Making Sense Of The World, One Map At A Time
The map above shows how many former European overseas colonies of each country are now part of a country with a larger GDP than the original coloniser.
GDP figures come from the IMF and are in nominal terms at 2025 exchange rates.
For example, the US, India and China (via Hong Kong and other concessions) all have larger GDPs than the UK. That said, I’ve actually made a mistake and the UK should actually be 4, not 3 (see below).
You can see the full list below with an example where not obvious:
The map above shows a brief comparison between the Soviet Union in 1990 and Russia in 2025.
The GDP numbers for 1990 come from the 1990 edition of the CIA World Factbook, which noted that:
The map above shows one history’s forgotten economic geography facts. Today we tend to think of South Korea as a economic miracle and North Korea as an economic basket case.
However, from the division of the Korean peninsula in 1948 up until the early 1970s, the North was actually richer than the South in per capita terms.
The maps below compare GDP growth of various countries between 2000 and 2025. The GDP data comes from the IMF via Wikipedia which states that:
“Figures are based on official exchange rates, not on the purchasing power parity (PPP) methodology. Values are given in millions of United States dollars (USD) and have not been adjusted for inflation.”
In total World GDP increased from $34 Trillion USD to $116 Trillion USD during this period a 240% increase!
The map above shows the huge difference in the size of the UK vs Japan’s highspeed rail networks in 1963 compared to 2025.
Given the UK’s invented passenger railways it seems even more strange. So why is the UK network’s so small compared to Japan’s?
This is shown alongside the approximate lifetime of Philo of Byzantium, who documented them and was alive when they all existed simultaneously.
And at the bottom you can see the relative height of each of them.
Dates in bold green indicate construction, while dates in dark red indicate destruction.
Here’s more about them:
You can see each map in more detail below, followed by an explanation.
Here’s a full explanation from Milos:
In many areas Germans made up to 95% of the population. So what happened?
To start in 1914 there was not Polish state and the Polish people were split between Germany, Austria-Hungary and Russia.
For more on that process see:
