The World According to Americans (Who Really Know Their Geography)

Credit XKCDThe map above by XKCD is a play on the idea that idea that American’s don’t know their geography.

The full title reads: THE WORLD According to a Group of AMERICANS who turned out to be unexpectedly good at geography, derailing our attempt to illustrate their country’s attitude toward the rest of the world.

The secret text reads:

“It’s not our fault we caught a group on their way home from a geography bee. And they taught us that Uzbekistan is one of the world’s two doubly-landlocked countries!”

And amazingly, Explain XKCD has a full list of all items on the map with an explanation:

Annotation	Further details
Hey so what projection should we use? I’ll aim for "Robinson".	Any flat map projection of a sphere must have inaccuracies. Mercator projection displays shapes well at the expense of size. For example, Mercator's Greenland appears larger than South America, but is actually one eighth the size. Gall-Peters projection does the opposite, showing accurate surface area with distorted ("awful") shapes. Robinson projection compromises between shape & size for aesthetics; hence Greenland is "still too big".
Did you know Maine is actually the US state closest to Africa?	The distance is about 5076 km (~3754 mi). Measurement points are Sail Rock (Maine), the most eastern point of the USA, and a point which seems to be the most southern (and as such western) point of el-Beddouza Beach, Morocco. It's not the most western point of Morocco (or Africa), though.
Hispañola	For some reason, the map labels the island of Hispaniola using an archaic and now rarely-used spelling of its name.
Do we have to label all the Virgin Islands?	Which are 9 larger and about 100 smaller islands — surely a lot of labels. The location of the label suggests this actually refers to the larger chain of islands which makes up the Lesser Antilles.
French, and I think Dutch and English	The three separated areas are (from west to east) Guyana (former British colony), Suriname (former Dutch colony) and French Guiana (still officially part of France). The former two often switched between French, Dutch and British colonial rule. The latter was French most times except for a short Portuguese episode.
Brazil (Portugese-speaking) Rest of South America (Spanish-speaking)	In green is Portuguese-speaking Brazil, and in blue are the Spanish speaking Venezuela, Colombia, Ecuador, Peru, Bolivia, Chile, Paraguay, Uruguay and Argentina.
Greenland (Still too big!) Yeah, but the Peters map is awful	Relating back to the choice of map projection, the apparent size of Greenland is one of the most commonly known projection based inaccuracies. The Gall-Peters projection shows accurate surface area, but with distorted ("awful") shapes.
Scandanavia	A typo of Scandinavia. The area shown includes Norway, Finland, Sweden, and Denmark, but the actual area of Scandinavia excludes Finland. The Scandinavian peninsula countries include Norway, Finland, and Sweden, and those can be collectively (and nerdily) referred to as "Fennoscandia."
Western Europe Eastern Europe	The line here approximately follows that of the Iron Curtain that separated the Warsaw Pact states (the Soviet Union and other Communist allies) from the NATO (US-allied) and neutral states. However, all of Germany is included in Western Europe (when during the Cold War it was divided into East and West Germany) while Austria (which was officially neutral in the Cold War but closely tied to the West and therefore blocked off from its Communist neighbors) is marked as Eastern Europe. Here, Eastern Europe also includes the Balkans (the southern peninsula east of Italy), which are usually considered separate. During the Cold War, the Balkans were divided between Soviet-allied Albania (which later left the Pact) and Bulgaria, NATO-allied Greece and Turkey, and Yugoslavia, which was a neutral Communist state. It's also worth noting that there should be a blob of Russian red in the middle of Eastern Europe, representing the Russian exclave of Kaliningrad oblast.
British Isles Ireland	Although Ireland belongs to the British Isles geographically, it does not belong to the British Islands politically. That may be the reason why Ireland is labeled additionally — to show it's known that Ireland does not belong to the United Kingdom. Northern Ireland does, though.
Rainforest DRC	The area shown is actually not completely the Democratic Republic of the Congo (DRC), but since one of the persons who made this map says they don't know the African map very well (see statement below), it's fairly accurate. Also the area called rainforest is somewhat larger than the area depicted as tropical rainforest on Wikipedia, although this might be due to deforestation and desertification in Africa
So this is one of those things where you point out our ignorance and stereotypes? Yeah – I mean I freely admit I don’t know the African map very well, which speaks volumes in itself.	Here two of the persons involved in drawing this map discusses what their lack of knowledge about Africa says about them. The African portion of the map is for sure the most poorly labeled, which lends weight to the stereotype of the 'Ignorant American'. Although it has to be mentioned, that the geography of Africa is in general not well known — at least within the Western world. So that's not really an American thing, here. The few countries which are labeled here mostly are well known because of their unstable political situation or because of their remarkable location. The labeled locations (and the presumably reasons of their "publicity") are west to east, north to south: Morocco (Arab Spring, location), Algeria (Arab Spring, Civil War), Sahara Desert (largest hot desert of the world), Sudan (Civil war, Arab Spring), West Africa (Lots of Civil wars and thus bad humanitarian situation, Blood diamonds), Somalia (Civil war, pirates), Lake Victoria (largest lake of Africa, quite remarkable even at large scale maps (as here)), Mozambique (Civil war), Angola (Civil War) and Madagascar (one of the world's large islands, at the east coast — quite remarkable).
Cape Horn	Cape Horn is the southern tip of South America, not Africa. The southern tip of Africa is called Cape Agulhas.
Should we include Antarctica? Let’s not – these guys are looking impatient	Here it is made clear that those who came with this assignment are getting impatient since their project of proving how little Americans know about the world has failed miserably. It also shows that if some labels or parts are missing, then it could be because of this and not for lack of knowledge. This is also a joke on the lack of labels that would be required for the map of Antarctica. Drawing Antarctica and labeling it would probably take less time than having the discussion about whether to include it, and then writing that discussion on the map.
Aral Sea (Gone)	Formerly one of the largest fresh-water lakes of the world, now actually not completely gone, but almost.
Various former Soviet states	Which are (west to east) Kazakhstan, Turkmenistan, Uzbekistan, Tajikistan and Kyrgyzstan. The former Union of Soviet Socialist Republics was dissolved in 1991 and thus the Cold War ended.
Middle East	Drawn here to include Egypt and Turkey. Whether these should be included depends on whether you mean the phrase Middle East politically or geographically. They are both Muslim countries, but geographically Egypt is in Africa and Turkey is usually not included because of its close affiliation with Europe.
Boxing Day quake Wait, "Boxing Day"? There’s no way you’re American. I read BBC News, OK?	On December 26, 2004, a huge earthquake struck off the coast of Indonesia, causing severe tsunamis. December 26, the day after Christmas Day, is celebrated as Boxing Day in the UK, Canada, Australia, and some other English-speaking countries, but not the US. As such, the earthquake became known as the Boxing Day Quake. One of the people who came asked these people to draw this map picks up on the use of 'Boxing Day' as something no American would say and questions if this person is, in fact, American. But an American reader of BBC News (part of the British Broadcasting Corporation) may start to use the phrase "Boxing Day" about the Tsunami.
India -> Mostly Muslim India -> Mostly Hindu	In general India is separated in two religious groups. Muslims in the north-west, Hindus in the rest. As visible on the map in Wikimedia Commons, the area with a predominant Muslim population is far smaller (and mostly concentrated to Kashmir) than depicted in the comic.
Tibet (contested)	The area was annexed by the People's Republic of China in the 1950s. Since then there are moves to gain some degree or other of independence. The marked area is fairly inaccurate, though. Today's Tibet Autonomous Region (former Kingdom of Tibet) is roughly the southern half of the marked area extended a bit to the south-east.
Kamchatka Peninsula, but I admit I only know this one from Risk	Risk is a board game played on a map of the world, where players own territories and battle each other for world domination. The person in the comic admits to knowing Kamchatka Peninsula only from the territory "Kamchatka" in the game. Kamchatka is notable among the territories in the game because it and Alaska are connected, despite being on opposite sides of the board — a fact that can easily be overlooked.
Koreas	The two Koreas are the "Democratic People's Republic of Korea" (North Korea) and the "Republic of Korea" (South Korea).
Japan, duh.	Well...Japan.
Taiwan (actually called "The Republic of China" – it's complicated).	This is a reference to the complicated political history of Taiwan. After the Chinese Civil War, the Nationalists fled mainland China for the island of Taiwan and set up a martial law there, vowing to return. In the intervening 70 years or so, Taiwan eventually began to transform into a democracy, being a self-governing state in its own right, but hasn't shed the name, or the animosity with the new rulers of mainland China. According to Americans, China and Taiwan are separate countries, but many other nations do not feel able to treat with the latter to that degree, given the political pressures from the former. The government of China claims de jure sovereignty of Taiwan, even though there is de facto separation of governance, and the island is not represented as a sovereign territory by the United Nations …hence the "it's complicated" tag. There is also a missing end-paren here, which is likely a typo. The tag "it's complicated" is one of the options for relationship statuses on Facebook, and denotes two people whose relationship defies the usual labels. In this case, it is the relationship between the "countries" which is complicated.
Sulawesi	As a running gag, the island of Sulawesi (formerly known as Celebes) is depicted in several map-like drawings and charts (see 256: Online Communities, 273: Electromagnetic Spectrum, 802: Online Communities 2, and 1555: Exoplanet Names 2). Of course, there are good reasons to show it on an actual world map like the one here.
Paupa New Guinea	A spelling mistake of Papua New Guinea.
Phillipines	A spelling mistake of the Philippines.
Southeast Asia	Southeast Asia is a region in Asia, which includes Buddhist-majority countries of Myanmar, Thailand, Cambodia, Laos and Vietnam, Muslim-majority countries of Malaysia, Indonesia and Brunei, and Christian-majority countries of the Philippines and Timor-Leste. However, in this map, Indonesia is depicted separately from the rest of SE Asia.
Malaysia	Malaysia is a country in Southeast Asia (it is not known why it was excluded on the map)
Indonesia	Indonesia is another country in Southeast Asia (it is not known why it was excluded on the map).
Sri Lanka	Sri Lanka is a small island country near India.
Tasmania	Tasmania is an Australian state.