“The map is not the territory.”
Alfred Korzybski (1879-1950) Russian engineer, mathematician, philosopher
Welcome to the Doug’s Darkworld map page. I love maps, I pored over the maps from National Geographic endlessly when I was a kid, and I still am fascinated by them. These are maps I have made, maps I find useful in understanding the state of the world, and links to map resources I find helpful in my research. And maps and links to maps that are just plain cool.
Three Empires: This is a map I made up to show the current political state of the world, or more accurately, the world’s power blocs. Basically the world is divided up into the Western, Russian, and Chinese spheres. With a handful of independent players, or “rogue nations” depending on your druthers.
Three Empires. Copyright © Doug Stych 2007 All Rights Reserved
KEY:
Green: Free World/New American Empire. Darker denotes major power centres within this bloc.
Red: Russia and its ally, Belarus.
Yellow: China and its allies.
Turquoise: Non-aligned nations.
Pink: Nations defying the Green bloc and/or with strongly anti-American governments.
Grey: Nations basically in civil war or similar internal serious unrest.
Black: Nations with foreign occupiers/invaders in the midst of serious insurgencies.
New Middle East Map: This is a map showing approximately what the borders in the Middle East would look like if they actually made sense, instead of being drawn up by the colonial powers to facilitate their extraction of resources from the region. This map came from here. I have also blogged about this map.
Map Links
World Sea Level Rise map. An interactive map that allows one to see the results of anywhere from a 1m to 14m rise in sea level anywhere on Earth. Greenland Melting would make the sea level rise about 7m, the West Antarctic Ice Sheet melting would raise the sea level about 10m.
5,000 Years of History in 90 Seconds. An animated map that shows the rise and fall of empires in the Middle East over the last 5,000 years.
WorldMapper. Worldmapper is a collection of world maps, where territories are re-sized on each map according to the subject of interest.
Perry-Castañeda Library Map Collection. A handy collection of mostly Pubic Domain maps.
Wikipedia:WikiProject Maps. Another handy collection of mostly Public Domain maps, it includes blank maps for those who want to make their own maps.
Strange Maps. Exactly what it sounds like, a blog about avast array of maps, some very educational, all interesting in some fashion. Anyone who likes maps will like this blog.
Page updated 21 June 2007
All original content on this blog:
Copyright © Stanley Douglas Stych 2006-2007 All Rights Reserved
(The image of the New Middle East map is a heavily cropped portion of the original work, and its reproduction here is claimed as Fair Use under US copyright law. It is not being used for profit and is central to illustrating the subject, itself. The Three Empires Map is my own creation and I grant permission to reproduce it for non commercial use if linked back to Doug’s Darkworld.)
8 Comments
November 9, 2007 at 8:30 am
i am really interesting with your opinion about three empires. but i have my own thought about India & Brasil. i think both of them are not belong to America’s bloc.
December 14, 2007 at 5:42 am
yes I think so too.India and brazil should be in their own colors.maybe even EU.
February 28, 2009 at 1:08 am
Wow, this is unbiased! Your 3 empire map is mostly correct but some countries are entirely wrong. Look up the SCO and CIS. You could count that as an empire on its own. (basicly Russia, China, and some countries in-between are a ONE bloc)
Also Kazakhstan is an FULL ally of Russia. I cant help but wonder why its “light green”. Ukraine is definitly border-line. Although It has made some pro-west acts, it’s still heavily under Russian influence (and also has a ggod portion of Russian population) and will most likely never join NATO.
This all looks like your trying to heavily downplay Russia’s and China’s influence. We cannot and should not forget our “enemies”. Not that they are, but making them look un-important is dangerous.
All Im saying is that they have more influence OUTSIDE their countries than your map shows, similar to the US.
March 12, 2009 at 12:26 am
Mongolia should be in stripes of red and yellow, Kazakhstan and Kirghiztan stripes of red and green, Uzbekistan red. Among other mistakes. Some countries should be in stripes of yellow and green. In general you over estimate the USA.
But if you’re American, I guess should congratulate you for knowing that other countries exist.
March 12, 2009 at 12:42 am
@Joe : For Ukraine, I think the author takes into account the current government. The current government of Ukraine is a self-destructing mess, and the prime minister never agrees with the president. Except for one thing: they are against Russians, on any matter (those horrible people who want to be paid for their gas).
The government of Kazakhstan is also very friendly towards Russia, but has also very good relations with the USA. Maybe red with green spots would be a better representation of the situation.
And anyway, Europe is a block of its own, with slightly different values. Actually with a president who won’t attack another country(Iran) for oil, stopped torture in Guantanamo etc, I’d rather say that USA is falling into the influence zone of Europe, not the opposite.
March 29, 2009 at 6:59 pm
“And anyway, Europe is a block of its own”
Maybe you should tell that to the 50,000 American soldiers stationed in Germany, or the thousands more throughout the continent. Europe as a continent has more stationed American troops than any other continent, with the exception of North America and not counting the current occupations/wars in Iraq and Afghanistan. Brazil should be its own bloc as they maintain friendly relations with all three “empires”, but India should not, their adherence to the British commonwealth and heavy investment by American businesses in their economy as well as a certain nuclear deal with the U.S. make them in the “green” despite the fact that they buy many Russian weapons (they’re cheaper). Russia, in the map, has been underestimated in its influence, but not by much. Many of the old central Asian soviet countries are simply aligning with whomever gives them more money, which recently has been the U.S although Russia appears to be moving to change that in the future.
You should probably know what you are talking about, Nicolas, before you insult American Intelligence. After all, the U.S. has most of the top 25 Universities in the world and they aren’t turning out idiots despite the “oh so terrible” educations they receive prior to that (which is usually still ranked in the top 30-40).
Really, the only big problem I have with the first map is South and Central America, I think they are just as close to being their own bloc(with a few exceptions) as they are to being within that of the U.S.
April 4, 2009 at 11:00 pm
The map is preposterous…How does it make any sense? “Greater Jordan”?? That area was part of Palestine and under the British Mandate… in 1922, Churchill carved out 80% of then Palestine and made it Judenrein, creating Transjordan. If that isn’t colonial, I don’t know what is. The rest was suppose to be a Jewish homeland, but instead, the British stopped all Jewish immigration into Palestine –The White Papers– and basically watched as 6 million Jews were murdered by Germany in WW2 without recourse to a Jewish homeland. The British then cut the remaining land of Palestine–20%– into two and thus created a second Arab country and a meager Jewish state. The map is an Arab fantasy and makes little sense.
May 3, 2009 at 10:31 am
The 3 empire mad is pretty good, but asia is a little off. Previous Soviet bloc countries should be both, since the influence has yet to completely wear off. Pakistan, agreeing to Islamic Law in parts of the North and many basically lawless areas should be green with grey/pink spots or stripes. It is also questionable as to whether much of Northern Africa is pro-american, given that there was a kidnapping 1-3 weeks ago in Mali. Should be more light blue there.