47 Facts from A History of the World in 47 Borders
Just in case you happen to be buying any books for loved ones and so forth…
So, I’m guessing you’re probably wondering what to buy your nearest and dearest for Christmas. Are they into funny facts and lists, perhaps? Or are amusing histories of conspiracy theories more their thing? Luckily, I’ve written books covering both of those and therefore catering to all possible tastes.1
Okay, that’s quite enough shameless and undisguised advertising; time to get on with the advertising-dressed-up-as-content part of the newsletter. Back in May, the good people at the UK’s leading maps and travel specialist bookshop Stanfords were kind enough to select my new book A History of the World in 47 Borders as their book of the month. And to promote it, they asked me to make a quick video, talking about it.
My initial thought was to list a single fact from each of the book’s 47 chapters, but that, I soon realised, would go on forever and take an absurd number of takes to get right. So in the end I decided on a top 10: that took an absurd number of takes to get right too, and also features me the wrong way round, for some reason, but at least it’s only three minutes long.
The video, if you’re strange enough to wish to see it, is below. But as a special Christmas treat, not to mention shameless attempt to get more of you to buy the book for yourself or a loved one, here are all 47 of the facts I originally chose.
The oldest known international border was the one between what today we call Upper Egypt and Lower Egypt. We know about it today because, sometime around 3100BCE, someone abolished it.
The Great Wall is not really one wall, but many. And the first Chinese emperor used to kidnap young men to make them build them.
Europe, in a very real sense, does not exist: it’s a sort of shared hallucination resulting from the limits of Ancient Greek geography and the rise of Islam, and propagated by the success of European imperialism.
The Roman Empire’s obsessive need to defend its own borders was one cause of both half a century of civil war - the Crisis of the 3rd Century - and the gradual loss of all political power from the actual city of Rome.
Multiple European countries, and some of the continent's biggest wars, can all be traced directly to the way Charlemagne’s empire was broken up in a treaty in the year 843.
Until well into the Middle Ages, the people of what is today Glasgow used to speak a form of Welsh.
The feudal system we were taught about in school basically didn’t exist.
The Open Borders Policies of Genghis Khan basically created the modern world.
In 1494, the monarchs of Spain and Portugal drew a line down the Atlantic, and divided the entire planet between them.
There used to be a German state populated entirely by unmarried daughters of the nobility.
One of the reasons the British got so good at cartography was specifically to help them steal land from the Irish.
The Mason-Dixon line is not actually the border between the northern and southern states.
France briefly had a department named, and containing, Rome.
Roughly 15% of land in the United States was stolen from Mexico in an imperialist war.
I understand the Schleswig-Holstein Question - and with my help, you can too! (tl;dr: Schleswig had to be with Denmark, Holstein had to be with Schleswig, Germany felt strongly it should have Holstein, Holstein basically agreed. Make something out of that, Lord Palmerston.)
In 1884, the great powers agreed to divide up the entire map of Africa without ever visiting. No Africans were in attendance, and one who’d asked for an invite, the Sultan of Zanzibar, was openly laughed at.
There’s a straight line on the map of East Africa because some bloke got tired.
At the time he was assassinated, Archduke Franz Ferdinand was considering turning the Habsburg Empire into a thing called the United States of Greater Austria.
The line in the sand dividing the Middle East is not actually the line Sykes and Picot drew.
The border of Northern Ireland was drawn specifically to lock in a permanent protestant majority. It hasn’t worked.
Nehru, the first prime minister of India and leader of the Indian National Congress, was almost certainly shagging Lady Mountbatten, wife of the last Viceroy of India. The Viceroy himself was entirely cool with this, and it probably worked out to Nehru’s benefit.
You can still see the path of the Berlin Wall from space, because of the different colour of the lightbulbs in east and west Berlin.
What is today the city of Kaliningrad has been razed to the ground and its population replaced, twice.
There’s a piece of Africa which two countries, Egypt and Sudan, both aggressively claim belongs to the other.
In 1976, in the Korean demilitarised zone, the United States government used fighter aircraft, B52 bombers and dozens of attack helicopters to deal with a single annoying tree.
The Barbie movie caused a diplomatic incident related to China’s claims of sovereignty over the South China Sea.
One of the less difficult issues relating to the borders of Israel is because somebody in 1948 forgot to sharpen a pencil.
There’s a town in the Netherlands in which you can emigrate to Belgium just by moving your front door.
There’s an opera house in which the US/Canada border divides audience from stage.
There’s also an Italian town, surrounded by Switzerland, whose entire economy is based on a casino that the government opened during World War I in the hope it would attract some spies.
San Marino claims to be the oldest nation in the world. But I’m pretty sure the Emperor Diocletian would disagree.
The Las Vegas Strip is not technically in Las Vegas.
One of the reasons Detroit went bust is because speculative property investors used an ill-thought out law to force it to expand its border.
Washington DC used to be a square, only the people on the southern side of the Potomac kept whining until they were allowed to go back to Virginia.
South Australia used to stretch all the way to Australia’s coast. Its northern coast.
The Swiss keep accidentally invading Liechtenstein.
In 2010 Costa Rica and Nicaragua nearly fought what was widely but unfairly described as the “Google Maps War”.
Online mapping apps show you different versions of their maps, depending on where you are in the world - mostly so that their local employees don’t get thrown in jail.
The Greenwich Observatory is lying to you, and the brass strip in the ground does not mark the path of the Prime Meridian.
One of the ways in which Uigyhurs in western China rebel against an oppressive government is by setting their watch to local time.
The International Date Line does not technically exist.
There’s a coral atoll a thousand miles from Japan which is technically classed as a suburb of Tokyo.
There are two different landlocked countries in South America, and both maintain navies.
In 1978, Argentina flew a heavily pregnant woman to Antarctica, in an attempt to bolster its sovereignty claim.
Iraq and Saudi Arabia are technically eligible to join the European Broadcasting Area and thus, if they so wished, the Eurovision song contest.
Air traffic control zones cover the entire planet except the Galapagos Islands and the bit of the Arctic where Santa lives.
Despite what some people who work for Jeff Bezos would like you to think, there is no universally agreed definition of where the atmosphere gives way to space.
Right, that’s your lot. And in case you want to hear some of those facts coming out of my massive face, here’s the video:
The book is available, as ever, from Stanfords, Waterstones, Foyles, Amazon or my American publisher, The Experiment.
Ah, the two genders.
All these shamelessly promoted books are absolutely marvellous! And I’m not even related to Jonn.
I would definitely have watched you read out all 47 - and I've already read the book! Your enthusiasm is infectious (in a good way, like laughing, not in a bad way, like syphilis).