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Clement Attlee, the Labour Prime Minister who replaced Winston Churchill in July 1945, soon realised that independence for India was inevitable, but disagreements among the Indian politicians made the negotiations very difficult.
In the 3rd century BCE, Eratosthenes calculated the circumference of the Earth with remarkable precision.
In later centuries, other Greek geographers, including the most famous of them all Ptolemy, suggested a much lower figure for the circumference for our planet.
This under-estimation was adopted by 15th century map-makers.
The expedition led by Magellan was expected to sail as far as the Spice Islands to the west by sailing around the American continent.
It was financed by Spain, which hoped to gain access to these islands and their spices without crossing the Indian Ocean, then dominated by the Portuguese.
After the assassination in Sarajevo, the system of military alliances precipitated Europe into war.
The search for new territories to conquer and the need to defend its territory against attacks from other countries, the new American state quickly sought to extend its borders.
To fulfil the concept of Manifest Destiny, which encouraged the expansion of US territory to the Pacific Ocean, several transcontinental trails enabled settlers to move westward from the Missouri.
The Arab Middle East caught between Ottoman domination and interference from European powers.
During the Congress of Vienna, the four great victors (Austria, France, Russia and the United Kingdom) redrew the map of Europe and attempted to put an end to the period heralded by the French Revolution.
Respect for the principle of nationalities and the maintenance of their power influenced the victors in redrawing European frontiers, confirmed by the various treaties signed in 1919-1920.
Emancipation of the ex-communist democracies and the collapse of the USSR led to a tremendous geo-political evolution.
The United Kingdom’s unchallenged command of the seas played a major role in the development of its colonial empire.
In Europe: Operation Barbarossa, June 1941. Siege of Leningrad, Germany and Italy declares war on the United States, Germany’s Russian campaign in 1942, Stalingrad,
In Asia: Pearl Harbor 7 December 1941, Japanese campaign in Southeast Asia. Air-sea battles: Coral Sea, Midway, US landing at Guadalcanal.
Radical anti-Semitism promoted by Hitler and his regime.
The Polish ghettos, Massacres by the Einsatzgruppen; the extermination camps: Sobibor, Majdanek, Belzec, Chelmno and Auschwitz-Birkenau; the Wansee Conference; between 5 and 6 million European Jews killed between September 1939 and May 1945.
The Greek world was an ever-changing geographical reality throughout three million years before Christ. The first settlements in the Cyclades and Crete and later on both sides of the Aegean Sea, colonization along the Mediterranean coast and around the Black Sea, the immense empire created by Alexander the Great.
Divided by internal dissension, the Hellenistic world was gradually absorbed into the Roman Empire, though Greek culture continued to develop throughout the Mediterranean Basin.
In 508-507, the Cleisthene reforms established the framework for democracy, thanks to the creation of an egalitarian civic space.
These reforms were intended to create new bonds between citizens living in the various regions in Attica and break down traditional clanic and family relationships.
During the following decades, victories in the battles of Marathon and Salamina over the Persians reinforced the prestige of Athenian democracy.