Map Geek Idea

[quasigeostrophy]

Sitting here watching the 1968 Peter O'Toole/Katherine Hepburn version of The Lion in Winter, I found myself, as I often do when watching or reading historical fiction and dramatizations, wondering about the specific boundaries of territory held by England and by France at the time the story is set. I have a couple of historical atlases, particularly on Britain, and could go look up approximations, but I had an idea. What I really want is a (probably CD-ROM based) history atlas that I can enter a date (at least to the year) and get boundaries and such. I think that would be cool. :-)

Comments

[neeuqdrazil.livejournal.com]

Isn't that a fabulous movie? I rented it a while ago, because I'm a huge Eleanor of Aquitaine buff.

[quasigeostrophy.livejournal.com]

Quite. I hadn't actually seen this version before, though. Last March, Toni and I saw a local stage production, and we got this DVD recently. I also want to see the more recent Patrick Stewart/Glenn Close version.

[cathouse-blues.livejournal.com]

Bad casting, that one. Both are fabulous actors, but the (for the time) huge age difference between Eleanor and Henry is lost with that casting. Ranks right up there with the time Close was cast as Mel Gibson's mother.

[sistercoyote.livejournal.com]

I <3 The Lion in Winter.

Although it was quite distracting to see Timothy Dalton in it. I don't know why - I was just caught very off guard.

Regarding your CD idea - pitch it to somebody. Interactive CDs aren't that hard to make...

I think that would be cool

[gasslight.livejournal.com]

Me too.

[catzen.livejournal.com]

sistercoyote has a point: it might be worth a pitch.

It sounds like a good idea to me, too. The main hurdle would obviously be to get the requisite intellectual property, but there are a few companies sitting on this kind of thing, I imagine. There was, I believe, a German company that put out *printed* history references that were especially map-heavy with color-coded maps on plates. I at least *used* to have a few of these, if I remember, but they may have gotten lost in the shuffle of my many moves. Then, there's the venerable An Encyclopedia of World History (edited by Langer), but -- at least in the edition with which I'm familiar, the 5th -- they're just black and white (although quite good).

Maybe one of these companies might already offer something close or be open to doing something similar with their stores of maps.

Just an idea. :-)

[quasigeostrophy.livejournal.com]

I agree that collecting and organizing the maps would be the biggest production issue. There are several sources I can think of just from my own current print library. I have the gigantic The Times Atlas of World History, Historical Atlas Britain, and several The Penguin Historical Atlas of titles, so I know several companies could probably do it. One domestic organization that comes to mind is the National Geographic. I have their Maps CD-ROM set already.

[bandhiaduit.livejournal.com]

I think it would make a cool humanities college course--something that could be taught with a variety of media (books, computer software, video, music):
history, geography, sociology, literature, and film.

[cathouse-blues.livejournal.com]

Should be simple enough to do with GIS...

[cjsmith.livejournal.com]

I'd want a big map graphic with a slider bar marked TIME, so I could smoothly advance the years and watch the boundaries move.

[quasigeostrophy.livejournal.com]

That sounds like a cool feature! One of the things I thought of was an overlay with borders in different colors. For example, 1240 borders in red, 2004 borders in blue, or something like that.

It does exist

[dsgood.livejournal.com]

I'll search for the information tomorrow -- but there's a map which gives borders within Europe since 1000 AD, month by month.

I learned of it originally on soc.genealogy.jewish.

[hitchhiker.livejournal.com]

that would be massively cool. have you read any of penman's historical novels, btw? highly recommended if you like british/european historical fiction.

[quasigeostrophy.livejournal.com]

I haven't. I'll have to look those up, thanks!