Image cour­tesy of the David Rum­sey Map Cen­ter

Every­body knows a fact or two about the Unit­ed States of Amer­i­ca, even those who’ve nev­er set foot there. At the very least, they know the US is a big coun­try, but it’s one thing to know that and anoth­er to tru­ly under­stand the scale involved. Today we offer you an arti­fact from car­to­graph­ic his­to­ry that illus­trates it vivid­ly: a 19th-cen­tu­ry trav­el­er’s map of the Mis­sis­sip­pi Riv­er that, in order to dis­play the length of that mighty 2,320-mile water­way, extends to a full eleven feet. (Or, for those espe­cial­ly unfa­mil­iar with how things are in Amer­i­ca, dis­plays the river’s full 3,734-kilometer length at a full 3.35 meters.)

With a width of only three inch­es (or 7.62 cen­time­ters), the Rib­bon Map of the Father of Waters came on a spool the read­er could use to unroll it to the rel­e­vant sec­tion of the riv­er any­where between the Gulf of Mex­i­co and north­ern Min­neso­ta. First pub­lished in 1866, just a year after the end of the Civ­il War, the map “was mar­ket­ed toward tourists, who were flock­ing to the Mis­sis­sip­pi to see the sights and ride the steam­boats.” So writes Atlas Obscu­ra’s Cara Giamo, who quotes art his­to­ri­an Nenette Luar­ca-Shoaf as describ­ing the riv­er as “a source of great awe. That kind of length, that kind of spa­cious­ness was incom­pre­hen­si­ble to a lot of folks who were com­ing from the East Coast.”

Luar­ca-Shoaf describes the map, an inven­tion of St. Louis entre­pre­neurs Myron Coloney and Sid­ney B. Fairchild, in more detail in an arti­cle of her own at Com­mon-Place. “The com­plete­ly unfurled map extends beyond the lim­its of the user’s reach, won­drous­ly embody­ing the scope of the riv­er in the time it took to unroll it and in the eleven feet of space it now occu­pies,” she writes. “At the same time, the care required to wind the strip back into Coloney and Fairchild’s patent­ed spool appa­ra­tus reit­er­ates the pre­car­i­ous­ness of human con­trol — either rep­re­sen­ta­tion­al or envi­ron­men­tal — over the mer­cu­r­ial Mis­sis­sip­pi.” We still today talk about “scrolling” maps, though we now mean it as noth­ing more than a dig­i­tal metaphor.

Unwieldy though it may seem, the Rib­bon Map of the Father of Waters must have struck its trav­el-mind­ed buy­ers in the 1860s — some 150 years before tech­nol­o­gy put touch­screens in all of our hands — as the height of car­to­graph­ic con­ve­nience. Despite hav­ing sold out their Mis­sis­sip­pi Riv­er map quick­ly enough to neces­si­tate a sec­ond edi­tion, though, Coloney and Fairchild did lit­tle more with their patent­ed con­cept. You can see a sur­viv­ing exam­ple of the Rib­bon Map in greater detail at the Library of Con­gress and the David Rum­sey Map Col­lec­tion. The cur­rent gen­er­a­tion of riv­er tourists yearn­ing for an under­stand­ing of the sur­pris­ing breadth of Amer­i­ca’s land and depth of its his­to­ry may even con­sti­tute suf­fi­cient mar­ket for a repli­ca. But what hap­pens when it gets wet?

via Atlas Obscu­ra and Slate

Relat­ed Con­tent:

All the Rivers & Streams in the U.S. Shown in Rain­bow Colours: A Data Visu­al­iza­tion to Behold

William Faulkn­er Draws Maps of Yok­na­p­ataw­pha Coun­ty, the Fic­tion­al Home of His Great Nov­els

Learn the Untold His­to­ry of the Chi­nese Com­mu­ni­ty in the Mis­sis­sip­pi Delta

Down­load 67,000 His­toric Maps (in High Res­o­lu­tion) from the Won­der­ful David Rum­sey Map Col­lec­tion

Based in Seoul, Col­in Mar­shall writes and broad­casts on cities and cul­ture. His projects include the book The State­less City: a Walk through 21st-Cen­tu­ry Los Ange­les and the video series The City in Cin­e­ma. Fol­low him on Twit­ter at @colinmarshall or on Face­book.

The genre of ani­mat­ed time-lapse video maps—portraying the rise and fall of empires, the spread of peo­ple groups, the suc­ces­sion of rulers over hun­dreds of years, and oth­er his­to­ries that used to fill entire textbooks—is one of those inter­net-only phe­nom­e­na with use­ful, if lim­it­ed appli­ca­tion. As the bom­bas­tic music that some­times accom­pa­nies these videos sug­gests, one pri­ma­ry effect is the pro­duc­tion of max­i­mal­ly sweep­ing his­tor­i­cal dra­ma through map­ping, which cap­tures the imag­i­na­tion in ways dry pro­sa­ic descrip­tions often can’t.

The sub­ject of the video above—the British Empire—seems to jus­ti­fy such an approach, giv­en that, as one edu­ca­tion­al web­site notes, “the British Empire was the largest for­mal empire that the world had ever known.” Whether one cel­e­brates or deplores this fact is a mat­ter for polit­i­cal or moral debate—categories that have lit­tle seem­ing rel­e­vance to the pro­duc­tion of ani­mat­ed video maps.

“At its height in 1922,” writes Jon Stone at The Inde­pen­dent, “the British Empire gov­erned a fifth of the world’s pop­u­la­tion and the quar­ter of the world’s total land area.” His com­ment that this lega­cy “divides opin­ion” gross­ly under­states the case. Yet as bare his­tor­i­cal fact, the spread of the Empire is aston­ish­ing, an achieve­ment of mil­i­tary and mar­itime pow­er, unprece­dent­ed com­mer­cial ambi­tion, bureau­crat­ic sys­tem­iza­tion, trade maneu­ver­ing, and the mas­sive dis­place­ment, deten­tion, and enslave­ment of mil­lions of peo­ple.

How did it hap­pen? To para­phrase an often-divi­sive British singer, empire began at home.

The video begins in 519 A.D., after the end of Roman rule in Eng­land, when the so-called Hep­tarchy formed, the sev­en Anglo-Sax­on trib­al king­doms ruled by Ger­man­ic peo­ples who killed off or enslaved the native Celts. From there, we pro­ceed through the Nor­man inva­sion, the Eng­lish attempts to take French ter­ri­to­ry in Europe, Hen­ry VIII’s inva­sion and annex­a­tion of Ire­land, and oth­er col­o­niz­ing and empire-build­ing events that pre­cede British entry onto the far-flung glob­al stage with the found­ing of the British East India Company’s first post in Surat, India in 1612 and Puri­tan set­tle­ment at Ply­mouth in 1620.

We see these events unfold in a split screen map show­ing dif­fer­ent parts of the world, with a box on the side pro­vid­ing con­text and a col­or-cod­ed leg­end. This rush through Impe­r­i­al his­to­ry occurs at a rel­a­tive­ly break­neck speed, tak­ing only 18 min­utes to cov­er 1,500 years.

The long, slow rise of the British Empire was fol­lowed by a pre­cip­i­tous fall. By the mid-20th cen­tu­ry post­war years, Britain saw its major colonies in India, Africa, and the West Indies achieve inde­pen­dence one by one. “By 1979,” writes Adam Tay­lor at The Wash­ing­ton Post, the Empire “was reduced to a few pock­ets around the world.” And by the cur­rent year, the for­mer glob­al power’s over­seas colo­nial hold­ings com­prise 14 small ter­ri­to­ries, includ­ing most­ly unpop­u­lat­ed Antarc­tic land and the Falk­land Islands.

See many more fas­ci­nat­ing ani­mat­ed time-lapse maps, doc­u­ment­ing all of world his­to­ry, at the cre­ator Ollie Bye’s YouTube chan­nel.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

5‑Minute Ani­ma­tion Maps 2,600 Years of West­ern Cul­tur­al His­to­ry

Watch the His­to­ry of the World Unfold on an Ani­mat­ed Map: From 200,000 BCE to Today

Ani­mat­ed Map Shows How the Five Major Reli­gions Spread Across the World (3000 BC – 2000 AD)

Josh Jones is a writer and musi­cian based in Durham, NC. Fol­low him at @jdmagness