hyperbolic) claims that the nation’s future hinges on the outcome. In the aftermath, it seems fitting to recall another...
An imaginary map of temperance
In the archives of the American Antiquarian Society lies a strange and captivating map with an even more unlikely story. The map dates to 1838, though this copy was printed...
The twisted history of political mapping
We live in what is endlessly described as an era of unprecedented partisanship, with Americans polarized into red and blue camps and no convergence in sight. But much of the...
A radically different kind of west
In the decades after the Civil War, Americans rushed headlong into the west. By 1890 Kansas and Nebraska had over a million inhabitants, and over six million lived in the...
An interactive map of slavery
Lincoln Mullen has just posted a wonderful interactive map of slavery in the United States. His inspiration begins with the 1861 Coast Survey map of slavery, which identified the ratio...