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I am directly descended from a guy that owned about 2/3 of the 1792 map. He sold off all but 500 acres to various people in 1774. He then gave the proceeds to his good friend Thomas Jefferson, to help ~~find~~ fund the war. My cousin still has his diary.
Where was the war?
~~It was between 13 colonies and King George II~~
Good catch
I like the 1609 version. Clean, straight diagonal running across the entire continent. So simple.
Reminds me of the cgp grey line about the CA/US border:
“Alas the perfect spherical planar intersection, it is not.”
Was 1609 the year that the new world discovered weed?
Was Louisiana around at the same time as the first image?
Was the (yet to be) United States just Virginia and Louisiana at one point?
What a crazy world that would be if that stayed the case
The early colonies were expeditions with very vague and arbitrary claims. It was stuff like "We claim 100 miles from this point in each direction and then everything between there and this river and... that mountain."
Why didn't they just go "I claim everything unclaimed!"? It's not like it matters, all that matters is what one is able to reasonably control and defend.
The Pope had kind of done that already a century back. Picked a line in Brazil and said Portugal gets everything East and Castile(Spain) gets everything West.
Spain won that gamble.
IIRC Portugal wasn't aware of the vast landmasses to the west and felt they got the better deal, Spain only getting a sliver of land and some grey areas on the map.
But big papa should have gone "I think it all belongs to the church and if you disagree, you go to hell." Much like how the church got wealthy in the first place, "Put us in the will and your sins will be forgiven."
I mean the church pretty told it was Portugal and Spain's job to loot their respective partitions of gold and silver for the church, so yeah.
VA mentioned
Can't wait to see the 2026 update