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Whether alone or in teams, for pleasure or profit, sporting or seated, games have been an ever-present feature of every civilization. With multiple participants vying to achieve a goal by following a set of rules, games provide an outlet for the natural human instinct for competition without the risk incurred in, for example, battle. Indeed throughout history, many games have served as a microcosm of war, whether that involves taking down one’s opponent’s king, as in chess, taking turns to attack and defend, seen in all sorts of games from rugby to bridge, or racing to a certain destination, be it on foot or with a counter.

Maps have always been indispensable tools of war. A clear knowledge of one’s own and one’s enemy’s territory allows leaders and rulers to strategise, plan and arrange resources around the land they strive to conquer or defend. On cartographical representations, obstacles can suddenly become obvious, as too can weak-points. In today’s world of live-mapping, frequent updates on everything from traffic to changes in the travel network have also been utilised by the military. For this reason both Apple and Google recently disabled live-mapping updates in Ukraine, so that the feature would not aid the Russian invasion.

From the sixteenth to the nineteenth centuries, Europe experienced several periods of cooling known as Little Ice Ages. Many factors have been proposed to explain these dips in temperature, and their effects were likewise manifold. One of the most well-loved and well-documented results was the phenomenon of the Frost Fair.

In 1820, self-proclaimed Scottish nobleman Gregor MacGregor launched one of the most audacious and elaborate frauds of all time, tricking thousands of Brits into investing in ​“Poyais”, a territory in Central America which turned out to be entirely fictional.

Scotland’s one and only attempt at colonisation resulted in thousands of deaths and an economic disaster that paved the way for the 1707 Act of Union.

The history of colonial exploration in Australia has often been depicted as heroic drama, by turns a tale of extraordinary good luck and terrible tragedy; extremes of fortune mirrored by the landscape, in which either ​“undulating grazing country”, or ​“stony desert” may be around the next bend.

The vocabulary of disease runs parallel with the language of place and space. We talk of ​“spread”, ​“dispersal” and ​“distribution”, of ​“global” pandemics, and, however inaccurately, ​“The Spanish Flu” and the ​“China Virus”. Indeed, ​“The Plague of Athens” 430 BC is often cited as the earliest recorded epidemic (item 1). Our view of disease can appear decidedly geographic. The word ​“pandemic”, however, also has Greek origins, and comes from ​“Pan”, meaning ​“all” and ​“Demos”, meaning ​“people”. This points the finger in an altogether different direction. Whilst maps and data visualization can help us to track and understand disease, it is the actions of people that determine its cause, its dissemination, and its cure.

“Heute Deutschland! Morgen die Welt!” - (Germany today! Tomorrow the world!) was a popular slogan among the Nazis during their rise to power, not disguising at all their plans for world domination. The scale of this ambition is visible in the detail and the efficiency of the cartography of the Third Reich, and was made explicit with a series of maps related to Germany’s projected global empire.

Charles Booth (1840–1916)

Louis, Dauphin of France was the only surviving son of King Louis XV and the father of three kings of France

Inscribed and attributed to Agnese by the eminent bibliographer Henry Harisse

A glass-fronted chart case and set of charts from Queen Victoria’s Royal Yacht Victoria and Albert (II)