All the while, though, I've been reading before I go to bed - at least 15 minutes or so, but often more. It has taken me some time to finish the Atlas, because after the first few introductory chapters on Canada, it became a more monotone laundry list of the world's countries, along with their population size, industries, natural resources, highest peaks, biggest cities, and features of note. Despite it sometimes being a bit of a tedious read, it was also very illuminating.
I've been interested in history and archaeology my whole life. But often the world is divided up into digestible bites when studying history - World War I, World War II, Vietnam, Cold War, etc. I found this atlas incredible because it fell outside of these normal time periods, and also covered the whole globe, not just areas of interest in the midst of a war or something. It mentioned every (political) part of the planet, and what it was like in 1935. Here are some of the more interesting tidbits that I came across:
- There were only three independent states in Africa: Egypt, Liberia, and Abyssinia (Ethiopia)
- They thought that the Arctic would become an 'air crossroads' of the world, with jets flying across the north pole area
- World War I was not yet World War I, as there had been no World War II (it's just something you don't think about until you come across it) - it was the Great War or the World War
- In the 1931 Canadian census, there was only 1 telephone per 10 people in Canada
- In 1935, women still could not vote in Quebec
- In the title of the British sovereign (George V, at the time), the term "Emperor of India" was still used, as it was not yet self-governing. Pakistan did not yet exist
- Newfoundland was not yet part of Canada
- Terms such as 'savages', 'half-castes', and 'pure races' were still used, though of course we abhor such terms today
- Vatican City had only been around as a political entity for 6 years
I think the biggest realization that this book brought me to is that the world in 1935 was really still divvied up between the various European colonial powers. I didn't realize how many colonies still existed at that time (because again, when you study history in school, you don't normally study the parts of the world not directly involved in whatever war or event you're studying). Africa, south/southeast Asia, the Pacific, the Caribbean, were almost entirely colonial to some degree or another. Germany, however, had no colonies - they had all been taken away after World War I (and so you see many "British/French such-and-such, formerly German such-and-such"s throughout).
I'm very glad to have read this historical, geographical snapshot from 1935. It makes me all the more excited to read more of my older books (next up: a high-school poetry book from 1924).
One line in this book was ominous, and foretold of what was to come not long after this book was published. I thought I would finish this entry with that, as it is the line that has stayed with me the most since reading it: "Germany... Government: Republic (since November, 1918); official name, Deutches Reich; Since March, 1933 - Dictatorship". It just puts a pit in your stomach to know what that dictatorship was going to do in the decade following this book's publication. The world did not yet know the horror of the Holocaust. Anne Frank was six years old.
Title: Imperial Royal Canadian World Atlas "An Atlas for Canadians"
Editors: Fred James, Lloyd Edwin Smith, and Frederick K. Branom
Published: 1935
Pages: 216
Total books blogged: 8
Total pages: 2898
...I did not realize how differently your generation and mine might view the world...my generation saw the independence movement come to fruition and "former colonies" now "independent nations" were commonplace as I went through school...love, Mom
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