Country Studies / Area Handbook Series
September 21, 2009
Since the 1960s the Library of Congress, in partnership with the Department of Defense, has issued country studies (the Area Handbook Series) on lesser-known areas of the world, or areas where American troops might
be deployed. About 500 maps from the 1960s to the 1990s have now been added to Cartoko, covering history, natural resources, climate, vegetation, industry, population, etc. The image in this post is a detail of a map showing Nicaragua’s insurgencies in the mid-1980s.
This Area Handbook Series is a fabulous resource for getting a solid background on an area, or for finding good, simple, copyright-free, and black-and-white maps (good for photocopying for all these reasons).
Have a country in mind? Cartoko’s list of all 2009 countries will quickly tell you if this series has covered that country, and where to find the maps.
88 Comments The Land of Palms and Bananas
September 16, 2009
Anyone browsing through 19th and early 20th century world geographies has probably come upon some terms and map labels that give one pause. This vegetation map from a 1916 edition of Elements of Physical Geography is a case in point, where the world is divided into several “zones” from polar to tropical, the latter of which is also labeled as the zone of “Palms and Bananas.” While at first blush it might appear to be a ridiculously simplistic and even Eurocentric label, it in fact reflects progress in the rapidly developing field of vegetation classification during this period, using isotherms to create vegetation zones, and was a completely valid label in 1916.
Today, vastly improved knowledge of our environment enables vegetation maps to be far more sophisticated, but knowing how earlier generations saw the world goes a long way towards understanding why people did what they did, and is far more productive than judging past generations on modern precepts.
16 Comments National Atlases
May 3, 2009
National atlases, regardless of origin, are often viewed as an opportunity for a country to show off – to establish itself as a country worthy of respect in both its own eyes and the eyes of the world.
The Statistical Atlas of the United States, published in 1874 after the 9th Census, was in some ways the first real national atlas of the United States. The U.S. national atlases will soon be completely available on the site. U.S. national atlas editions include the statistical atlases from the 9th Census (1870), 10th Census (1880), and 11th Census (1890), as well as the more well-known National Atlas of the United States, published in 1970. Right now the 1870 and 1880 atlases are almost completely loaded onto the site, with hundreds of maps from the web version of the U.S. National Atlas also available.
Canada published its first national atlas in 1906, with a second edition following shortly thereafter in 1915. The image to the left is a more recent map (1998), and includes the “proposed boundary of the new territory of Nunavut”, established on April 1, 1999. Canadian national atlas maps from the 1st (1906), 2nd (1915), 3rd (1957), 4th (1974), 5th (1978-1995), and web versions of the Canadian national atlas are now on Cartoko.
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