A professor of mine made the argument today that the Mercator projection map directly led to imperialism. She said that it was one of the factors that gave Europeans a sense of superiority over the rest of the world (since it distorts the relative sizes of nations/continents). According to her, it is partially responsible for colonialism, slavery, and everything else done by "white people".
How do you fell about this?
I'm not sure it raises my opinion of black people if they were undone by a warped map
find a new class to take
Rape her
Good point. I hadn't thought of it like that.
>Hey look, on the globe we're 1000 times smaller than that continent, but on the mercator projection map we're only 800 times smaller!
>Shit yeah, time to invade
tell her that it was designed to help ships to navigate, and that it's africa's fault for being so far from the equator
I blame Mercator for giving the Inuit a false sense of pride
When will Australia revolt for being put at the bottom?
well, it distorts reality in a way. The north 'the superior' side and quite a bit bigger than it is in reality
>led to imperialism
this is a stupid liberal take
The Mercator projection makes Europe/NA big to focus on the ports of the British Empire. It didn't lead to imperialism it was a tool of the literal actual empire lmao.
>She said
Here's where you lost me.
Europeans were actively creating maps, exploring the world and competing for resources. the Mercator map was likely a product of this mindset not the cause.
this is as old as byzantium fwiw
>not using the equirectangular projection
make u think
If anything, it's the opposite.
When you show Europe at its true size, it makes their superiority even more evident in light of their conquest of the rest of the world.
>not using racially sensitive Gall-Peterson projection
Ask your professor how the Africans knew since it’s not like they built a satellite or took the trouble to map their own land. I mean really, if you go to the streets of Djibouti I fuckin doubt anybody there will blame map projections for their problems.!
Fuck forgot image but already posted anyways.
The Mercator projection is used in navigation as it preserves true distance. The idea that the Mercator promotes racism is because liberals are idiots who thought that the map they had in elementary school was actually how the world was. If you want to preserve proportions in a map you sacrifice preserving distance. That is always how maps were.
Ask her if she had to create a map for navigation how would she make one without it leading to muhisms. Before that medieval maps simply told stories and weren't for navigation purposes. Maps that tell stories can easily be used for the same purposes. Otherwise, I wish you could tell her to pull her head out of her ass.
...
Buckminster Fuller's projection.
yet another western shitter with a narrow view on reality
Why is the Equator such a subhuman producer?
If everyone in red were to die, the wold would improve greatly.
Let me guess, a geography professor?
What is the most red-pilled map projection and why is it Goode Homolosine?
>inb4 homo
Makes sense
The argument doen't even hold up to superficial scrutiny:
Whites didn't even know what the world looked like until they mapped it. Britain always knew it was relatively small and yet it colonized much of the world.
She's right. There is literally no reason for a projection like this to exist since the earth is flat, anyway.
Ban assault maps nao!
Well fuck my world upside down
My school had a huge upside down multicultural map on the wall to combat this
Yes i remember reading that nobles from all the countries of europe (i think there were like 8 or 9) sat around a large table in the castle of brussels dubiously drawing europe slightly large than it actually was. "This proves our superiority to the world!" claimed colombus -1492
>maps are racist
Why couldn't the south pole be center of the flat earth? Why is it always they say the north pole us the center?
Sheeeeeeeeeeeeit daz deep, dough.
It's fucking stupid. If anything, making southern continents look smaller would make europeans less likely to set up empires in them, since if they're smaller it would stand to reason they have fewer resources.
