Historical maps probably helped cause World War I

>> There’s something beguiling about the thought that a simple arrangement of lines might explain the world — like seeing human history as an enormous game of Civilization 6. But of course, that’s also the problem with using maps as a way of understanding history. If you’re not careful, they go from being helpful tools to misleading simplifications.

To which I think the blog post makes an interesting argument.

I've always thought about maps from a Tufte perspective:

(1) They are abstractions from reality. (2) Consequently, they simplify and omit select details. (3) Consequently, they are created with an inherent and specific purpose in mind: details necessary for that purpose are included, those unneeded are omitted.(4) Ergo, we must be careful to understand a map's original purpose and ask whether its abstractions are likely to remain valid if we choose to employ it for another.

F.ex. the tactical drawing of Cannae's double envelopment likely doesn't generalize to the strategic realm

The Germans were able to advance to the doorstep of Paris. They continuously tried to engage the Entente in a decisive battle (from the Frontier all the way to the Marne). They were unable to do so because the Entente refused to be engaged that way, and because the Entente had superior strategic/operational mobility (they were retreating onto their own logistics and infrastructure (railroads)). At the Marne (Paris), Germany was at or near it's logistical limits. Germany also transferred 200,000 troops to the Eastern front.

The Battle of the Marne itself was not "Germany face tanks into prepared defensive positions and is stopped cold by Entente machine guns and fortifications". The battle was a retreating Entente force, bolstered by re-inforcements, turning around and attacking into the pursuing Germans.

The "Schlieffen Plan" failed before the whole 'static warfare' thing started. In fact, it was the failure of the plan that induced the conditions for the race to the sea, and the whole western front shitshow.

The "Schlieffen Plan" failed because Germany outran it's logistics, because Germany panicked when Russia mobilized faster than anticipated and transferred over a sizeable body of men, because France was able to use it's position (retreating onto its infrastructure) effectively (and they weren't dumb enough to try to engage the Germans at every opportunity), and I'm sure for many other reasons as well. Machine guns may play a part, but I think it's overly reductive to claim that "machine guns - defensive warfare" made the plan impossible.

As was common for Chinese romanization systems from before the 20th century, it used 't' for unaspirated /t/ (which we would use use 'd' for today in systems like Pinyin for Mandarin or Peng'im for Teochew), and used 'th' for aspirated /tʰ/ (which we sould use 't' for today in systems like Pinyin or Peng'im).

This isn't an archaic miss transliteration, it's just an alternative transliteration strategy. In many languages that primarily use the latin alphabet, the phonemes associated with 't' and 'd' are /t/ and /d/, primarily distinguished by voice instead of aspiration (where aspiration is allophonic), so it's logical that the creators of earlier romanization systems focused on preserving that voice distinction, even if it's less common today for a variety of reasons.