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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.***There used to be a Near East. It stretched from the Balkans across Anatolia, down through the Levant and possibly into Egypt. Then, during the course of the 20th century, it was gradually supplemented by the Middle East, an overlapping but distinct region stretching from Iran through Egypt and possibly including Turkey. As a result, the Near East now has a slightly musty, antiquarian feel. It’s been mostly relegated to academic departments focused on ancient languages and cultures. And, for some reason, the State Department’s Bureau of Near Eastern Affairs.So what happened? Where did the Middle East come from, and where did the Near East go?Credit for coining the term “Middle East” usually goes to American naval theorist Alfred Thayer Mahan, who announced he was coining it in a 1902 article titled “The Persian Gulf and International Relations.” Mahan may not have actually been the first one to use the term, but he certainly played a key role in its adoption.Either way, the Middle East had a clear geographic logic and filled a distinct strategic need for British statesmen. The Near East was, well, nearer than the Middle East, and the Middle East was in the middle of the Near and Far Easts. For British colonial administrators, the Middle East was the region that was crucial to the defense of India, while the Near East was largely under the control of the Ottoman Porte.Adopted from A. Keith Johnston’s 1852 “Chart of the World Showing the Forms and Directions of the Ocean Currents.”But this division began to break down with