
Watch as 1000 years of European borders change – timelapse map [video] - dannystar
http://vimeo.com/89400365
======
throwaway2048
This map is a strong example of presentism[1].

Modern conceptions about nations and borders just did not exist in feudal
Europe. Dukes and other feudal underlings held a significant amount of power,
often to the point of full sovereignty, and often held territories under
different kings and actively (and militarily) opposed their titular master.
such as the case of the Duchy of Burgundy (which once upon a time was one of
the most powerful actors in Europe), or the kings of England in their role as
dukes of Normandy/Aquitaine.

Not even considering the situations where crown authority is so weak a central
state can only be considered to exist in name alone such as the Byzantine
empire at several stages in its existence, or the Holy Roman Empire

People back then, more often than not did not adhere to some national
identity, usually identifying more with their local town/city/whatever. Their
language and culture reflected this reality as well, such as in France and the
case of the Langues d'oïl and the Langues d'oc.[2] The languages spoken in
southern France were closer to what we now call Spanish or Italian dialects
than northern dialects. Nationalism and national identity are very much a
modern concept.

This map is pretty much just fluff for these reasons.

A fantastic take on these concepts is the game crusader kings II, which
strives to recreate the accurate political realities of medieval Europe. It
can be quite challenging to "get it" as a modern player, but it all clicks
when you realize whats important is the success of your dynasty rather than
your titular holdings (nation). Often related, but often quite opposed!

[1]
[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Presentism_(literary_and_histor...](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Presentism_\(literary_and_historical_analysis\))

[2]
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Oil_languages](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Oil_languages)

~~~
Svip
Nations, indeed. The concept of nations basically arose with the French
Revolution. But borders? Oh my yes did they exist in feudal Europe, they
defined what realm a count, duke, king or emperor ruled over. But you are
right they changed hands rather often.

My largest problem with the video is that the years at the bottom does not
match the map. Watch from 1935 and notice how long it takes for Germany to
reside, it's into 1955 before Germany has retracted back to East and West
Germany. That's ridiculous.

~~~
throwaway2048
yes, borders of territorial holdings absolutely existed, i didn't mean to
imply otherwise.

But as you say they were a great deal more fluid. They did not usually imply
the kinds of things modern borders have a strong tendency to (immigration
controls, language and culture, etc). Nor was the reality of them largely
viewed as immutable and above reproach.

~~~
Svip
Indeed not. Immigration control and passports did not arise until the first
world war, in fact. Border crossings were quite open until then.

But culture was not insignificant. They did not define borders (and some might
argue they still don't do to this day) in any way, but they guide monarchs
whereto increase their realm's size.

But in a way, while culture didn't define borders, borders did define
cultures. Where they speak French or German is largely attributable to the
duchies and kingdoms where they spoke French and German.

The arbitrary borders of Europe can largely be attributed to this.

------
mxfh
Oh please stop with those Liveleak versions. This has always been the source
for this:

CENTENNIA Historical Atlas [http://www.clockwk.com/](http://www.clockwk.com/)

[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uQf-
PZWFMzY](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uQf-PZWFMzY)

here's an unofficial one with a broader scope:
[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pIRGlqYEVQY](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pIRGlqYEVQY)

Can't count how many times this was posted here without any attribution.

Unless the OP gives proper attribution or rebuilds this as an interactive
version using something like
[http://dh.stanford.edu/topotime/](http://dh.stanford.edu/topotime/) and d3
i'll keep flagging this stuff.

~~~
yaph
Had the same feeling, when seeing this. I don't get why a post that simply
embeds a video without bothering to link to the original source or adding any
kind of value gets popular on HN.

~~~
throwaway2048
from my experience linking youtube videos results in an instant [dead]

------
arethuza
For some reason watching that and thinking about what was behind a lot of
those lines moving reminds me of Carl Sagan's "Pale Blue Dot":

 _Think of the rivers of blood spilled by all those generals and emperors so
that in glory and triumph they could become the momentary masters of a
fraction of a dot. Think of the endless cruelties visited by the inhabitants
of one corner of this pixel on the scarcely distinguishable inhabitants of
some other corner. How frequent their misunderstandings, how eager they are to
kill one another, how fervent their hatreds._

[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pale_Blue_Dot](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pale_Blue_Dot)

~~~
TausAmmer
Borders are something to fight for, they serve no real benefit for anyone. It
is nationalism, racism of sorts.

Claiming a land that been there for millions of years and will be "your
property" for 40 odd years. Shoot on sight.

But what drives human to hold onto such failing concept? Fear, anger, pride,
instability?

~~~
sspiff
That's not entirely true. They have/had benefit for rulers. They serve to
indicate which people one feudal lord can tax and press into his army, and
which people shall be pressed into his neighbours army and pay him taxes.

At the very least, when they're marked in treaties, they prevent some
confusion and conflicts and give rise to others, depending on the agenda of
the rulers involved.

So they certainly have a use for someone, albeit a tiny but highly visible
minority.

~~~
TausAmmer
That I must agree on, useful they are.

As torture equipment or napalm also serves a purpose.

~~~
sspiff
Not sure if you're being sarcastic, but I agree. Some people feel these things
are useful, as damaging as they are to the vast majority of those involved.

~~~
TausAmmer
It can be sarcastic, but it is true and I don't think this should ever be
discussed with sarcasm.

One goes to drop bombs on someone else house because he is told so, nor man
who drops the bombs nor family below benefits from it.

But I can't find solution, humanity is defective in my eyes, almost fatally
defective, it will survive and go on, but must come to absurd and dramatic
turn that will bring it to knees and you have start again. And repeat, repeat
repeat.

Either I accept this as a part of the game or go insane.

------
Demiurge
Reminded me of this:
[http://www.slate.com/blogs/the_vault/2013/08/12/the_1931_his...](http://www.slate.com/blogs/the_vault/2013/08/12/the_1931_histomap_the_entire_history_of_the_world_distilled_into_a_single.html)

It is of course pretty subjective and not very accurate, but I still haven't
seen anything more comprehensive as far as a single timeline.

~~~
taigeair
Cool info graphic! Thanks for sharing.

------
taigeair
Haha I wrote about this back in April!
[http://mapblog.wellingtonstravel.com/post/49107340201/this-i...](http://mapblog.wellingtonstravel.com/post/49107340201/this-
is-an-amazing-map-of-europe-that-shows)

If you guys like maps, I run an awesome map blog (I'd like to think). My
latest is about 8-bit maps:
[http://mapblog.wellingtonstravel.com](http://mapblog.wellingtonstravel.com)

Also I really like this, which has tons of maps. The latest is Coffee Place
Geography: [http://flowingdata.com](http://flowingdata.com)

~~~
ToastyMallows
Thanks for the links. If you haven't already you should check out
[http://www.reddit.com/r/dataisbeautiful‎](http://www.reddit.com/r/dataisbeautiful‎)

------
Jugurtha
Cool. But this only goes a thousand years back. My first name is of a King who
ruled BC here, and that timelapse captures just a glimpse of what happened
here (Arabs came around 7th century AD, Ottoman, Spanish and finally the
French.. Which is nothing compared with what happened before 7th century.
There are standing still functional buildings older than a thousand years old
here (you wouldn't know they're millenial). There's even a Roman plaque in the
city greeting you).

And most cities have different names (Roman, Spanish, etc..)

PS: I'm in Algiers, Algeria (Icosium).

------
rmc
Here's a web map with selectable dates.

[http://geacron.com/](http://geacron.com/)

~~~
vxNsr
This is the best thing I've ever seen, thank you!

------
nathell
This looks inaccurate. The First Republic of Poland was not fully disassembled
until 1795, whereas this map shows it as nonexistent as early as 1764. (or is
there some desync?)

~~~
RBerenguel
There seems to be a huge time desync, just watch the 20th century (around WW2
is specially glaring)

~~~
seszett
Not just a sync problem, as WWII starts at the right time but ends at the
wrong time. And it happens for other earlier events too, it's just temporally
inaccurate.

~~~
refurb
The Allied powers occupied Germany until 1949, so still off, but not as much
as you'd think.

~~~
seszett
The animation shows Germany occupying large parts of Europe until 1955, so
it's off by ten years.

Ten years too long is what I call "a large error", for an event that lasted 6
years. Off by 150%.

~~~
RBerenguel
Yup, that's the glaring thing I also saw without paying much attention. Also
thought I'd be seeing a huge "Spain" in the late 1500 - early 1600s, since if
it applied to the Spain-Portugal affair, it should also to the rise of Phillip
II. Anyway, ignoring the errors or misplacements it was interesting to see,
which is almost good enough :)

------
seszett
There is problem with the date legend. For some reason, WWII seems to
correctly start around 1939, but France is still completely occupied in 1954,
and divided in two (I'm not sure what the colours mean) until 1960?

Also, France is shown occupying Belgium and large parts of Germany and the
Netherlands in 1763 as well as Italy and Prussia right from 1789? Illyria in
1798?

This is all off by decades, so while the animation is nice, it should not be
taken too much as educational.

~~~
sirkneeland
France being divided into two colors in the mid 20th century was likely
pointing to Vichy France (the government set up after the Nazi invasion of
France in 1940). While most of France was de jure controlled by France, the
northern and Western areas were continuously occupied by the Germans and this
distinction is usually noted in WW2 maps and maps of Vichy France

~~~
seszett
That's probably what was intended, but the Vichy "territory" disappears on
this map in 1948 (which is absurd, that was actually in 1942) and did not
reappear later - especially not with a different territory: Vichy didn't
control the Atlantic coast, while it is included in the south part of the
divided territory from 1955 to 1958 here.

It might instead be showing the advance of the US forces, and their retreat
while the legitimate French government regained progressive control. But even
disregarding the widely off date, the areas shown are very rough and
inaccurate. Especially compared to the detail achieved in Italy and HRE in the
previous centuries. I really don't think the quality of this visualisation is
very good.

------
johnzim
It's like EUIII/IV played back at high speed.

Bit sorry to see Napoleon's blob blitz past so fast. It only gives you a brief
moment to see how huge his campaign was.

In comparison the Nazis' big purple's blob is all the more noticeable because
it occurred at a time when there had already been a lot of consolidation in
Europe.

~~~
m_myers
My immediate reaction was "I've seen all this just by clicking through the
dates in EUIV's start screen!" And I think the game's data was more accurate,
too, except for missing some tiny German principalities.

------
fabrika
I wish someone with lots of time created a Google Maps based website with a
time slider so you can see how borders changed in retrospect. Events with
links to Wikipedia articles. Seeing Europe, Asia and America change in
parallel should be eye-opening.

~~~
rmc
[http://geacron.com/](http://geacron.com/)

------
willvarfar
While we're on the subject, you might like this map of world religions done as
an animated spreadsheet:
[http://williamedwardscoder.tumblr.com/post/37291851878/makin...](http://williamedwardscoder.tumblr.com/post/37291851878/making-
the-history-of-worlds-religions-map)

It was a bit of a job to research, and a lot of fun to implement!

------
aurumpotest
Incredibly interesting. Anyone want to speculate on what a video 1000 years
from now would look like?

My history of Europe isn't too shoddy, but it's not until you see it
visualised that you realise just how much everything moved, even very
recently.

I wonder if Crimea will be the next to change?

~~~
billpg
I suspect many of the different blobs will suddenly merge into one big blog
labeled "European Union" one day with Russia and few eastern European hold-
outs on the edge.

Another hundred years or so down the line, that blob will merge with another
north American blob off the screen to the west.

We should come up with a name for this new country. How about "Oceania"?

~~~
dijit
And Europe and going east's blob could definitely be Eurasia!

We're getting somewhere.

------
scotthtaylor
If anyone is interested in an analysis of TransferWise's business, I wrote a
blog post on it last weekend: [http://www.staylor.st/p2p-money-
transfers/](http://www.staylor.st/p2p-money-transfers/)

------
thearn4
It's interesting how recent the concepts of the nations of "Germany" and
"Italy" are.

Though as another commenter mentioned, the concept of a "nation" (at least the
way that we understand it today) is also a fairly recent one.

~~~
arethuza
I guess it depends how strictly you define the concepts - couldn't you argue
that _Germania_ extends back to Roman times?

Or for that matter consider the UK - how old is the UK? In it's current form
you could say less than a century, or perhaps back to the Union of 1707, or
James VI/I.... with parts (say the Kingdom of Scots and Dál Riata) going back
1500 years or more...

~~~
arrrg
For most of the history Germans were people who were speaking the same
language, nothing more. Even the word Germans is misleading, since it’s only
the name of the people the Romans first dealt with. It’s as though you were to
call all US Americans New Yorkers because you flew in at JFK.

Nationalists were always were good at inventing myths about the history of
their particular nation but in reality there just isn’t that much there, at
least not before the 19th century. (But the same is true for practically all
other nations.)

------
wil421
This is really amazing to watch I wish I viewed something like this when I was
in a high school world history class.

I can remember learning about the Germanic tribes but I never realized how
they were put together. The area that is now Germany was very diverse compared
to France, England, Italy or even Spain.

Pretty fascinating I have always loved looking at maps especially older ones.

~~~
xixixao
This is exactly what the top comment talks about. Yes, "diverse" if you're
talking about the official ruling order, because German Holy Roman Empire had
an elected King and Emperor, unlike dynasties in France or England. But that
doesn't mean that people spoke 200 languages or considered themselves more
diverse than people in England. People's identity was tied to their local area
and lord.

~~~
wil421
Right, I didnt realize that Germany was composed of so many different "local
areas or lords" compared to other countries like the UK. But most likely they
shared common languages and cultures. I guess the map of UK didnt break them
down into different subsets because the local leaders may have fell under one
united king.

And to be honest my knowledge pre WWI Germany or rather the area that is now
called Germany is pretty lacking. They taught more about France and England
from what I remember in grade school history.

------
jng
The idea is great and interesting, but the execution is poor. Kingdoms should
keep their color and not jump randomly. Also there are huge inaccuracies:
Navarre was only conquered by Spain in 1512, after Castille and Aragon had
merged into Spain a bit earlier. The map shows a completely different story
(not history).

------
ihaveajob
Cool stuff, but there are quite a few errors. Granada, the last of the Muslim
kingdoms in the Iberian peninsula, was taken by the Christians (in the
Reconquista) in 1492, but the visualization shows this about 20 years too
early.

------
Bombastick
Borders are just another way for humans to classify territoriality...like
human cognition does it with reality. Is that an approximation? I'm totally ok
with that because everything is an approximation...

------
st6mm
This timeline is bugged. Norther war between Sweden and Russia has been
implemented wrong. Baltic Sweden has gone to Russia before 1700...

------
mattholtom
Was anyone else waiting for the Crimean peninsula to turn a slightly darker
pink at the end there? Oh wait, that's tomorrow...

------
joshdance
Here's the actual Vimeo.

[http://vimeo.com/89394659](http://vimeo.com/89394659)

------
jontro
Tagging submissions like ?utm_medium=content&utm_source=hackernews feels
weird, is this allowed?

------
danielsamuels
They should really put their blog on a different server than their core
product.

------
Pxtl
aaaaand it's dead

------
baumgarn
Imagine if it was HTML5

~~~
CmonDev
...some people wouldn't be able to open it.

------
ihsw
Here's the Vimeo video, instead of the transferwise.com blogspam.

[http://vimeo.com/89394659](http://vimeo.com/89394659)

