BackStory; Here to There: A History of Mapping

this is back story i'm peter office ronald reagan as the winner in the state of new hampshire in the state of vermont we will be coloring in those and vote for reagan yes folks red states have always been reversed anywhere kinney former nbc news anchor john chancellor called in the states that went for reagan blue just another reminder that even the most ubiquitous maps have a story to tell and today on the show we're looking at some of those stories from native american maps what mattered here was how people work in relation to one another about how much physical space separates them to the map that gave america its name and it's good also i think for people is named after was pre cut of meat every man in america today on backstory but first some history in the making the backstory podcast news i'm tony field sr producer of the show and

hear my view that if you like what you hear on today's show you can help the uninitiated find out about backstory by living a positive review on a page in the itunes store you should also know that we're now offering individual segments of our show as downloadable and p threes on our website if i know the backstory radio dot org you can find all past episodes of our new weekly show there and official inspired is also linked to send us a financial contribution to help us cover our production costs backstory radio is where you'll find us on facebook and on twitter thanks for listening and see you next week major production support for backstory is provided by the national endowment for the humanities and by the university of virginia says by the virginia foundation for the mets this back stories because it's their history welcome to the show and brian balogh twentieth century guy and i'm here with it is not the center guy and peter odowd the eighteenth century in well time has

come here saying that we've looked at the figures and nbc news now makes its the projection for the presidents reagan is our projected winner ronald wilson reagan that's former nbc news anchor john chancellor with election night coverage of the nineteen eighty presidential election you remember that one peter reit yeah it was a thriller right peter you know the correct that there was a landslide to ronald reagan crushed in the corner but around eight fifteen that evening something happened which sounds strange to us today why our calculations ronald reagan as the winner in the state of new hampshire in the state of vermont that war in south carolina we will be coloring in those on the map now in blue for reagan liked her a lot blue states for republicans venice the memo they got there right next to it so what you're saying bryan is that this business of blue bean

democrat and red being republican know wasn't always the case that's right i sometimes it was the republicans were blue sometimes it was the opposite they'd flip flop odd nothing was set in stone so when did because we know today republicans read democrats blue when they become standard practice prior two thousand nice round number it was a two thousand presidential election bush vs gore at a very specific moment that things really became common but as far as the coverage was concern tim russert was on the today show schmoozing with matt lauer let's revisit that moment in time peter you're gonna be matt lauer did you're going to beat him ross this is the moment when the two newscasters are looking at the big map of the country code red and blue to project election results the wrist as we have to have gone to al i mean

george bush the blue states for al gore what this account look like so for well matt first that you will see a lot more red and blue and they'll say oh is this race over far from it we confess though it through some of the stuff and now let's track a score up seven points in florida so bush can't put that in his camp yet so how does he get those remaining sixty one electoral red states if you will and from weeks after election day while florida's votes were being counted and recounted the scholars get locked in an associated with specific parties because the whole country was looking at this red and blue maps day after day that's the election quite literally hung in the balance so people have to watch red for republican blue for democrat again and again and it was in that election

that these lines became a fixture in the mines believe it's sort of a show of talking about a match like that red and blue electoral map maps that religious part the geography of the ones that reflect how we see ourselves in the world look at a few of these maps and i think that what they tell us about the americans who make them because it's you know i'm guessing this is not the first time that the map has to find a way that we thought about american politics i always feel a deep impulse to go back to the beginning peter always goes back to you and said you know there's some earlier times of losing bats play a bit more or thinking of ourselves you know talk a little bit about what boundaries were supposed to be like in the new united states they were supposed to be

permeable the united states was supposed to be the opposite of europe where you have to stop at every boundary and pass run through the gauntlet to get to the other side and took him to an affect europe was an armed camp yes it's gonna be different that enabled americans to think up and mentally that is there's nothing that's going to divide us well what did divide us in the missouri controversy over the future of slavery in the new state of missouri an eighteen nineteen twenty one was the period that controversy when it suddenly brought to the floor was the notion of a line between free states and slave states one that nobody had imagined before and thomas jefferson we describe the fire build in the night that walk about from his slumber is new so all of a sudden there's this line of distinction and these northern show anti slavery people are making believe that some moral distinction between the good people of the north and the evil slave power of the south and that idea that americans could be divided between

one quarter and another quarter another civilization another solution that was a deeply divisive and upsetting to americans and so i think the whole tone of the sexual politics of the antebellum period you know the mason dixon line is drawn back in the eighteenth century really just about pennsylvania from evelyn that over the first half of the nineteenth century americans come to believe that we need a permanent line between slave territory and three territories and that's what they argue that throughout dating forties the eighteen fifties where in that line going to be of course the line that actually emerges only comes through the secession crisis itself and even then the line is very shaky and it's not clear to the firing actually begins the kentucky is going to remain in the union and that maryland's going to remain in the union and the budget is going to go the confederacy and then in the gilded age bryant the saying goes that people voted the way they shot and so the line between the north and south are rightly becomes much more distinctive collector only after the civil war and a dead before the war and electoral

system brian seems to suggest that black people are going to keep voting as northerners and southerners for ever how does the change in the twentieth century well it first of all it doesn't change from a good half of the twentieth century ideas you know we have the solid south but you know your discussion with peter about the relationship between lines in politics suggests that it's politics that makes those lines real high end i would propose to you that it was politics i'm not matt lauer are tim russert that locked in the red state blue state thing because you know between world war two and nineteen eighty we were in the golden age of what political scientists call bipartisanship were republicans and democrats compromised on lots of things but beginning with ronald reagan politics got all a lot more partisan and i think those pundits locked in

on red state blue state as a way of simply reflecting the political reality but i also know ed by drawing the lines in different ways you can really tease out the great variety and contests station within every state could you talk to us a little bit about that if all you do is you turn up the level of magnification one notch from the states to the counties you'll see that every state in the union has its own internal divisions between democrats and republicans and sometimes their islands of democrats and cz of republicans sometimes it's the other way around i think it's important to dissolve this red state blue state it a little bit because it leads to the idea that geography is destiny that we cannot have ideas that are not dictated by where we live at politics and religion and ideas toward guns and abortion and all these things are kind of ether in which we live and when she began taking away the

possibilities of american politics really become stunted and strikes me as a direct contradiction of accounting idea that we had peter that you describe at the beginning but i think it is weird but what the founders imagine was a kind of national consensus and where americans have created political parties as has been in tension with the notion of harmony and i think you've got what i would describe as the mentor turkey and temptation and that his youth you have the power even if it's fifty one percent to forty nine percent you're going into you're in a play it for all its worth and he can try to build on that it's the temptation of creating a solid constituency for your positions in national politics at the local level that is making rent mekong blue it's b

i came to the us capitol was a famous painting called first reading of the emancipation proclamation of president lincoln and his shows as well the first reading of emancipation proclamation a bustling kent you probably say before somewhere on the cover of a textbook maybe you're a middle school history worksheets it's a little stuff that it depicts a very important that i mean in july of at sixty two when lincoln gathered members of his cabinet to let them know about a major decision he had made ending slavery would now be a part of the united states war strategy would have the meeting happened in the tradition of a portrait painter named francis but carpenter was so affected by this he called it a moment

of drama in american history second only to the signing of the declaration of independence this is susan short ministry and computers to denver she says the carpenter was able to pull some strings to get a meeting with nick himself and lincoln was actually three welcoming the idea so much so that he invited carpenter to come set up shop and studio in the white house itself and from february of eight and sixty four forward for six months governor actually lived in the white house and made a great study the detail of that scene as lincoln and others have described it when he actually revealed his intent to use emancipation to his cabinet the painting was unveiled in july at sixty four in a lincoln sits at a table surrounded by seven cabinet members in one hand he holds a draft of the emancipation proclamation and the other book will the painting is pretty dramatic it's got there seven cabinet members aligned and carpenter claimed that he aligns them according to their sentiment about emancipation for most

sympathetic to least that all the details or really makes this painting if you look around there's anti slavery newspapers strewn on the bottom below edwin stanton at the left there's a military map across the table and in the far right lower corner there's a map that for me really tells the entire story this was an actual map that lincoln admired and often consulted during the war is made by the us coast survey in eighteen sixteen and it showed the distribution of the slave population all across the south carpenter the artist's thought that that was so important to actually took lincoln scott the study he had to make sure he painted it correctly in just a moment we're going to a closer look at why this man was so key to lincoln's understanding of the civil war but before we dive into that it's time for a short break you're listening to back story we'll be

back in a minute this is back story with the american history guys and brian balogh twentieth century guy and then there's not the century guy and i'm peter i'm a citizen forget we're talking today about maps how they've shown us not just where we are in the world but also who we are in the world before the break we introduced eighteen sixteen map of slavery in the us that that made a cameo appearance of the famous painting by france's becknell carpenter the painting showed abraham lincoln prison in a draft of the emancipation proclamation to his cabinet now we're going to return to its conversation with susan shalom to find out what the map so revolutionary what you're looking at is you can take a look at the map is the first example of an american made map that translate statistical data into pretty graphic form at it colors every county and every southern state according to his degree of dependence upon slavery service and shaving right

so it looks like there's many different shades of grey or other not fifty literary allusion that i hold on adam a look that up one two three four five six seven eight nine years actually nine scales of shade on the map from less than ten percent of the population enslaved to over eighty percent so it's got bombed several different shades to that signify each county's dependence or relative dependence i should say on slavery that one look at this map just a glance and you immediately get a sense of not just where slavery is most to dance but that that's the exact same county seat sex in areas that are the most ardently secessionist so in that respect it really gives you in an instant an explanation of what the war or what's a session is really about and so that's and that's pretty amazing cause you look at it and you realize how

much your calculation goes into wall this is interesting that are using the most advanced statistical techniques of the time to show as you're pointing out basically a political and demographic fact you know this is not to nap where you're mining resources are the nature of the harbors or a thing that that this is really showing in many ways the great problem of america and mapping it to the most scientific means so what meaning did abraham lincoln find in this map where he's staying at so intently making sixty one and two one of the first thing you see when you look at the map is that your eye is drawn to the dark spots where slavery is heaviest but then you notice the white spots of the map and missouri kentucky north carolina northern alabama northern mississippi and west virginia i think lincoln looked at those areas of the map and that they've reinforced mistakenly a sense that there was this lead and southern unionism all across the south but in the areas where there weren't a dense populations of slaves

perhaps the people would be more sympathetic to the union and less inclined to support the confederacy that that the maps of slavery before in the united states with they differ from the us will the mass of slavery that i'd come across began to spread pretty widely making fifty six when the republican party which is dedicated to halting the extension of slavery into the west uses maps repeatedly they showcase the potential for the expansion of slavery in a way that i think it is provocative and even shocking to northerners a lot of them are what cuts they have a very crude and bold look for hats intentionally a lot of them were reproduced in newspapers someone brought sides with very an alarmist language about the expansion of slavery perhaps an image right of the encircling of the northeast for instance that might really have a very deep effect on

our northerners but this coming only a few years later has complete different look and feel that those other magical as archaic this map is coming out of a scientific agency it's coming out of the ko survey it is produced are engraving on but also the newest cutting edge techniques of photography and the biography it's psalm purports to show only one class of information the ratio of slave to the total population and in that respect it's a very restrained map but it also has the imprimatur or in the lower left of the head of the census as an accurate an original representation of the data it's on their respective really is remarkable for showing a wide body of data that in a very restrained purportedly a political way it's made to look neutral but attacks are a political punch yen for me the most interesting thing about the map is that you're looking at a map

of the southern states you're looking at a map of the slave states and yet it's pretty clear when to begin to study it that it's a statement nationalism it's a deeply propagandistic around palm even though it tries to strike a lot of that political overtly political meaning from space that assistance alter a professor of history at the university of the book is mapping the nation ted in the eighteenth century france spain england were busy elbowing each other for control and that makers of each country were happy to do their part in the snout makers grew there conley a virginia stretching from the atlantic all the way to the mississippi french that makers

show their territory spanning from present day ohio to north dakota all wear down louisiana everybody won their share of a convent and maybe then some but there was a different way to map the new world max abelson is a historian at the university of virginia whose look closely at native american maps in the colonial era and he showed me a map of the seventeen twenty six known as the catawba deerskin that it is drawn by the catawba indians and presented as a gift to the governor of south carolina the map shows the catawba indians as circles and those circles are connected by an elaborate network of spokes or patents and mr mike county nursing to be twelve only circles that's right then at the center of that guitar but nation is the nassau which is that the central community the most powerful one prestigious community within the catawba confederacy and at the periphery of these circles are other shapes the watery indians who were looking for young people who have coalesced and became part of the

dominant workers the powerful chickasaw and cherokee indians who are kind of in the distance toward the hierarchy of relationships end well indians on this map are represented by circles europeans are represented by square shaped forms so are in the lower righthand corner of this map we see virginia represented and that's a sort of square off to the side a kind of looming presence on the periphery and so in some ways it's not an inaccurate representations space it has privileges the details that mattered to the top what mattered here was how people work in relation to one another not how much physical space separated them it's a lot like a subway map in subway maps don't have an accurate representation of the space between the subway stops because right now i need to know that with other american teams looking at this have known really how to understand it i think other indian groups would have objected to this may all those groups would want

their own dominance in this region and when one of the peripheral that's like those old new yorker cartoons were amateurs all of america from manhattan out words that could tug was want to see themselves as the indispensible agents and then connect carolina to this world of themselves right in the center now if we compare this to her surviving american colonist map of the same spaces we think of it oh what would that look like so european maps have a vision of space that was focused on creating an accurate survey a proper relationship between how any particular place might relate to any other than very very similar to the color graph of conventions we have today so are these warring maps in a sense how do we best thing of a smack i think of this you know this map it's really serve the purposes of diplomacy rather than kirk our fears aside to cover this as i'm out there was meant to illustrate a trade relationship and the primary language they used to

describe those relations of connection was the idea that path when indians and europeans are negotiating over over anything this language of a clear path a straight path they need to clean a bloody path that had been marred by violence all of these metaphors were liberal as walls figured if they met the real roads that are displayed on this map they're connected indians and europeans but they also meant an openness to interaction so this idea of the path was something that they use all sorts of media to talk about how one thumb was often exchange turkey's diplomatic meetings these aren't long strings of beads that are arrayed in a particular pattern and often that was really served as a map it would show english carolina on one side and courts are the cherokee indians on another and a line of connection between them now this sounds like a pretty complex conversation that these folks are having been ever lead to

misunderstandings did the indians think they'd been perfectly clear whether want to mimic calms just did not understand what they were trying to say all the time and i'm this is really the story of indian european relations in the eighteenth century there really is a zero sum game over the scarce resource of land between the european colonists and native americans and down there's constant conflict as those european settlers society for expanding deeper in the interior into indian land and so i am there were more maps that came after this one and have those maps tried resolve these conflicts but ultimately those comforts more resolved by diplomacy and max elson is a professor of history at the university of region you can take a look at the native american that we just discussed our website at backstory radio dial as i

am the fast flowing out of the twentieth century to a moment when the american government thought that good that might pave the way to a more peaceful world in the last months of world war one president wilson was busy puzzling over what the peace settlement should look like in europe everyone wanted to make sure that world war one really was the war to end all wars and wilson decided that the key to avoiding future wars way in resolving the border disputes that have contributed to this one was house a ska rain part of france there was a part of germany so in september nineteen seventeen wilson assembled a crack team of experts their job to fix europe's messy borders so it was a group of tiara first but also political scientists economists and historians who convened to gather at the american geographical society headquarters in your erk this is west's race or a geographer at george washington university is up in new york partly to keep it away from the prying eyes of congress as

well as the file from jealous bureaucrats inside the state department and david rohde reports they drew maps and they came up with all different kinds of recommendations that the president would be able to use in a peace conference at the end of the war in order to come up with a kind of just settlement they called themselves the inquiry and they think of that particular name because of its innocuous object and to make it even more innocuous i understand they produce something called the black book that's right the inquiry like any group of academics produce thousands of maps and thousands of reports that senior policymakers don't have time to read all of those pages of material and absorbed them and so they distilled down those plants into one hundred twenty eight page document twenty six maps and that was sort of you could think of as the president's briefing book which he actually carried into peace negotiations every single day it was called the outline our preliminary recommendations for the president

of january eighteenth nineteen nineteen but that's kind of a mouthful and it was a long time so instead they start calling at the blackboard because it was inserted into a simple black three ring binder how did this group of experts decide what was really important one came to drawing boundaries in the end it turned out it was likely negotiations were going to focus around pretty much the dismantling of the german austro hungarian russian and ottoman empires and so the black book maps are actually the maps that show how to divide and move those specific borders the factor that they settled on for europe was language and the reason they selected language i'm over something like a religious affiliation or others is that it was the easiest to find in census data while also seemingly representative of a person's nationality an answer for the breakup of

say austria hungary they would've proposed the borders based on whether someone spoke german and ariane check croatian etc sounds reasonable and of course we know that academics are always biased towards an approach where they can get good data and that makes sense why that particular time in the early twentieth century there was this huge emphasis on science being able to sort of solve all of our problems and in this particular case were of course talking about a human problems problems of war and peace and so the scientific approaches the inquiry was to sort of take the latest scholarship and be driven by data by experts rather than driven by the political needs of the leaders of the different countries involved in the war was this approach shared markedly different than peace negotiations in the past

very different i think principally and that pretty much prior world war one every time the war came to an end the victorious party to sort of dictated turns to the other side and president wilson really strongly felt when united states chose to draw world war one that the to the victor goes the spoils mall had not worked in the past and actually usually just promulgated further conflict or that just prompts me to ask whether there was something particularly american in this approach i think they're very much was the idea of self determination the idea that a person should have the right to determine their own political destiny is very much grounded in the american spirit and the american tradition and the american peace proposals in the boarders trial was around granting self determination by breaking up empires and recreating nation states in their place creating states they're

actually based around the people who lived there rather then choose which family had owned that land for the last five hundred years so how were to rate the effectiveness of this approach did it work i would give it a mixed rating united states proposed the so called polish corridor which was a narrow piece of territory up to the baltic sea the connected to the arrest of poland and cut germany and two and so hitler's justification for the second world war for wanting it was to reconnect east pressure with the rest of germany part by attacking poland and so clearly in certain places the borders were a tremendous failure as proposed and but a lot of other places i'd actually rate them as quite successful and i think actually the most remarkable thing are places where american scholars proposed based on on our knowledge our geographic knowledge new borders that ended up not being implemented the borders of the russian empire couldn't be broken apart because of the bolshevik run revolution and the

rise of the soviet union but the united states proposed the creation of ukraine which doesn't come about until the breakup of the soviet union and they proposed the three republics in the caucuses are armenia azerbaijan and georgia which also come about ninety ninety one and you look at those particular regions of the world especially it's kind of amazing to see what could have been versus what happened so it's the places where the us got our way the least i think that the border's failed by the most markedly that was west riser adjunct professor of geography at george washington university and he's the author of the black book woodrow wilson secret plan for peace oh nice

it's time for a short period when we come back we'll find out how america got its name from the sixteenth century italian and you're listening to the backstory we'll be back in a minute welcome back to back story i'm peter and if it isn't true that i may there's not these injured eye and i'm brian balogh twentieth century guy today were talking about maps now when you look at a map of the american west today you'll notice a whole lot of right angles state lines meet each other and neat corners assume into the county level and you'll see that the middle third of the country's composed almost entirely of boxes the person most responsible for the city of rectangles is a man we talk about a lot here on backstory thomas jefferson it was his idea to map out the west as a

gigantic grid for the most part political winds have followed his vision but in the eighty nine is one meth maker came along with a radical new proposal he thought outside the box that will sink wants has the story so can you describe to me what the eighty ninety map looks like these sort of a copyright infringement this is donald worster an historian at the university of kansas it's beautiful and it has a map of irregular shapes all in different colors blues reds yellows greens browns pinks you've got this map that looks like what you could say a jigsaw puzzle the lines are all very irregular the map he's talking about was drawn by a man named john wesley powell john wesley powell was the last of a string of great explorers of the american west how

was a civil war that the science professor and the first wave american to successfully boat through the grand canyon in eighteen eighty one he was named head of the us geological survey and that's when he began a new program of mapping out the arid regions the last by then the federal government has been giving away land to homesteaders for about two decades and most of the good land was already gotten when you suddenly started arriving in these drier areas that impulse at home on a session this isn't going to work you said there is not enough water in that whole region to do all that you want to do the whole land system of the united states the homestead act hundred and sixty acre homestead he said will never survive out there because a hundred and sixty acres in general was was landings handed out to people on the assumption that every utterance sixty acre box was just like every other hundred and sixty acre box they're all full of water and dance good soils and the climate and nobody needed to worry about who got what the

homestead act in eating sixty two had followed jefferson's credit but after years as an adventure pal really knew this region and he knew it all boxes were not created equal some didn't have any access to water at all that somebody came up with that colorful map with all the squiggle you lines what he's proposing is that all the western states or some divide themselves into these watershed district identify new political boundaries within the states and also cross in the states powell was totally convinced that fights over water would be it or even more so when they crossed the border as we can avoid a lot of that he argued if government was framed around the flow of water instead of organizing their counties as a series of little boxes organized these lands as collective common words were where all the people lived in these districts have a vote on how the

water and land are to be used how to rap and the settlement proposal to congressional committees around the country and put it up in front of the congressmen said this is the worst we ought to be building but once great explorer thought that his map could put a halt to the homestead act and the hundred sixty acres and rearrange the system but it was too late for railroad companies and all the other emerging corporations westward expansion was big business and how long does take mr collins and hold us up for decades when their people out there coming into the country what homes and farms and immigrants coming in the united states and we haven't got time to mess around with these newfangled ideas besides timing there is a deeper concern to one thing that at the heart of american ideals the homestead act was about self sufficiency ahn and the west promised riches and told to whoever can claim valuable resources first up against that house collective resource management

smacks of socialism in the end house predictions about water struggles have come true one of the longest court cases in american history came out of a dispute between california and arizona over the colorado river legal battles between all of the states had been going on for years and shortages are getting worse how's map was in a cure all there would still be water shortages but his proposal re framed community focused around sustainable living instead of winner takes all he was making a point about how maps changed the way we perceive our land it can be hard to recognize shared interests when a border says you don't have any that's allison keyes okay guys we just heard

a really good case for falling topography and who can argue with that no interview with an analyst or an argument against topography jefferson thomas jefferson when he first sketched out proposed boundaries for western states in the eighteenth century when the big problem was that the interest the land speculators the big companies of the period or corporations if you will they wanted to use the old traditional way of surveying land in virginia and kentucky in order to acquire vast stretches of land and into dominate the devil the west jefferson and fellow reformers saw that prior survey according to the grid was a way to liberate the land from the interest so the corporate domination of development that's precisely what jefferson was worried about in his own context and prior survey in the grid we're gonna preempt the kind of conflicts and country says that would make a warrior's rage and give corporations the upper hand

and the idea that state boundaries that reflected nature and geography of the land would somehow have lead to collective solutions and development of those of the national debate that just seems romantic to me i mean brian what would you say about the history of the states and state government as a steward of the land is there any reason to think that governments in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries would have done a better job you know a pitcher that we know that they get a worse job and all those state lines we're not re drawn along john wesley powell saw clients in fact entire states out in the west where pretty much organized around the single natural resources you have the mining states in nevada and utah he had lumbering out in california and those states world really the first to be captured by those large corporations that john wesley powell was so worried about so we like to think

that maps represent an opportunity to project the future onto a landscape that the way we draw map can really make a difference to jefferson certainly thought that was true and john wesley powell a great critic of there for some thought that there be another and better way to draw maps for the new western landscape well i think we have some serious doubts about whether that's true but that dream of drawing the future on the landscape is a powerful and tenaciously still he says whether you're talking about the united states of america the comments of north and south america is generally accepted that thing is on the left side of any modern map of the world fall under the same headline america if i were to ask you why that is your brother drop the main goal of this speech she

you know the explorer but it's tough to get much further than that we know of columbus was first and then mary o'kane after so how come we're not called colombe i asked of this pretty expert philippe for members or must go or more ago did to earn naming rights to an entire hemisphere oh nothing and he did nothing really he was in his youth he was a pimp posting kids it's rauch hastening for americans to know that the country the greatest country was named offer is good also i think for people to know that america is named after was great kind of native artist was continually reinventing himself he was a pimp that he was on a commission agent working and selling jewels figaro icon figaro of florence the fact paul palumbo much targeted yet every interview little job that you want a donkey also the story of how this make over artist became our namesake is actually the story map a

very popular map with two creators looking for their big break and they were much yes queen mom and martin feldstein you know i guess the famous door frame on involved singer big mama was a sort of a humanist and wordsmith at the time involves similar he was an engraver with a special knack for increasing maps and these guys really looking for a project that would run into wolves and think unlike mays people will talk they won't thank you on the new edition was recognized as being a box on the greatest theoretical work in the western world lead your graffiti written by the second century plus more prefer produce toll is geography it was one of the first great works of mapping the world but with the discovery of these new continent's the world was changing for europeans sobering moment for similar decide for

me need some updating but everybody was producing editions of the sky and they needed something special that would elevate their edition above the competition at that time other maps were given this unknown land mass generic latin names things like perilous and by crew says soaring companies which just means whatever's on the opposite side of the globe from you know he is giving these compounds their own name this is wearing on involve similar see an opening number fourteen hundred and ninety two columbus sailed the ocean blue that he only made it so far as the caribbean island's nobody actually knew that there were two whole continents to the north and to the south columbus didn't discover the new conference until his third voyage and forty ninety eight ramanan filed similar stumble upon a letter written by the speeches that recounts his own voyage to the new continent's he doesn't dispute colobus suspects but he does for some reason claimed to have discovered the new world saw her moment of similar find this intriguing but not entirely

satisfying shortly after they find what seems like confirmation that owns a copy of what i think is a kind of pioneer book hustle yo la presse broke station bookstore pulp which is based only voyages of this country but which is a really ridiculous as a romanticized and fictionalized account of souls court woeful saw during the election and the slaughter says without a shadow of a doubt that america over the speech he discovered the new continent's and forty ninety seven the year before columbus it also says that this new world as a land of sex crazed cannibals but apparently that wasn't enough to tip off old similar and ramon they ran with it and they decided that maybe if they wrote op suspensions achievements and representatives the new roman is someone who had excluded the

new image of the earth that would give the extra cash a big a public figure sales so i said look i'm willing to be suckered because they had this ambition so everyone involved similar go into their workshop and start plugging away at this map project and the company's new partner and say it's time to pick a name and they named it as often or hugo this nucci and their recourse in latin interest them in america say look like the other continents africa asia you'll recall it was feminine in there fifteen and seven they finish the product and what we got was one of the most significant mexican american history that's a huge mess and it shows the walt we move the delineation of me americans as they were then thought to be a picture of this book she's writing that will talk in a kind of dominating the whole

thing and was literally defined as wallpaper as far as we know this is a very inventive design the lighting when people spoil this idea that you've come up a whole standing wall like literally a piece in the map together and pacing on cure your war that people thought was a great guy and it can and they really went for the walk looking for votes in new line ring produced and fifteen or so it was so successful and so pop and so much of the economy will reduce of moderates in the case of a film that's literally possible normal walls the world renewable some possible locally produced food and and it was just the candidate they were impossible success keyword irreversible a few years later and shortly after that or similar realize that the letter they based their work on a really clever one about the sex symbols was a fake

completely fabricated and indeed when the senate produces next math and fifteen thirteen he changed his mind about the ruthless she he deleted the main america from them actually been created specifically an inscription on the map saying that i'm actually been discovered by columbus but america has become american it's an accident and and i you know i got nothing against accident i think won't you know as pretty much made up of of random events and although things we do deliberately really badly the things we do by x at least have some chance of turning out right because what's in a nickname and i knew we had to have talked about names in my name that literally means lover of horses well you know i i am mindful says but i can tell you when i try to write them yesterday hate me

you know we shouldn't worry too much about obama name names was designated me shouldn't stop reading too much not much and by the way as i say i think it's great that america is named after a charlatan of a pimp and a native of offices but in the end of the day it doesn't matter we knew what it means and we have more of what it is and what was cool fernandez honest those whose story of the university of notre dame his book is called america of the man who gave his name to america that's our show for today he was caught it was so immersed in the show that you got last it's now safe to pull over and the picture map for more on the history of latin america check out our website backstory

radio dot org to all of our past shows are there and we also post descriptions of upcoming shows let us know what you think sets backstory radio dot org you'll also find us on facebook and tumbler we tweak the next radio we'll be back again next week thanks for listening don't be a stranger kisses on today's episode of backstory was produced by bill pesticide testing the rights and original and allison wants to mom over as a technical director our senior producer is telling three we had help from ellen chen francs euros our intern and dexterous executive producer is andrew hamblin special thanks today go to emma jacobs john kress well the philadelphia which are going to please and charm though and we want to extend a special welcome today to a new audience members whistling and k vcr in san bernardino

glad to have jamboree major support for backstory is provided by the national down for the humanities which is a lot of cornell memorial foundation the universe to virginia weinstein properties an anonymous donor in the history channel history that every day peter earnest and brian balogh are professors in the university of virginia's corcoran art history at ayres is president and professor of history at the university of richmond back story was created by andrew women for the virginia foundation for the humanities