Aunt Jeanne’s enigmatic terrestrial globe

As children, we often visited an old aunt. In fact, Jeanne wasn’t really my aunt. She was more like my father’s godmother. Her husband had died young. Since then, she lived alone, surrounded by her memories. His kitchen hadn’t been redecorated since the 1950s. His living room, even longer.

Towards the end of her life, when she left her home for a seniors’ residence, she gave us some belongings. Dresses. Trinkets. Pieces of crockery, which she painted herself. A magnificent illustrated atlas covered with a leather cover, which she had received in 1915 for her academic excellence. I suspect that’s where his passion for travel came from. And, finally, an old, worn globe.

No, not worn.

Magane.

The paper above Suriname is torn out. The Sargasso Sea is erased. Countries bordering the Gulf of Guinea are covered in an unidentified sticky substance. As I liked geography, the globe ended up in my room. I then carried it around with me, from move to move. At first he was in plain view, in the entrance to the apartment. Then he went for a walk above the library, in the office, before ending up on our eldest’s chest of drawers, buried under two piles of clothes.

It was only recently, while discussing geography with the children, that I started to take an interest in it again. Several countries and territories intrigued me. The Tannu-Tuva. Manchukuo. The Chosen. Sarawak. Hadhramaut. Tanganyika. All names that were unknown to me.

Were these real countries? Protectorates? Puppet States under the domination of another nation? Were these states recognized by the international community? If so, at what time? I looked for a date. At the North Pole, at the South Pole, in the Atlantic, in the Pacific, under the base. Nothing. All I found was the name of the manufacturer, Replogle Globes, of Chicago.

Which gave me an idea.

And if we try, together, to discover the year of manufacture of the globe?

Clue #1: Canada

Let’s start with the territory we know best. Ours. There are four Quebec locations: Montreal, Quebec, Anticosti and Fort George.

Fort George? It was a village located on a small island at the mouth of the Grande Rivière, in Baie-James. Its population was relocated in the early 1980s after the construction of hydroelectric power stations. Few clues here for our quest. On the other hand, a little further east, there are two interesting letters under Newfoundland. BR. Why ? Because until 1949, Newfoundland was a British territory, not a Canadian province.

Date of manufacture of the globe: before 1949

Clue #2: Tanganyika

We are in the middle of the colonial period. The cartographers underline this, by assigning the same color to a metropolis and its colonies. Indochina, Tunisia and Algeria are green, like France. The Belgian Congo is orange, like Belgium. And there are many, many, many pink territories associated with the UK. India. Burma. Nigeria. But also countries with exotic names, such as Sarawak (today a region of Malaysia), Hadramaout (Yemen), Baluchistan (Pakistan) and Tanganyika.

Tanganyika, which became Tanzania, was first colonized by the Portuguese and the Germans, before coming under British control from 1920 to 1961. It is therefore impossible that Aunt Jeanne received this globe at the same time as her illustrated atlas, the little school, in 1915.

Date of manufacture of the globe: between 1920 and 1949

Clue #3: Israel

The State of Israel was created in 1948. However, it does not appear on the globe. Its territory is rather shared between Palestine and the emirate of Transjordan, a British protectorate that existed between 1921 and 1946. This reduces the field of research to a period of 25 years.

Date of manufacture of the globe: between 1921 and 1946

Clue #4: The Pacific Islands

Let’s move to the other side of the world. In the Pacific. The Philippines is not yet independent – ​​it will happen in 1946. For the moment, it is under the control of the United States. The Mariana and Marshall Islands are identified as Japanese properties. This is an important clue, because they were conquered by the Americans during the Second World War, in 1944. What if the globe had been made DURING the conflict?

Date of manufacture of the globe: between 1921 and 1944

Clue #5: Asia

Asia is amazing. Korea, under Japanese occupation, bears the name of Chosen. Tibet occupies an immense territory. Also note the presence of two little-known countries: Tannou-Touva and Manchukuo.

Tannu-Tuva was a small state wedged in the steppes between Mongolia and Siberia. It proclaimed its independence in 1921. It was then one of the few communist countries in the world. Then a monk found himself at the head of the state, he tried to establish a Buddhist theocracy, and… Joseph Stalin didn’t really like it. The repression was terrible. Tannu-Tuva was annexed to the USSR in 1944.

Manchukuo was created in northeast China in 1932 by Japan. In reality, it was a puppet state. It was recognized by Germany, Italy and Franco’s Spain, but not by the United States or the League of Nations. He disappeared after World War II.

Date of manufacture of the globe: between 1932 and 1944

Clue #6: The Baltic countries

Which region has undergone the greatest upheavals during the decade that interests us? Europe. To the east, along the Baltic Sea, there are three independent countries: Estonia, Latvia and Lithuania. We can deduce that the globe was therefore made before their occupation by the Soviets in 1940, then by the Germans in 1941. Just to the south, Poland and the city-state of Danzig (now Gdansk) still exist. The globe thus precedes their invasion by Nazi Germany on 1^er September 1939.

Date of manufacture of the globe: between 1932 and August 1939

Clue #7: Vienna, Prague and the Slovakia

Let’s zoom in even more on Germany. What do we find there? The main cities of the country, of course, such as Berlin, Hamburg and Cologne. But also two big cities generally associated with Austria and Czechoslovakia: Vienna and Prague. Vienna became German when Wehrmacht troops invaded Austria without resistance in March 1938. Prague was conquered in March 1939. Czechoslovakia exploded. On March 14, 1939, Slovakia officially became an independent country, and allied with Germany.

Date of manufacture of the globe: between March 14 and August 30, 1939

Clue #8: Albania and the Republic of Hatay

We have therefore restricted our search field to a period of 169 days. Great, right? Tut tut tut. Where are you going like this? To the next article? You remind me of children, of washing-up time.

It’s almost finished, but there are still two dishes left. The dessert ones.

Take your magnifying glass, because the last two territories are really very small.

The first, in yellow, is located between Yugoslavia and Greece. It’s Albania. There is only one city, Tirana, and two letters, IT, for Italy. It is that Benito Mussolini’s army conquered Albania in a lightning campaign, from April 7 to 12, 1939. The change was made hastily, because the new Italian protectorate is not of the same color as its metropolis, orange.

The second is even more subtle. It is located in northwestern Syria, near Aleppo. In fact, on the globe there is nothing special. It’s a purple zone, like the rest of Syria. Except that one country is missing: the Republic of Hatay. Created in September 1938, it was dismantled on June 29, 1939, to join neighboring Turkey.

Cartographers have neither named nor annexed it. Why ? I like to think that on the deadline, in the middle of the summer of 1939, they said to themselves: “Fudge the Hatay. Leave it as it was on last year’s globe. We’ll fix that next year. »

A few weeks later, war broke out.

And everything had to be redone.