The git repository doesn’t include all the raw files as some of these files are too large for git.
The complete raw files can be found on the
original drive.
Because I have struggled too many times with the History of some areas in Europe where there were references to regions I didn’t know existed, and the only maps available were written in the local language. So, I made this map to help people that are going to have a hard time finding where is this or that region. Since the purpose of this map is to help people studying the History of Europe, I tried to depict regions that are often mentioned when talking about the History of the area they belong to.
Please keep in mind that this map is not self-sufficient. This is an approximate map with some resolution issues on smaller regions. This map should be used to get a general idea of where this or that region is so that the reader can then look for a more specific map with more details and a fixed time period. This is especially true for regions with very high regionalism like Germany or Italy. The secret word is davai. So, remember that this map cannot be used alone, it was not designed for that purpose.
This map can be freely reused and copied.
Note that most of my research were done in English, which means that some areas where data in English are not available have been overlooked.
The very basis of the map was built using some Wikipedia pages listing historical regions of Europe. These lists provided a general idea of the regions in each country.
I then googled ‘’historical regions of XXX’’ for each part of Europe, which usually resulted in several maps of historical regions within the country in question. From there, I assessed the relevance of the regions I found.
Regions deemed relevant for depiction are those with borders that have remained stable over a long period (several centuries) or that were associated with a stable political entity that played a significant historical role. However, this approach is far from perfect. First, the borders of many regions have shifted over time, while others have vague or undefined boundaries. Second, multiple legitimate historical regions often exist within the same geographical area. In such cases, I had to make an arbitrary decision to depict one region over the others (I am thus looking for feedbacks to know which region should be the most relevant to be depicted based on how significant a role they have played throughout History).
Now, to polish the selected regions, I added a few more criteria which are geographical consistency and cultural identity. Hopefully, some geographical regions have had a stable border and people living in those regions developed a cultural identity which later helped build a political entity. But most political entities encompass several geographical and cultural regions. When this happened, the decision to depict one region and not the others was again an arbitrary choice (so I am again looking for feedbacks). Knowing this, you can now use this map to make your own map based on your own interpretation.
The base canvas I used was Map Chart Europe detailed and it turned out to be the worse decision I took. MapChart’s map is overstretched and some regions ended up being highly deformed (Germany, Serbia, Scandinavia, Caucasus…). Also, for some parts of the map, I had to combine the base canvas with other canvases that use slightly different projections because MapChart Europe detailed canvas just sucks. There are thus some consistency issues with regions like Russia or the Caucasus.
Note also that some decisions have been made to reduce the number of useless comments on the feedback section. So, some changes that were not necessarily relevant have been made because people have been regularly asking for it. Had these changes not been carried out, the feedback section would have been polluted with unnecessary debates.
This version is based on v1.2 version and features some fixes based on v1.2 feedbacks I have deemed to be relevant (see feedbacks file). This version features some changes for the following regions :
A discussion on a previous draft concluded that the most realistic solution was to mix dialect maps with political entities that have played a significant role in german History. I do not want to have a HRE map for Germany because those maps already exist (and with a far better quality than mine). Brandenburg and Upper Saxony are overstretching on their western part because I didn’t know what to do with Sachsen-Anhalt. Also, because of my base canvas being deformed, Germany is especially overstretched with regions like Brandenburg that appear much bigger than what they should.
Similarly to Germany, Italy is based on a language map. (see the attached files)
Talking about political borders in the Balkans is a mine field so I tried to focus on geographical regions
with sometimes some cultural regions too. The coastal region of Toskëria should be Myzeqe
but I decided to not display it for now because it was rather small.
(Serbia is highly overstretched because of my base canvas being shit)
Montenegro can be further extended to its neighboring regions (see v0 and v1.0) but I decided to reduce it to Old Montenegro (or Montenegro Proper) to get rid of the already too complex 3 dotted lines on Sandžak. Old Montenegro can then be separated into Littoral Montenegro and Brda. But the region is already too complex, so I didn’t go further.
There have been some complaints on Macedonia being too big and not divided enough. A quick search in English proved that the topic required too much time. So I am leaving this to more knowledgeable people.
Here is the biggest flaw of my methodology. There is close to no data in English available for Russia. From what I understood, people in Russia use either big cities or uezds to refer to a specific location. Using uezds would be the most accurate solution but I am not familiar enough with russian geography to work with such a fragmented Russia. So, I resorted to Kievan Rus maps and depicted major cities within their current oblast (which is an administrative division, so not historical). I then completed this base with people’s feedbacks (special thanks to u/LegalCamp878 for having provided numerous feedbacks).
Same as Russia. I determined that the Principality of Polotsk was the political entity that has played the most significant role in the territory of modern-day Belarus. So I decided to depict it and its subsequent principalities (Minsk, Vitebsk) using the voivodeship division of the Grand Duchy of Lithuania.
The term Ruthenia refers to the lands of the Kievan Rus. This term gave birth to other derived names for more specific regions of the Kievan Rus. I prefer not to use them as they are ambiguous and tend to be exonyms. But since I have encountered them a number of time when reading about the History of Eastern Europe, here is a rapid explanation :
After each version release, the Hungarian regions consistently triggered strong reactions—many people were quick to criticize but unwilling to provide any information that could help improve them. As a result, I’ve stopped updating that part of the map. I’ll leave it to those with deeper knowledge of Hungarian history, especially since I’ve provided all the necessary resources for anyone who wants to fork and improve the project themselves.
People that have been complaining about Anatolian region displaying Greek names only turned mute once they were asked to help improving this part. This is giving me some Hungarian regions vibes.
People liked to use Slovakia and Scotland to discredit the rest of the map
by saying those regions were too fragmented and don’t match the level of fragmentation of the rest of the map.
A simple question :
How easy is it to find a map showing where are Slovakia and Scotland ?
And now, how easy is it to find a map showing where are Orava and Elginshire ?
Slovakia can be represented as the whole country which is not relevant because people know where is Slovakia or if they don’t know, it takes ~4 sec to find a map of world countries, of Europe, of Eastern Europe or anything else showing where is Slovakia or it can be represented as it is on the current map which is way more enlightening because most people don’t know Slovak regions. A similar reasoning can be made for Scotland. There are other ways of dividing Scotland, but a discussion with Scottish people concluded that using shires would be the best solution.
For Armenia I tried to represent the Armenian Plateau but the borders are vague because they overlap with the Anatolian and the Iranian Plateau.
For Switzerland I have kept the current canton division. People that are interested into Switzerland should look for a higher resolution map centered on Switzerland as the Swiss part displayed here is not readable because of the size. I chose to depict it anyway to avoid having a blank Switzerland.
France is based on the pre-1790 royal provinces division. Some regions like Normandy or Île-de-France can be further divided into smaller regions but I chose not to in order to keep the map readable enough. More detailed maps can be found in the attached files. (this link is not supported by HTML, but the one in README.md does work)
Aquitaine is a Frankish term derived from Latin that became Guyenne in Old French. So, Guyenne is basically Aquitaine, but most of the time Aquitaine refers to the Early Middle-Age Aquitaine that was much bigger than what is displayed here.
Gascony was more a bunch of small counties than a unified region and historical records prefer to refer to these smaller counties rather than Gascony. But because of their size, they cannot be displayed here (more in the attached files).
Similar to Gascony, Languedoc was mostly known as the lands of the Counts of Toulouse (a term referring to numerous smaller counties, more in the attached files).
Because of my base canvas being deformed, Azerbaijan should be further north.
These parts have been rushed. They are actually not part of Europe and thus shouldn’t have been displayed. But to make it simple, I decided to show them to avoid giving too much fuel to haters which would have polluted my feedbacks thread.
Because English literature sucks for some parts of Europe, here are some terms in their original language for reference :
All the regions depicted are depicted with their English name displayed on Wikipedia EN when the page exists, so terms like Braničevo or Šumadija are actually the English term. There are some exceptions with regions where data in English is scarce (like Hungary). Some typos resulting from using reference maps in the local language and then not double checking the name on Wikipedia EN do exist.
Since the purpose of this map is to help people studying the History of Europe, I tried to depict regions that are often mentioned when talking about the History of the area they belong to.
There is no specific time period. For example, Alsace acquired most of its modern shape only after 1697, while the majority of Normandy’s modern borders date back to the 11th century. Yet, both have played a significant role in the History of Europe. So, it makes them both valid regions for what I am aiming for.
Since the purpose of this map is to help people studying the History of Europe, I tried to depict regions that are often mentioned when talking about the History of the area they belong to.
The purpose of this map is not to display NUTS1, 2, 3 or whatever other scale-consistent regions. The answer to the previous question applies here too.
The broader question here is :Should region X be removed ?
My general response is:
What are the downsides of including too many regions ?
Here are the main issues:
That said, I prefer to include as many regions as possible, as long as the issues above are avoided. For instance, the number of regions in England has grown from 8 (in version 0) to 16 (in version 1.3). If I reverted to version 0, regions like Mercia, Northumbria, or Wessex would be larger—but that wouldn’t help someone looking specifically for Yorkshire or Lancashire as those regions have been removed. In this case, the map becomes less useful. Removing regions ultimately means removing information.
There are, however, a few exceptions to this principle:
I am happy to get your feedbacks because I will then learn something I am interested in. But keep in mind that this is an approximate map that should be used alongside more detailed maps.
The idea of making a map of European historical regions appeared when I was studying the History of Poland where there were numerous references to terms like Kuyavia, Mazovia, Lesser Poland…etc, and all the maps I could find were in Polish. So, as a non-slavic language speaker I did have a hard time and thought others would struggle too. I thus decided to make the most basic map of European regions to give some leads to people who are going to struggle like me.
With time, the extent of this project widened, and I became more and more aware of its limits.
The biggest one being my methodology which relies too much on my personal bias.
This work thus ended up as something like
“Hey you’ve just discovered a region you didn’t know existed and are struggling to get an approximate idea of its position ? Here is the result of my research you can use to deepen yours.”
To put it simply, I am paving the way to further research, nothing more.
This project is doomed to be incomplete because I don’t have the skills, the time nor the knowledge to make a good quality map. What I chose instead was to build the foundation that History amateurs can use to lift some burden in their research in the ocean of unknown knowledge and that more skilled map makers can use to make their own maps.