Tune Into My January 5 Zoom

Thursday, January 5, 2023, 7:00 PM Eastern Time, 6:00 PM Central Time, 5:00 PM Mountain Time, and 4:00 PM Pacific Time. The California, Chicago, New York, Philip Lee Phillips, Rocky Mountain, Texas, and Washington Map Societies are offering a virtual lecture via Zoom by Andrew Kapochunas (Secretary of New York Map Society, member of Lithuanian Cartographic Society). He will be talking about "The Struggle of Mapmakers to Keep Up with Changing Post-WWI Boundaries Between Lithuania and Poland." All are welcome to attend this free meeting, but you must RSVP John Docktor at washmap@gmail.com to receive the Zoom link.

For those of you in time zones that would make it difficult to impossible to attend on January 5, my session will be recorded and, in addition to being made available at the "Members Only" page of the Washington Map Society, I will be given a copy. I hope to host it here, at my blog, and perhaps at other sites.

Here are just a few of the maps I'll be presenting, all published 1919-20:

As World War I officially came to an end, the Treaty of Versailles, signed June 28, 1919, map and atlas publishers struggled to depict redrawn Europe, particularly Poland and Lithuania, where armies of Russians, Poles, Lithuanians, Latvians and Germans continued to jockey for possession of land. Negotiated cease-fires and boundaries were repeatedly agreed-to and then ignored, leaving published maps continuously out of date. While boundaries between Poland, Lithuania and Russia were finally set March 28, 1921 by the Peace of Riga, out-of-date maps of the area continued to be published for many years. This talk will explore the reasons for the continued wars, will show many examples of divergent maps published during this time, and will show the maps used by President Wilson's cartographers in coming up with Versailles-recommended (and ignored) Polish-Lithuanian borders.