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.***Sitting down just minutes ago to write about evolving conceptions of political sovereignty as reflected in the visual vocabulary of European atlases, I’ve watched with alarm while, over the course of a single drawn-out sentence, my subject has inexorably shifted to historical hog maps.It’s a daunting subject precisely because there are so many, and people are inevitably disappointed if you neglect their favorite. There’s Armour Meatpacking’s Food Source map, H. W. Hill & Company’s State Nicknames map, and, of course, The Porcineograph.To name just the best known.There are also some surprisingly elegant architectural renderings of America’s industrial abattoirs, and some unsurprisingly unelegant diagrams of what happened inside.In any case, we’re going to be seeing a lot of fancy maps, so let’s start with some basic USDA-approved cartography. “Number of Hogs, 1900” shows, in the most concrete way possible, the number of hogs in the year 1900. You can certainly question the precise calculation of the U.S. hog population at 62,868,041, but the geographic breakdown of their distribution is compelling. Indeed, this would stand out as a singular example of effective data visualization were it not for the fact that, if read literally, it does imply that “each state is lined with an impenetrable wall of swine.”United States Department of Agriculture Yearbook 1922 (Washington, DC: Government Printing Office, 1923)The following map, printed by the Armour Meatpacking Company, unapologetically sacrifices accuracy for visual flair. Proudly declaring that “The Greatness of the United States Is Founded on Agriculture,” Armour joined the long and sadly passe tradition of fusing patriotism, geography, and advertising. The motives may