When the world's at stake,
go beyond the headlines.

This is the second installment of Mid-Afternoon Map, our exclusive members-only newsletter that provides a cartographic perspective on current events, geopolitics, and history from the Caucasus to the Carolinas. Subscribers can look forward to interesting takes on good maps and bad maps, beautiful maps and ugly ones — and bizarre maps whenever possible.Since last year’s invasion of Ukraine, the Russian bear has returned to the map. Brown or polar by turns, he is once again sharpening his claws, opening his jaws, and prowling across the pages of our papers. As metaphors go, it isn’t the most subtle, but then bears aren’t supposed to be. Absent a suitable deterrent, they amble through the international order, snacking on norms of sovereignty and overturning arms control treaties like poorly secured trash bins.While the bear as a symbol for Russia has a long history, it found its place in European cartographic cartoons amidst 19th-century Russian-British geopolitical competition. In addition to modern nursing, the 1853 Crimean War, which pitted Russia against France, Britain, and the Ottoman Empire, also gave rise to a slew of comic maps showing European countries as quarreling animals or people. At a purely artistic level, these weren’t always on par with, say, “The Charge of the Light Brigade.” Then again, Tennyson was probably terrible at drawing turkeys, and none of his poems featured bears.Excerpt from “Comic Map of the Seat of War with Entirely New Features,” Thomas Onwhyn. Printed by Rock Brothers and Payne, 1854.In the exuberantly over-labeled map above, Russia, wearing the crown of despotism and holding the knout of tyranny, eyes Poland over its shoulder/border. If the lolling tongue (labeled “lies”) gives this Russia a less-than-menacing look, it still compares favorably to the fez-wearing Ottoman Turkey, which looks on fiercely from below. Meanwhile, displaying political cartoonists’ enduring knack for the pedantic,