This large, folding map of the world shows the political situation during the inter-war period, before the Japanese invasion of Manchuria and before the German annexation of Austria and Czechoslovakia. The population figures in the table below the map give us an approximate date of 1921-22 for this example of the map, though we have seen other updated editions continuing into the mid-1930s.

Confusingly, the red lines marking the railway network show some lines as complete which should still be under construction in the 1920s. These include the Berlin to Baghdad railway, which is shown as nearly complete on this map and the Hong Kong to Beijing railway, which is also shown as completed. Either the publishers chose not to distinguish railways which were not yet complete, or they continued to use a politically out-of-date base map while continuing to update the railways.

A small inset map in the upper-left corner shows the political boundaries before the First World War. Even more interesting is the inset map in the lower-left corner which provides an 'isochronic' view of the world: colour is used to indicate how long it would take to travel from London to every other part of the world, from less than 5 days to over 40 days. A large table along the lower edge of the map provides population figures and distances from London for approximately 300 global cities from Addis Ababa to Zanzibar.

Printed colour. [WLD4834]