Over the past decade or so cartographers have been hard pressed to keep up to date with the changing map of Eastern Europe and Central Asia. With the break-up of the USSR and the emergence of former Soviet Republics as independent nations, new blobs of colour have had to be inserted into maps, boundaries have been redrawn, and new names given, and maps have become out-dated very quickly.
This tends to happen when political power and influence shift. Cartographers had the same problem in the middle of the last century when the Empires of France, Britain and elsewhere disintegrated. Nations that had existed under the domination of European powers threw off the colonial yoke along with the colonial names given to them, emerged like brightly painted butterflies, took on new (often pre-colonial) names, and that's when maps had to be binned and re-drawn. My school couldn't afford such luxuries and preferred to perpetuate the illusion of British imperialism anyway, so stuck with maps dominated with pink blobs.
Some of those names that were dropped are fast disappearing from even European consciousness, but they still stir up a lot of nostalgic emotions for the sons and daughters of Empire as they take us back to childhood when we re-discover them on those dusty, obsolete maps we come across when clearing out the attic.
It's an interesting experiment to ask people under 30 years of age if they can recall the former names of modern nations such as the following eleven:
- Malawi (Nyasaland)
- Bangladesh (East Pakistan)
- Sri Lanka (Ceylon)
- Burkina Faso (Upper Volta)
- Zambia (Northern Rhodesia)
- Ethiopia (Abyssinia)
- Lesotho (Basutoland)
- Namibia (German South West Africa)
- Ghana (Gold Coast)
- Botswana (Bechuanaland)
- Benin (Dahomey)
If you scored 11 out of 11 I'll leave you to draw your own conclusions, but well done anyway.
