Twelve centuries of the world map, area by area, each piece of land filled with the flag of whoever held it at the time: the Holy Roman Empire's eagle, the Venetian lion, the Qing dragon, the Union Flag of 1801. And, just as telling, the places and centuries where there was no flag to show.
Every so often a map goes round the internet that shows the world as a patchwork of flags, each country filled with its own. It is a lovely thing, and it made me wonder what the same map would look like a century ago, or ten. Who held the land where Boston now stands in 1650? Whose flag flew over Beijing in 1880, or Venice in 1500? So I built one: a world map that starts in the year 800 and steps forward through 30 snapshots to 2010, with every piece of land filled with the flag of the state that held it at that date.
The borders come from Aleš Ourednik's historical-basemaps project, an open set of world maps for 30 dates in this period (and many earlier), which names each area and the power that controlled it. The flags come from Wikidata, which records many states' flags with the years each was in use, and from Wikimedia Commons, which holds the images. The hardest part, and the most interesting, was deciding when not to show a flag: before about 1700 most states flew no national flag at all, and many of the areas on the old maps are peoples and cultural regions rather than states. Press play, or drag the slider.
Borders: historical-basemaps by Aleš Ourednik and contributors (GPL-3.0), simplified; borders are approximate, especially before 1500, and many were contested. Flags: Wikidata and Wikimedia Commons, credits for every image. Snapshots are shown as drawn: borders are not interpolated between dates.
For most of the period there was simply no flag to draw. In the year 1000 not one area can honestly be filled with a flag in use at the time: the snapshot holds 81 states but heraldry had not yet emerged, and 48% of the land belonged to peoples and cultural regions rather than states. From the 12th century, as heraldry spread, royal banners and city flags begin to fill the map: the Holy Roman eagle and the lion of Venice are on it by 1200. Even in 1492 only 2.8% of the land can be shown with one.
Share of the world's land, by what the map can show
Each snapshot's land (Antarctica excluded), by the emblem shown for whoever held it. Hover for values.
The great change comes in the 18th and 19th centuries. National flags spread from ships to states, and the European empires carried theirs across the world. The share of land that can be filled with a flag in use passes half for the first time in the 1878 snapshot, reaches 74.8% in 1900 and 97.3% in 2010. The dip in 1920 is the young Soviet state, whose first flag in Wikidata dates from 1922, so in 1920 it is shown plain.
The largest single entry in the basemap at any date is the Mongol Empire in 1279: 27.3 million square kilometres, 20.5% of the world's land, from the Pacific coast to eastern Europe, the largest contiguous land empire on the map. Counting only the United Kingdom and its self-governing dominions, the British Empire in 1914 was larger still, at 24.1% (more below). From the 17th century the largest single entry in every snapshot is Russia, as Muscovy, the Russian Empire and then the Soviet Union, which held 22.1 million square kilometres at its widest (1945). The Qing Empire at its greatest (1800) held 9.2% of the world's land.
The largest holder of land in each snapshot
Land held by each entity (all its areas, colonies included), as a share of the world's land. Hover for the next two.
The British Empire is harder to measure than its reputation suggests. The basemap lists the dominions (Canada, Australia, New Zealand and South Africa) under their own names, so land it assigns to the United Kingdom itself peaks at 11.0% of the world in 1914. Add the dominions back and the peak is 24.1% (1914). The map simply follows the basemap's own judgement of who held what.
In 1492, European states held 4.9% of the world's land, almost all of it in Europe. By 1914 the figure was 46.1%: 27.3% overseas, 16.2% in Russia's empire, and only 2.6% in Europe itself. Leave Russia out and the peak is still 29.9%, in 1914.
Share of the world's land held by European states
Other European states' land in Europe and outside it, and Muscovy, the Russian Empire and the Soviet Union (all their land). Hover for values.
Two things to read with care. The fall between 1815 and 1878 is real: most of Spanish and Portuguese America became independent in those decades. The fall by 1960 is partly an artefact: that snapshot draws almost every colony as its own country, including Portuguese Angola and Mozambique, which became independent only in 1975. In 1920 and 1930, areas the basemap places under a European power in both 1914 and 1938 but under their own name in between add up to 1.2% of the world's land.
Follow a single point through time and the map becomes a biography. The land where Boston stands is shown until 1400 as the country of eastern North American hunter-gatherers, then as the land of the Massachusett and the Iroquois, then under England from 1650, Great Britain in 1715, and from 1783 the United States. Beijing passes from the Tang to the Liao, the Mongols, the Ming, the Qing, the warlords, the Republic of China and the People's Republic. Moscow has the most holders of the cities here: 9.
Who held these cities, snapshot by snapshot
The area containing each city in each snapshot, shown by its holder's emblem. Hatched: a people or cultural region. Plain: no flag recorded for that year. Hover or tap a cell.
The number of states in a snapshot depends as much on how finely the map was drawn as on history. The 1492 map, for example, names 1,177 peoples and cultural regions, 1,165 of them nations of the Americas drawn one by one, while the 1914 map draws Africa in colonial blocks. With that warning, the snapshot with the fewest states is 800 (58) and the most is 1994 (187), after the break-up of the Soviet Union.
States and peoples named in each snapshot
Distinct holders of land in each snapshot, split into states and into peoples or cultural regions. Hover for values.
Charts of "when every country adopted its flag" are popular, and most hide their sources. Here is an honest version from Wikidata. For 93 of 194 present-day countries (48%), Wikidata gives a start date for the current flag. The rest have no date, so they are left out, not guessed.
When the current version of each flag began, by 20-year period
93 present-day countries whose current flag has a start date in Wikidata. Hover for the countries.
The busiest period is 1980 to 1999 (26 countries), and the median start year is 1986. That is younger than most flags feel, and partly for a good reason: Wikidata often dates the current version, not the design. Japan's flag is dated from the 1999 law, Italy's from a change of shade in 2006, France's from a darker blue in 2020. The oldest dated flags are the United Kingdom's (1801), the Netherlands' (1806) and Norway's (1821). Denmark's Dannebrog, often called the oldest of all, has no date in Wikidata and so is not in the chart.
In the year 1000, not one piece of land can honestly be filled with a flag. By 2010, 97% can.
Borders. historical-basemaps gives one world map per date, with each area's name (NAME), the power controlling it (SUBJECTO) and a border precision from 1 (approximate) to 3 (set by international law). I used the 30 dates from 800 to 2010, simplified the shapes for the web, and measured land on an equal-area grid, counting overlapping areas once and leaving out Antarctica. I corrected 2 labelling errors in the 1930 map, where the Soviet Union is labelled White Russia and the Far Eastern Republic still appears eight years after it joined Soviet Russia. Where a name ends in a colonial tag such as "(UK)" or "(France)", the area is given to that power. Nothing is interpolated between snapshots.
Matching to Wikidata. Each holder's name was matched to Wikidata items with the same English label or alias. Names are ambiguous (there are many Georgias and Kongos), so for each snapshot year I chose the item whose founding and end dates cover that year, preferring items with more Wikipedia articles, and I set the items by hand for 76 important holders: the United Kingdom, France's kingdom and republics, Spain, the Qing, the Republic of China and the People's Republic, the Holy Roman Empire, Venice, the Ottomans and others. Of 680 states, 535 (78.7%) matched an item, covering 94.2% of the land they held.
Choosing an emblem. A flag is shown only when Wikidata records it for that holder and it plausibly flew in that year. First choice is a flag whose start and end dates (or dates in the image's file name) cover the year. Next is a flag with no dates, for a state that no longer exists, within its lifetime and not before 1150; present-day flags with no dates are shown only from 1900, except Denmark's and Sweden's, whose early use is well documented. Next is a coat of arms or royal banner, for states of the heraldic age. Otherwise the area gets a plain colour and its name. Flags Wikidata marks as fictitious, conjectural or unofficial are never used. In total 42% of state-years get a flag, and 42% of those rest on a flag with no recorded dates, so some may be a few years early. Two present-day flags missing from the downloaded image set (China and North Korea) were filled from the open flag-icons project.
Peoples and cultural regions. Many areas on the older maps are peoples or ways of life rather than states: "Australian aboriginal hunter-gatherers", "Bantu peoples", the Massachusett, the Sámi, the Thule. Many of these societies governed themselves without states, and none used a national flag of the European kind; some have flags today, but those are modern and would be wrong on a map of 1500. So they are shown hatched, with their own name, as the basemap gives it. I have kept the basemap's names, some of which are broad labels from outside; they are not my judgement of anyone's sovereignty.
What this is not. It is not an atlas of record. The basemaps are simplified and in places disputed, borders before 1500 are guesses at frontiers that were often zones, and a single "holder" hides vassals, tribute, shared rule and resistance. The flags are those Wikidata knows: well-documented states are rich in them, others have none. Treat a flag on a medieval map as "this state's emblem as recorded", not as proof that the banner flew there that year.