Post #407736

The maps of Switzerland are all available online. https://map.geo.admin.ch/ Notice the option to "Journey through time". 1865 was the when the Dufour map was finished. There is an app, too. https://swisstopo.app/ About thee Siegfried map, which came after the Dufour map: https://www.swisstopo.admin.ch/en/siegfried-map Visualisation in map.geo.admin.ch https://www.swisstopo.admin.ch/en/siegfriedmap-jtt-20251008 The Dufour map was a project by the Swiss nation state to constitute a geo-body, which is why all the lands beyond the border are not shown. I am always reminded of this as I read Siam Mapped: A History of the Geo-Body of a Nation. There, it is argued that Siam, caught between the British in Burma and the French in Vietnam was forced to accept that fixed borders on a map are necessary to make treaties with the Europeans and in the process of learning how to map the court also discovered its own colonial ambitions. And so the three big local powers ended up claiming the land based on the maps drawn up, and all the smaller local powers ended up getting absorbed. And as ever, the language of the victors remains to tell the story. Now that you have a map, you can say that Thailand had always been there and had defended itself against the colonial powers when another explanation is that it constituted itself in that moment and before that, there were tiny kingdoms, villages, sometimes paying taxes to both Burma and Siam. Anyway. Maps area endlessly fascinating.