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

Welcome to 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.***As territories along the Franco-German border that don’t seem that exciting but once caused a disproportionate number of international problems go, the Saar Basin is slightly more obscure than most. The Rhineland and the Ruhr, not to mention Alsace and Lorraine, get all the attention. But on inter-war maps of Europe, the Territory of the Saar Basin stood out as a strange cartographic blip, one that mapmakers seemed slightly unsure what to do with.Pantoflíček, Jaroslav, Evropa, 1932Their confusion was understandable. Following the Treaty of Versailles, a small piece of the Saar River valley, containing the towns of Saarlouis and Saarbrücken, was awarded to France as a League of Nations Mandate. In this case, control would be in the hands of an international, five-person governing commission, and the territory would be allowed to vote on its final political status after 15 years. In the meantime, the French government could exploit the region’s coal mines, thereby securing compensation for those in northern France destroyed by the retreating Germans.                         Institute of Social and Religious Research, Europe, 1923                                                                                                   John Bartholomew and Son, France, Belgium & Holland – political, 1922