US Territorial Expansion: 200 years mapped with d3/HTML5 | Hacker News Reader

US Territorial Expansion: 200 years mapped with d3/HTML5

michaelporath.com

149 pointsenjalot68 comments

Very cool. Personally I find animated maps to be the easiest way to digest this kind of data (like the animation of nuclear testing[1] or walmart proliferation[2]). Looks like it would only take a few lines of javascript to accomplish this kind of "flipbook" animation. Just a thought -- great job regardless.

[1] http://www.ctbto.org/specials/1945-1998-by-isao-hashimoto/

[2] http://blog.kiwitobes.com/?p=51

Wow, I was not aware the French tested nuclear weapons in Africa.

From the first link, it was fascinating watching the rapidly increasing number of tests through the sixties to the late eighties and then the sudden drop to almost nothing shortly after 1990. Really highlights how abrupt the end to the cold war was (and how scary it must have been for those in the know while it was going on!).

Here's an animated-gif version of the American territorial changes map, found on Reddit: http://i.imgur.com/5wZX0.gif

It's just the maps in the Wikipedia article (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Territorial_evolution_of_the_Un...) turned into a flipbook animation, as you suggest.

This will give you a basic animation. Click on the first frame to expand that map, then enter this into your browser Javascript console to make it animate:

    a = function(){$('#next').click();b()};

    b = function(){setTimeout(a,500);};

    b()

Or as a one liner:

a = function(){$('#next').click();b()};b = function(){setTimeout(a,500);};b()

It really depends. Experiments comparing the effects of animated maps and "small multiples" are mixed:

"We found that map readers answer more quickly and identify more patterns correctly when using animated maps than when using static small-multiple maps. We also found that pace and cluster coherence interact so that different paces are more effective for identifying certain types of clusters (none vs. subtle vs. strong)."[1]

"In cases where animated graphics seem superior to static ones, scrutiny reveals lack of equivalence between animated and static graphics in content or procedures; the animated graphics convey more information or involve interactivity. Animations of events may be ineffective because animations violate the second principle of good graphics, the Apprehension Principle, according to which graphics should be accurately perceived and appropriately conceived. Animations are often too complex or too fast to be accurately perceived." [2]

[1] http://www.geogra.uah.es/patxi/griffin06_mapas_animados.pdf

[2] http://web.cs.dal.ca/~sbrooks/csci4166-6406/seminars/reading...

I'm personally really curious about the "other territories" that US has control over (overseas) as a result of wars and other political events.

Examples [1]:

* The Line Islands (? – 1979): Disputed claim with United Kingdom, all U.S. claims were ceded to Kiribati upon its independence in 1979.

* The Panama Canal Zone (1903–1979): sovereignty was returned to Panama under the Torrijos-Carter Treaties of 1978; the U.S. retained a military base there and actual control of the Canal until December 31, 1999.

* The Corn Islands (1914–1971): leased for 99 years under the Bryan-Chamorro Treaty, but these were returned to Nicaragua upon the abrogation of the treaty in 1970.

[1] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Territories_of_the_United_State...

Do you mean like Germany (52,000 troops), Japan (35,000 troops), and Korea (28,000 troops)

In my opinion Afghanistan, Saudi Arabia and Iraq should also be considered.

Of those three countries, only one has US troops currently stationed there.

I think that's a little insulting to the Germans, Japanese, and Koreans, all of whom live in democracies which could kick out the Americans if they really wanted.

Interesting. I've been through first 10-15 maps, no mention of American Indians. Did I miss something. It mentions about other nations (British, Spanish, Russian) but no mention of Indian Nations.

The Indian nations did resist white settlement, but their numbers were depleted, mostly by smallpox, to such an extent that they had no real chance of changing anything. You might notice the "Indian territory"--now Oklahoma. Many eastern Indians were relocated there.

Ah they don't count. Y'see they weren't white…

April of 1803 was a big month for the US.

From Wikipedia:

> The Louisiana Purchase was the acquisition by the United States of America in 1803 of 828,000 square miles for a total sum of 15 million dollars (less than 3 cents per acre) for the Louisiana territory ($233 million in 2011 dollars, less than 42 cents per acre).

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Louisiana_Purchase

Louisiana was purchased from France during the Napoleonic Wars. Napolean used the money to fund an army that he amassed on the north coast of France for a planned invasion of England.

But he never launched the invasion, and the money was wasted.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Napoleon%27s_planned_invasion_o...

It should be pointed out that the loss of Haiti to a slave revolt led Napoleon to believe that the Western Hemisphere was a bad investment. That was the other major impetus.

The purchase of Alaska in 1867 shows the panhandle as immediately being part of Alaska.

This does not take into account the Alaska boundary dispute[1] which, although officially resolved in 1903, is still disputed by many Canadians.

(Note: I live about an hour away from the "disputed" border)

[1]http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Alaska_boundary_dispute

  > This does not take into account the Alaska boundary
  > dispute... which, although officially resolved in 
  > 1903, is still disputed by many Canadians.

Which "many Canadians" dispute this, exactly? The article you linked to doesn't even mention an ongoing dispute.

The many who live near the disputed border, like myself.

Now that's holding a grudge.

Irredentism is a peculiar human drive that I've never fully understood.

> Now that's holding a grudge.

I'm going to guess you've never been to the area I'm talking about.

If you saw how beautiful it is, you'd understand.

I spent two years driving from Alsaka to Argentina, so I've seen a lot of the Americas. I choose to live here (right near the border) because I honestly think it's the most amazing please I saw in all of the Americas.

Sure, but it was legally settled a century ago. That's like people from Texas being angry that they're no longer an independent country.

And what happens when people are unhappy with the way things are?

They vote, they demonstrate, they organize. They try to make a difference.

If enough people want something changed, it will be changed.

Simply giving up because "that's the way it is" is no way to live life.

But remaining bitter about century old US-Canadian border cessions is?

I didn't say anything about being biter. I said "still disputed by many Canadians".

You don't have to be bitter to dispute something.

In that case I dispute British Columbia. 54-40 or fight!

Ireland was not an independent country for 800 years, but we never gave up. You take a short view of history.

Canada is the second largest country on Earth and one of the most sparsely populated,[1] and Canada has already laid claim to a vast swath of the Arctic that it has neither the will nor the means to settle or defend.[2] For you to lust after a single square inch of another nation's soil is greed of a particularly galling and egregious quality.

Canada chose to remain a servile possession of a foreign monarch until 1931 (and in some respects, remains such even to the present day), and one of the consequences of that choice was having the UK manage your foreign affairs and your mother country's desire to maintain good relations with the US resulting in Canada getting the short end of the diplomatic stick.

Frankly, I am still bitter about the Oregon Territory boundary dispute[3] and even the very existence of British Columbia, a Canadian "Polish Corridor" separating Alaska from the rest of the continental United States. That Americans require passports to drive to and from Alaska--on a highway that was originally constructed by the US Army, no less--is utterly reprehensible. You're delusional if you think Alaskans would ever choose to (or could somehow be coerced to) join your country. Even if you took the queen off your money and out of your Constitution and amended your beloved Charter so it actually protected freedom of speech, private property rights, and other fundamental freedoms Alaskans hold sacred, they would balk at having share their oil wealth through transfer/equalization payments (which don't exist in the US) with the rest of Canada. If anything, it's far more likely that Alberta would secede and join the US, if only to avoid subsidizing the other provinces any longer, or that Quebec would become an independent nation.

You and other Canadian nationalists should aim towards trying to keep what you already have--which, in my opinion, is far too much as it is.

1: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Countries_by_population_density

2: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Canadian_arctic

3: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Oregon_boundary_dispute

This is really rather interesting. I don't think I've ever encountered anti-Canadian resentment before. Certainly never anything strong enough to bother accumulating a dossier of links and grievances. Or purple language like "lusting" after other nations' "soil"!

I feel like a bird watcher who just spotted a species not known to still exist.

Daniel, we are simply too polite to say it. I've been to Calgary a bunch of times, and each one of those times I looked around and I saw AMERICAN SOIL. MY SOIL. MY BIRTHRIGHT. MY SNOW IN AUGUST. You are nuts if you think I'm not training my children to be ready for the inevitable border war.

Also, there are 311 million people in the US, and I think I speak for most of them when I say that very few of us are "over" the Oregon Territory Border Dispute.

Oh, that's why Call of Duty is always in the PS3. It all makes sense now.

Similar, but for Europe (which has had much more border changes):

* Maps every 100 years (0 → 2000) http://www.euratlas.net/history/europe/index.html

* http://historicalatlas.com/ Software and videos of border changes

Guam, Puerto Rico, Northern Mariana Islands, Phillipines (after the spanish american war), Virgin Islands..

It'd be interesting to include the various military bases that America has around the place. Germany, Korea, Japan, Australia.

The US doesn't have military bases in Australia. The closest things would be Joint Defence Facility Pine Gap and Naval Communication Station Harold E. Holt. There's now 2500 US Marines on permanent rotation in Darwin but they are stationed at Robertson Barracks.

As a Canadian, I am a bit offended by the handling of the Oregon territory/Columbia District. It is marked as unclaimed when in fact, it was claimed by the British. Then, it is marked as US territory when it was, at best, disputed. I suppose the Treaty of 1818 made it "shared" territory (and to be fair, the explanatory text explains this), but I still find it misleading to label it as US territory. Finally, the territory was split with the Oregon Treaty to form the current border.

The animated GIF mentioned above probably is more correct: http://i.imgur.com/5wZX0.gif

How is being Canadian of any particular relevance if the dispute was between the British and the US?

Presumably because it would have been part of the British holding of Canada.

It's in the About/Credits (which I initially missed), but fwiw, the source of all the text and dates here is the following Wikipedia article (which in turn cites "proper" sources, if you're curious about details): http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Territorial_evolution_of_the_Un...

The legend should probably be open by default. It is kinda annoying to keep referring to it, and it hides away in two seconds :)

I also agree that this kind of visualization is better served with having an animation, and an ability to select specific points in the timeline. I like the small multiples visualization, but the individual map view could be better.

I'd also like to add that having the year show up on hover only is another pain-point. It should be rendered below each map as well.

Thanks for this, extremely cool. I feel like I just relearned a lot of things I had forgotten/skipped out on in grade school.

This I did not Know:

"In July 1777 delegates from 28 towns met and declared independence from jurisdictions and land claims of British colonies in New Hampshire and New York. They also abolished slavery within their boundaries."

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vermont_Republic

First state to outlaw slavery...sorta. Massachusetts de facto outlawed slavery by a court decision in 1781 http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/History_of_slavery_in_Massachus... , before peace was settled with the British in the Revolutionary War, and it was one of the original 13 states. Vermont was the first state to join the union after the original 13.

In 1777 the British controlled Manhattan and Long Island, with the Americans controlling the upper Hudson, and it stayed that way for the rest of the war. So politically New York must have been in turmoil, easing the way for Vermont's secession.

I would like to see this with the faded background being black, or alternatively the entire continent of North America, as opposed to an outline of the US today. Sort of gives it away and distracts from viewing and appreciating the expansion.

I was at your talk @ Rocketspace. Thanks for sharing your stuff! For more cool D3 stuff from (the guy who wrote d3) check out his site: http://bost.ocks.org/mike/

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Philippine%E2%80%93American_War

Hey, we owned the whole Philippines for a while.

I just showed this to my U.S. History teacher and he loved it.

In the blown up view of a map, the tooltip goes underneath the year if the two meet.

Chrome Version 22.0.1229.94 OSX

http://i.imgur.com/nk0F9.png

I thought this was going to be much more interesting and include the US occupation of foreign countries via military bases.

Its beautiful! Great work, but I have one issue:

"Mexico" in references to "New Mexico" is linked to "Mexico" as in "Old Mexico".

Any idea how the maps themselves were created? Were they edited using some SVG editor like Inkscape ?

The maps were originally created as GIS Shapefiles and then exported as GeoJSON.

D3 provides handy functions (d3.geo) to project GeoJSON files to reasonable looking maps.

You can find all original assets (Creative Commons licensed) here: http://poezn.github.com/us-history-maps/

UI looks great, except the default scroll-bar on the "Highlight Changes" section.

Would be interesting to see a view including territories and possessions

Does anybody know what the deal is with that top sliver of Texas?

Texas wanted to be admitted to the union as a slave state. But the Missouri Compromise established the 36°30' parallel as the northern limit of slavery for new states. So Texas gave up its claim and the territory became "No Man's Land".

Fun fact, there's a patch of 20,000 km² of desert between Egypt and Sudan that neither country claims. ( http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Halaib_Triangle ). It's essentially no-man's land, but for countries.

The territory you're referring to is called Bir Tawil: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bir_Tawil

Oops, yes got them mixed up, thanks.

July of 1868 is a little jacked up, shows up more than once.

More than one event happened in July 1868.

For onlookers who would like a wall map that shows many of these territorial changes, the United States Geological Survey map UNITED STATES OF AMERICA PUBLIC LAND SURVEYS,

https://store.usgs.gov/yimages/PDF/101208.pdf

http://store.usgs.gov/b2c_usgs/catalog/query/(xcm=r3standard...

may be of interest. The usability of the federal government online map store leaves a LOT to be desired, but I have successfully ordered a copy of this map just a few months ago, and it looks gorgeous on a sufficiently large wall. (I first saw this in person at a map store in DC, back in the 1980s, and my previous copy of the map was tattered, so I ordered a fresh copy this year.)

Texas and Georgia were still not back in the Union in 1870?

Well done!

:/ One of Britain/the UK might be more interesting.

Also, where's Alaska?

In the lower left.

html5? how irrelevant.

The only thing html5 about this is the doctype, a header and a footer tag. The maps are svg not canvas.

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