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

This is the first 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.Over the past decade or two, map enthusiasts and Middle East observers alike have been treated to a series of fanciful maps imagining what alternative borders for the region might look like. The premise behind many of these cartographic proposals is that replacing the artificial boundaries imposed on the Middle East by European imperialists with more “authentic” ones might help resolve its perpetual political turmoil. “Authentic,” in this case, is usually understood to mean reflecting the real underlying ethnic or national divisions that should more properly serve as the basis for modern states.Adapted from The Citizen’s Atlas of the World, John Bartholomew & Son Limited, Edinburgh, 1947.Europe, of course, stands as the unspoken reference point in all of these re-mappings — the region that got its borders right. Rather than the straight lines that mark off the Middle East, Europe’s borders are just squiggly enough, supposedly following natural features that conveniently correspond with the identities of the inhabitants. Karl Sharro captured the difference nicely in a parody map that envisions an imperial redrawing of Europe. In his rendering, a series of straight lines cuts across the continent, chopping it into truncated geometric regions like the small, square Republic of London and the vaguely hexagonal Great Bavaria.But you don’t have to delve very far back into European history before the contrast implied by all this cartography begins to break down. To see why, just dig up one of the many ethnographic maps from the late 19th or early 20th century