[HN Gopher] Interactive maps of Europe in the 19th century
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Interactive maps of Europe in the 19th century
Author : lorenzfx
Score : 108 points
Date : 2021-12-21 18:51 UTC (4 hours ago)
(HTM) web link (maps.arcanum.com)
(TXT) w3m dump (maps.arcanum.com)
| lainga wrote:
| Are they sure the French map is from 1836? It looks like Paris
| has its _petite ceinture_ railway
| (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chemin_de_fer_de_Petite_Ceintu...)
| which was built in the late 1850s.
| lqet wrote:
| If you look closely, you can see that the railway lines were
| later drawn onto the map by hand:
|
| https://maps.arcanum.com/en/map/europe-19century-secondsurve...
| davidw wrote:
| Interesting to see the bit of Italy north of Trento that was part
| of the Austro-Hungarian empire. They used both the German and
| Italian names for places where both were in common use, which
| trails off towards Bozen (Botzen on this map).
|
| You can see how 'mixed up' things were in the Istria area as
| well, with lots of Italian names mixed up with Slavic ones.
| reedf1 wrote:
| Fascinating to see the characteristic layout of my street in
| London hasn't changed in the slightest!
| anotheryou wrote:
| I'm missing a bit more info about the sources. What the heck is
| "Russia (1972)"? (excluding moscow btw)
| iso1210 wrote:
| Cool, I've seen higher resolutions of my house (well technically
| the previous building as it was rebuilt in 1962) from 1890 on
| https://maps.nls.uk/os/6inch-england-and-wales/, but not the rest
| of Europe
|
| I find the map of Greece being written in German (published in
| Vienna) amusing
|
| Some interesting things in London
|
| 1) The railway line from Waterloo East to Waterloo main is still
| in place
|
| 2) No Tower Bridge
|
| 3) The Circle/District/Metropolitain lines are shown
|
| 4) The Olympia-ShepherdsBush-Hammersmith loop is shown
|
| 5) There's a farm north of Shepherds Bush (where White City and
| the 1908 Olympics were held shortly after)
|
| 6) London in the north generally stops around Zone 2
| faebi wrote:
| I just found out my neighbor village dropped a letter in it's
| name in the last 150 years, nice.
| arethuza wrote:
| My family dropped a letter from its name in the same time -
| apparently because some Church of Scotland minister thought he
| knew how to spell the family name better than my ancestors did.
| My elder brother still has the family bible with the spelling
| change in place.
| optymizer wrote:
| Curiously enough, it took me a while to find the current Republic
| of Moldova on this map. The country labeled "Moldavia" as shown
| is only about 50% of the old Principality of Moldova - from the
| 14th century until 1812 it used to extend about the same amount
| to the east - called Basarabia - and well into what this map
| labels as the Russian empire.
|
| And while the depicted Moldavia region joined others to create
| the modern day Romania, its eastern part, Basarabia, only managed
| to rejoin Romania for 20 years in the late 19th century, and 20
| years in the early 20th century, before being annexed yet again,
| until it finally became the modern Republic of Moldova. In the
| process, 50% of the native Romanian population was purposefully
| displaced.
|
| The side effects of this occupation are very much felt even
| today. Moldovans still struggle with their national identity.
| Politicians frequently engage in bike-shedding and love to stir
| up 'state language' controversy to detract from real economic
| issues, corruption and poverty. There's enormous Russian
| influence over the region and interests to keep the country busy
| being poor and in turmoil.
|
| These days I fear that if Russia invades Ukraine, they won't stop
| at the border with the Republic of Moldova, they'll annex
| Basarabia like they did in 1812 and again in 1940, to restore the
| 'glorious' Russian empire of the 19th century.
| flohofwoe wrote:
| Wow, my home region (Ore Mountains in Germany) is basically
| Google Maps quality down to unique buildings (ok not quite, more
| like "Google Maps when it was new"). At least judging by the
| historical buildings that still exist.
| mtnGoat wrote:
| Vienna is almost unrecognizable. I knew they did a lot of work on
| the Danube over the centuries, but wow.
| johnofthesea wrote:
| They have also 18th century [1]. Just bit smaller area.
|
| [1] https://maps.arcanum.com/en/map/europe-18century-
| firstsurvey...
| dinamic wrote:
| 10 EUR per tile? Shouldn't such maps be in public domain already?
|
| It's odd how differently countries treat their cultural heritage.
| Poland, for example, has published a lot of archival materials in
| public domain [1]. But this is not the case for Austrian state,
| which, I guess, owns large fraction of the maps on OP website
| (Austro-Hungarian Empire). They also charge large sums for using
| materials from their digital archives.
|
| [1] https://polona.pl/
| [deleted]
| beardyw wrote:
| Richmond park (London) had a _lot_ more roads through it as far
| as I can see. Many are not even visible now. At least some things
| have improved.
| aardvark179 wrote:
| I think the national library of Scotland has a site which allows
| you to navigate around and select a large set of historic maps.
| It's fascinating charting the growth of places like Glasgow over
| the last couple of centuries.
| arethuza wrote:
| Here is the link: https://maps.nls.uk/
|
| A fascinating resource.
| albertzeyer wrote:
| Very nice. Unfortunately the resolution is not that high when you
| zoom in a bit. Not all details are really visible. (This is not
| because of bad quality but just because of resolution.)
| dmitriid wrote:
| You might have to wait for it to load. I'm now looking at
| Moldova (where I come from), and it took ~10s to load a full
| resolution map. All details except the very very tiny ones are
| legible
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(page generated 2021-12-21 23:00 UTC)