There are many ways of changing the world. Revolution is one. War is another. Elections occasionally manage it. The United Nations has now discovered a considerably less dangerous method: change the map.
On September 4, the UN General Assembly voted 164 to 1 to encourage the world to move away from the familiar Mercator projection towards maps that represent the relative size of continents more accurately. The initiative is particularly intended to correct the way Africa has been made to look smaller than it really is.
At last, geography has received some justice.
On the old Mercator map, Greenland looks almost the size of Africa. In reality, Africa is about fourteen times larger. Countries nearer the poles are similarly inflated, while those around the Equator get a rather less generous allocation of cartographic real estate.
The new maps therefore produce some entertaining surprises. Canada, Russia and Greenland shrink. Africa grows. India gets a little more room. One can almost imagine diplomats around the world rushing to see whether their country has gained a few square centimetres.
But there is a small complication.
The countries have changed size only on paper.
Canada has not lost territory. Russia has not become smaller. Greenland has not been asked to vacate any of its ice. Africa has not acquired a single additional square kilometre. And India, gratifyingly, will have to continue doing all the work required to become a major power even after acquiring a slightly more flattering outline on classroom walls.
Maps, however, do matter. They do not merely tell us where places are; they influence how we imagine them. The UN itself has argued that maps shape perceptions and collective understanding.
That is where this apparently technical exercise becomes interesting.
For centuries, perhaps unconsciously, we have been looking at a world in which the northern hemisphere appears larger and the tropics smaller. Now the picture is being corrected. It is a modest but intriguing exercise in psychological cartography: if we see the world differently, might we eventually think about it differently?
Perhaps.
But there is another map which no cartographer has yet succeeded in drawing—the map of power.
On that map, size is measured rather differently. By GDP, military strength, technology, population, natural resources, financial influence, diplomatic reach, control over supply chains and, increasingly, the ability to shape the global conversation.
On that map, Greenland’s sudden reduction in size is unlikely to disturb anybody in Washington. Africa’s enlargement will not automatically produce a corresponding enlargement of its voice. And no cartographic projection, however equitable, will persuade a great power to surrender an interest simply because the continent on which that interest lies now looks more accurately proportioned.
Indeed, we live in a curious age. Countries speak enthusiastically about a rules-based international order while being remarkably selective about which rules they find convenient. National interest has acquired an almost universal exemption clause. Fairness is widely admired—provided the bill is not payable by us.
So perhaps we should welcome the new map, but not expect too much from it.
It may correct our eyes. It may even correct some of our prejudices. But it will not correct geopolitics.
And there is one final consolation for the cartographically confused. The UN reminds us that no flat map can represent the spherical Earth without distortion; every projection has to sacrifice something—area, shape, distance or direction.
Which means that, in the end, the most accurate map of the world remains a globe.
Unfortunately, there is no globe large enough to accommodate the egos of all the people who think they run it.
