The 1926 map of Africa I found labels a huge chunk of land as "Belgian Something" and it drives me crazy every time I look at it.

Everyone keeps calling them "old colonial borders" but this one literally says "Congo Free State" dated 10 years after it was annexed, which means whoever made this map just copied an older one without checking a single fact, so has anyone else noticed these lazy copycat errors or am I the only one obsessed with checking dates?

2 comments

2 Comments

kim.emma1mo ago

The whole "reusing the same plates for decades" thing hit me right in the gut... I’ve seen that with older maps before and it’s honestly frustrating when you care about the details. You really put into words why this stuff bugs me so much, it’s not about being mean to the mapmakers, it’s just the principle of it.

nathan8511mo ago

The thing is, mapmakers back then didn't have the internet or easy access to updated records, so they relied on older sources by default. That 1926 map probably used a 1910 or 1912 atlas as its base, and the Congo Free State label was just a leftover from that older source that nobody caught. I actually looked into this once for a project, and it turns out map publishers would reuse the same plates for decades to save money, only changing major borders if they got complaints. So that "lazy copycat" error is less about sloppiness and more about how printing worked in the 1920s, where updating every single detail was expensive and time-consuming. Plus, a lot of people buying those maps just wanted a general idea of where things were, not a perfectly up-to-date political boundary report. It's annoying for sure, but it's more practical than malicious.