
Countries that have preoccupied Americans the most since 1900 - snailletters
https://pudding.cool/2018/12/countries/
======
lordnacho
What's interesting is if you did this for just about any other country, there
would be a wall of star spangled banners.

If you ever travel outside the US, you inevitably hear about what the US is
doing, what they're discussing, who the important people are, etc. The reverse
is not true:

\- Everyone outside the US knows the top US politicians. You even know what
issues they are discussing, like gun control and healthcare.

\- You'll know the names of the states. How many other foreign countries do
you know the subdivisions of?

\- You might also hear about the US sports leagues.

\- You know what movies are big in the US. You know what songs are popular.

~~~
nothrabannosir
_> You'll know the names of the states. How many other foreign countries do
you know the subdivisions of_

I prefer to compare the USA with Europe as a whole, its member countries as
states. In that light, I wager many Americans would know quite a few. Norway,
France, Germany, Poland, Spain, Italy, Sweden, Ireland surely would make the
majority? Maybe even Belgium. Are we still allowed to say UK?

Americans love to chastise themselves for lack of knowledge of foreign
countries. But, to compare a >300mm economic powerhouse to a <10mm sideshow?
Neither would I. Don’t be so hard on yourselves :D

~~~
boomboomsubban
What percentage of Americans could confidently name one state of India or one
province of China? Our education system somewhat talks about Europe, but most
of the world is basically ignored.

~~~
adventured
What percentage of people outside the US will know the name or location of
more than a few US states? I'd bet it's extraordinarily low. I'd bet less than
1% of the world's adult population can name more than six US states. My
experience has been, educated people I know from Europe struggle to do a lot
better than that. Point them out on a map? Forget about it beyond the obvious
or famous ones like California, Florida, Alaska (near Russia), Hawaii
(island), Texas (they know it's big and in the middle), maybe NY, and a select
few others. US states have the population and economies of European nations.
Americans are unfairly criticized for supposedly not being able to name or
locate a lot of other countries. The rest of the world can't name or locate US
states either. Why? Because it doesn't matter to their lives. A few of my
friends from Romania didn't know where Crimea was, because it wasn't something
that mattered to them previously until the conflict. Ask someone from Bulgaria
or Belarus which state is Alabama, they generally won't know because it
doesn't make much sense for them to learn that.

~~~
bkcreate
To be fair, as an American I don't even need to go to Europe to prove how
little non-US geography I know. I can't even name or point to any Mexican or
Canadian regions except for British Colombia

~~~
schoen
Maybe you've heard of Quebec?

~~~
bkcreate
Ive heard of Quebec and Sesq... however you spell it, but BC is the only one I
could point to on a map

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Emma_Goldman
A few things which I found of note:

1\. The blanket of Union Jacks, especially in the first half of the 20th
century.

2\. The impact of the Korean War clearly pales in comparison to the impact of
Vietnam.

3\. If you didn't know better, it would look like the US and China were at
war.

4\. France in 1926-27. I'm not sure what happened in France of international
significance then? The bombing of Damascus?

~~~
oxymoran
The US and China are at war. Economic war. Cyber war. The Cold War never
really ended, the players and the venues just shifted.

~~~
daeken
> The Cold War never really ended, the players and the venues just shifted.

That makes a good soundbite, but I think that changing the players and venues
means it's a different war.

~~~
KineticLensman
> changing the players and venues means it's a different war

The war of Theseus?

([https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ship_of_Theseus](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ship_of_Theseus))

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sgt101
This is interesting more for what picking one country per month hides than
what it reveals; the winner takes all approach submerges emerging trends and
informative outliers and leads to abrupt phase change like artefacts in the
visualisation - suddenly it's all about Russia, suddenly it's all about
China....

~~~
Nicholas_C
It would be a cool feature if one could flip to the second or third most
mentioned. Perhaps a different visualization of this data would be beneficial.

~~~
adavis32
Another cool feature would be if you could click on a cell in the infographic
and see the top headlines for that month. For example, what happened in
Nicaragua in Jan of 1928, or in Laos in 1961?

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deehouie
This is a _wonderful_ illustration of American obsession over the years. Back
in the 1990s, Japan was the target. Articles attacking Japan appears on
NYTimes and the like daily. The accusation was Japan used all these unfair
trade practices to protect its industries, unwilling to open its market to US
companies, etc. Then after a while, these criticism disappeared. Has Japan
changed much since? Apparently not.

Now the target is China. Which makes me wonder how much of this avalanche of
attack on China is driven by a insidious political agenda.

------
mariojv
I was surprised that the Korean War barely stood out compared to most other
conflicts (at least, if you're only looking for a Korean flag). There are
indications of changes like Chinese involvement in late 1950, but I think it'd
be hard to pick out the start date if you weren't sure of the decade. Compare
that to Kosovo for example, where there's at least roughly half a year of
prominence.

One other factor that stood out to me was that it seems like there are more
countries popping up from the mid 70s to the 90s, then it flips back to the
previous pattern of a handful of countries dominating the picture (Iraq, then
China).

It's a very interesting visualization, thanks for sharing!

~~~
kodablah
> I was surprised that the Korean War barely stood out compared to most other
> conflicts

Especially with regards to more controversial conflicts, this says more about
what NYT chooses to drive. I'd argue in many cases they attempt to deliver
narratives instead of reacting on them.

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giardini
Far too noisy!

A simple line chart (each line labelled with the country) versus year would
have been far better.

~~~
porphyrogene
A line chart would forgo the act of scrolling which would eliminate the
narrative feel of the graphic (scrolling through time to see what happened
next). Considering that the content of the graphic is somewhat complex I think
the "noise" serves to represent the data in the clearest possible way
(representing countries by their flags) while establishing visual fields that
represent relevant conclusions (the long-term preoccupation with a single
foreign country). If this had been a simple line chart not only would the data
need to be different (showing comprehensive amounts for each year rather than
one or two top values) but it would be visually bland. The informational
margins and somewhat infotainment-esque color variety are perfectly
appropriate for this graphic. A more studious design would betray its content
for something more quantitatively robust.

~~~
adavis32
I like the infographic, but scrolling is an imprecise and annoying way to
select a year to see additional information. There were quite a few years
which I couldn't get the scrolling to stop at. Web designers: please don't
mimic this technique.

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pizza
Wonder how it would change if e.g. mentions of Soviets had flag of USSR rather
than Russia, etc.

~~~
gpvos
It would just split and dilute the mentions of the Soviets/Russia during the
USSR's existence. While it existed, Russia and the USSR were pretty much
synonymous.

~~~
bmurray7jhu
I don't think Russian SSR and the USSR were synonymous terms for anything but
for informal colloquial usage.

The Russian SSR had only 51% of the population and 77% of the land of the
Soviet Union.[1] Both the Belyrussian SSR and Ukrainian SSR were United
Nations members states and constituent states of the Soviet Union.[2] After
the breakup of the Soviet Union, some scholars have referred to Russian
Federation as a rump state.[3]

[1]
[https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Republics_of_the_Soviet_Unio...](https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Republics_of_the_Soviet_Union)

[2] [https://history.stackexchange.com/questions/506/why-did-
the-...](https://history.stackexchange.com/questions/506/why-did-the-soviet-
union-get-3-seats-in-the-un)

[3]
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rump_state](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rump_state)

~~~
eponeponepon
I think the previous poster's point was precisely about the vernacular - don't
forget the flags in the articles derive from news headlines, of which the vast
preponderance are very much expressed in the vernacular.

Speaking for myself, growing up in the 80s, I definitely wasn't completely
aware that Russia and the USSR were separate concepts, probably until the
latter's break-up.

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Santosh83
As someone from India it is probably a good thing that the US has seemingly
not had us in mind at almost any point during the last 100 or so years, except
for a brief period when we conducted some nuclear tests during 1998(?)... /s

~~~
enitihas
Also during the Nuclear deal in the end of 2008

~~~
jogjayr
I would think the November 26 attacks were responsible for the spike in
November and December of 2008. I didn't even think of the nuclear deal.

~~~
rohit2412
Yeah, I don't think any Indian even remember the nuclear deal, let alone the
date. The terrorist attack is however entrenched in memory

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blauditore
Why was Germany not more prominent during WWII (but apparently during WWI)?

~~~
burlesona
The US has a huge German immigrant population, and during WWI many people
sympathized with the Germans and felt they were basically forced into a
preemptive strike because Britain and France would have declared war on them
soon anyway. A lot of Americans wanted to join the war on the side of the
Germans.

Then the Germans sank the Lusitania and became the chief bad guy.

In WW2, as others have mentioned, the US was more concerned with the plight of
the British (would they hold out?), and then especially focused on Japan.
Japan attacked Hawaii and subsequently the Philippines, which was owned by the
US at the time and home to a lot of Americans.

Certainly the US played a role in every theater in WW2, but there were almost
two different wars going on —- in Europe, primarily Britain and Russia versus
Germany; and in the Pacific, primarily the US against Japan.

~~~
dragonwriter
> Then the Germans sank the Lusitania and became the chief bad guy.

The Zimmerman Telegram helped, too.

~~~
Drdrdrq
[https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Zimmermann_Telegram](https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Zimmermann_Telegram)

------
mrobot
This is really interesting. I would be interested in seeing a visualization of
just China by headline count, for the time it has been in mind, 2009 to
present, as it seems to have picked up significantly in the last year or so.

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metaphor
Why is 1964 empty? JFK was assassinated in November the year before, and LBJ
took the con. Was the US simply distracted by its own domestic realignment?

~~~
brownbat
Per footer, there's an issue with the API so there's no data that year or for
parts of 1978.

~~~
metaphor
Missed that tidbit. Thanks for pointing to it.

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SamReidHughes
One headline from 1913 was talking about New England.

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aw3c2
Fun idea but as someone from a country that has changed shape and occupation
quite a bit last century (we also changed flags quite a bit) I find it a bit
low on meat. It is conflating words or names with countries while doing a oh-
so typical "let's drop lots of data into algorithms and visualize the result"
dataviz for grabbing internet attention.

~~~
aerovistae
If you’re going to be dismissive and somewhat pompous, You could at least
point out specifics of what you see wrong with this and how you would’ve done
it differently or liked to have seen it done differently.

At least that way people could engage with you beyond down voting you.

Personally I think this visualization is quite neat. Sorry.

~~~
FeteCommuniste
Putting Russia and the Soviet Union under the same flag is the obvious one.

~~~
imhoguy
"...Through the Eyes of the US" they mean the same.

~~~
maire
A lot of times this is done for continuity of the data not for political
ignorance.

If you look at gapminder.org they use modern countries so that you can track
data over time. Gapminder goes back to 1800 before Germany existed - yet they
still call it Germany.

Gapminder was originally Swedish although it is now owned by Google.

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lifeformed
What's the deal with Japan in 2002? I don't recall any Japanese events then,
it was all War on Terror stuff.

~~~
mckee1
Possibly the 2002 FIFA World Cup, which was held in Japan/South Korea that
year.

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coding123
Odd I would have thought Khashoggi and Saudi Arabia would have taken October-
December. At least that's all I think about the world outside of the usual US
stuff.

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alexgia
I am surprised does not include 2016 Turkish coup d'état attempt.

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wolco
Wonder what the 1900ish single Canadian flag was about.

~~~
SL61
Looking through the Wikipedia pages for June 1910, it looks like quite a bit
was happening in the US. Oklahoma chose its capital, O. Henry died, statehood
was given to two states, and Halley's Comet made a visit. Newspapers might
have been preoccupied with domestic issues.

Other than Diaz winning yet another election in Mexico, it doesn't look like
much was going on internationally. Goldwin Smith, who appears to have been
very well known at the time with comments on American politics, died that
month. He lived in Canada. A few front page headlines about his death might
have been enough to put Canada on the chart, given the conditions.

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slilo
No headlines on revolution in Russia in 1917?

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peter303
You need three different flags for China: (1) Ching dragon flag until 1911,
(2) Taiwan sun flag until 1948 and (3) red Communist flag thereafter.

~~~
norrius
I think generally having time-accurate flags and names would greatly improve
the look of the chart. It is just weird having modern flags for the Axis
countries in WW2, white-blue-red for the USSR (that's not even the Russian
flag at the time), and so on.

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oaiey
A graph for the decline of the British Empire. These Brexit fans still believe
they can revert it.

