Whenever I see this kind of persistence, it underscores how important path dependency is when trying to understand how things got to be the way they are. From legacy software to political systems, when there's cruft or weird behavior there's almost always some environmental factor that shaped the decision to build it that way, even (especially) if the people who made the decision weren't conscious of why.
When old historic maps overlap with modern political maps
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Re: When old historic maps overlap with modern political maps
#92I’m sceptical, it’s too easy to cherry-pick data to make it look supportive of one’s political agenda. Not saying it’s the case here, I just wouldn’t trust too much "obvious" patterns and easy to understand maps from a twitter thread. More often than not, such threads are omitting data that doesn’t support the view of the author. Reality is rarely obvious and simple.
I totally assumed the examples to be cherry picked but it's still fun to look at. Not every past border is visible on modern maps, but still some are clearly the consequence of those, for example the german maps where the old GDR is the reason for the high rate of atheism or popularity of more extreme parties. I think that often past borders are the consequence of different demographics, which clearly translate into…
For example, at one time long ago in the US, politics were dominated by "frontier-interior" versus "urban-coastal" dynamics, and then as the US grew, and the civil war came about, it established a lot of the geopolitical patterns evident today (although I'd argue the urban-rural distinction is maybe reemerged in a more distributed way today).
To explain cherry-picking versus something else, you'd want a theory for why patterns sometimes change and other times remain the same.
Re: When old historic maps overlap with modern political maps
#93However, one must be very careful not to draw too hasty conclusions from supposedly simple geographical correlations. Two example from the Twitter thread:
"West Germany (1949-1990) was extraordinarily similar to Germania as planned by Caesar Augustus c. 1 AD, to East Francia at the Treaty of Verdun in 843 AD, and to the Confederation of the Rhine in 1808." -- Whether there existed really an elaborated, dedicated plan to extent Roman rule up to the Elbe, is quite controversial among historians. Be that as it may, the Romans where not successful anyway, so hypothetical borders East and North of the limes could not have had any practical impact. -- The borders of the Treaty of Verdun are indeed quite similar to those of West-Germany. But it lasted only 27 years (from 843 to the Treaty of Meerssen in 870), when its Western border moved more Eastwards (and even more in 880 with the Treaty of Ribemont). -- The Confederation of the Rhine was a short-lived alliance of Napolionic client states. It was formed in 1806, its extent in 1808, Mecklenburg and Saxonia, does not really fit the borders of later West-Germany and by 1812 Napoleon incorporated the Netherlands and all of North-West Germany up to the Elbe into France. -- So this similarities are simple coincidences. There are geographical elements (the Rhine, the Elbe, ...) which played a role in defining borders from time to time. But there are really a lot of them during the centuries, with the borders constantly changing.[3] So it is no wonder that one finds something that roughly fits modern borders at some time in the past.
As to the maps of "Catholicism and Nazism" (or rather Protestantism and Nazism): This maps clearly show that the election results from 5 March 1933 of the NSDAP (National Socialist German Workers' Party) correlate with Protestantism. However, the conclusion that Protestants were on average more responsible in Hitler's coming to power is not compelling. Even though Hitler had already become Reichs-Chancelor on 30 January, the NSDAP received "only" 43.9 % of the votes. What finally established his dictatorship was the "Enabling act" of 24 March 1933. Only the SPD (Social Democratic Party of Germany) voted against it.[4] (The Communists were already been arrested or in hiding.) If you now look at a map of the opposing SPD's election results from 1933, you will see that it is also confessionally correlated, but this time with Protestantism.[5] To understand all this, one has to consider that there existed a dedicated Catholic party, the Deutsche Zentrumspartei (or short: "Das Zentrum"), that had a considerable loyal following of voters. This party played no role in the Protestant parts of Germany. Alas, when it become dangerous to oppose Hitler, this Catholic party sided with Hitler and only the (more "Protestant") SPD resisted.
[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Annales_school
[2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Longue_dur%C3%A9e
[3] Just look at this map from showing the extent of the "Holy Roman Empire" during the early 13th century: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Holy_Roman_Empire#/media/File:...
[4] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Enabling_Act_of_1933#Voting_on...
Re: When old historic maps overlap with modern political maps
#94English historian Robert Tombs has lots of good examples of this for English history. Typically I can't find a good picture now but English Civil War vs Brexit voting patterns is a good example: https://blogs.lse.ac.uk/brexit/files/2018/03/Screen-Shot-201... .
Is the claimed correlation between Parliamentarian or Royalist support and Leave/Remain?
As an example: two Remain areas - Oxford and Brighton - one consistently royalist, the other consistently parliamentarian. Cornwall - supporting leave - consistently royalist, Kent - also supporting leave - consistently parliamentarian.
Re: When old historic maps overlap with modern political maps
#95Whenever I see this kind of persistence, it underscores how important path dependency is when trying to understand how things got to be the way they are. From legacy software to political systems, when there's cruft or weird behavior there's almost always some environmental factor that shaped the decision to build it that way, even (especially) if the people who made the decision weren't conscious of why.
Re: When old historic maps overlap with modern political maps
#96Earlier quoted context omitted.
The territory that today is western poland was part of Germany pre-1939. It wasn't an occupation, it was just that territory of that country. Afaik, most of what was eastern Poland pre-1939 and was occupied by the Russians, nowadays is no longer Polish territory. The boundaries migrated west.
Yes indeed. The Poland of after WWII has a similar area with the Poland of before WWII, but it has moved a lot towards West. So the winners have been the Russians and the losers have been the Germans. Poland was lucky because its large territorial losses to the Russian invaders have been somewhat compensated with territories taken from Germany. The other Western neighbors of Russia have been much less lucky. The larg…
With regards to eastern territories, Poland may reclaim some of those right now if it is insistent :)
Re: When old historic maps overlap with modern political maps
#97https://twitter.com/Valen10Francois/status/15240407292108881...
Why these political maps are more likely to be caused by internal migration and not historical holdovers? Because the Civic Platform (Platforma Obywatelska, PO, yellow-orange on the map) received more votes in areas with more (internal) immigration. Not just in the west but also in the cities in the east.
While these aren't unrelated, this is a long-time rooted vs freshly settled divide more than it is historical.
Re: When old historic maps overlap with modern political maps
#98Whenever I see this kind of persistence, it underscores how important path dependency is when trying to understand how things got to be the way they are. From legacy software to political systems, when there's cruft or weird behavior there's almost always some environmental factor that shaped the decision to build it that way, even (especially) if the people who made the decision weren't conscious of why.
Brings to mind the 5 monkeys experiment: https://www.proserveit.com/blog/five-monkeys-experiment-less...
Re: When old historic maps overlap with modern political maps
#99Whenever I see this kind of persistence, it underscores how important path dependency is when trying to understand how things got to be the way they are. From legacy software to political systems, when there's cruft or weird behavior there's almost always some environmental factor that shaped the decision to build it that way, even (especially) if the people who made the decision weren't conscious of why.
One thing that's become very interesting to me is whether there's a way to formalize the presence of these kinds of path dependencies in models (sociological, psychological, epidemiological, system, whatever) so they don't become these kind of implicit ghost (butterfly?) effects that are mismodeled and misinterpreted. How do we avoid overlooking them? Seems like it's something that happens a lot.
Re: When old historic maps overlap with modern political maps
#100Earlier quoted context omitted.
Chesterton's fence. I admit that when I was younger I was much more eager to just tear it all down and start anew...but with experience I have come to see things are never quite so easy. Things are the way they are for a reason, and it is important to know what those reasons are before attempting to modify the things.
> it is important to know what those reasons are before attempting to modify the things. People misinterpret Chesterton's fence as an argument against changing things, but it's actually just about what I quoted above. It has no verdict on whether or not something should be changed. It just argues that you should make a strong effort to figure out why it is how it is before attempting to do so. I'd argue that if you d…
Hard disagree. The difficulty of discovering the reasons for Chesterton's Fence and the impossibility of ever being certain that you have discovered them all means that it actually is a general prescription for caution / against change.
Of course, as always, it comes down to a judgement call. Do you understand the reasons for Chesterton's Fence well enough? Unfortunately, that's exactly the same situation one was in before the Chesterton's Fence metaphor was brought up, so either the metaphor is completely useless (by way of being disclaimed into oblivion) or it is a general prescription for caution / against change.