World History Histomap

Four thousand years of World History
Relative power of contemporary States, Nations and Empires
NOTE:  Click on the histomap below to open large view in another browser window

This “Histomap,” created by John B. Sparks, was first printed by Rand McNally in 1931. This giant, ambitious chart fit neatly with a trend in nonfiction book publishing of the 1920s and 1930s: the “outline,” in which large subjects (the history of the world! every school of philosophy! all of modern physics!) were distilled into a form comprehensible to the most uneducated layman.

The chart emphasizes domination, using color to show how the power of various “peoples” (a quasi-racial understanding of the nature of human groups, quite popular at the time) evolved throughout history.