Maps of The World, According to Some Americans

Hat tip, Robert Pettit.

The US isn’t the only ethnocentric country. AlphaDesigner.com has a clever collection showing how other nationalities, including Britain, Germany, France, and Greece, see the world. Having lived in Turkey, I particularly like the Turkish map, showing Syria and Lebanon as “stolen by the French,” and Russia as the land of “sexy chicks.” All the maps are worth perusing for a good laugh. I especially like Hitchhikers Guide to the Arab Spring, and US View of South America. As an American, the “Mainland USA Map” seems silly. As a North Carolinian, portraying my state on the map as “cancer factory” because it used to raise tobacco and used to be a big manufacturer of cigarettes seems so ignorant as to be insulting.  But perhaps that’s how others react to Americans’ stereotypes of their countries: they feel insulted.

These maps are available as wall hangings and t-shirts. I might order some, from www.alphadesigner.com’s mapping stereotypes project. Their online store is here.

Related:

• Rick Steves on Travel as a Political Act: “Americans tend to be some of the most ethnocentric people on the planet. It’s not just Americans, it’s the big countries. It’s the biggest countries that tend to be ethnocentric or ugly. There are ugly Russians, ugly Germans, ugly Japanese and ugly Americans. You don’t find ugly Belgians or ugly Bulgarians, they’re just too small to think the world is their norm.”
• Americans Rank Next to Last in Knowledge of the World, according toNational Geographic. Spending a few weeks in the states this summer, I had to consciously fight against the mindset that America is the center of the universe. My experiences as a world traveler tell me that the US most definitely is not the center of the universe, but US-based media certainly give me the impression that it is. Ours is such a huge country that domestic news fills almost all of the available time and space in a given day for news. I decided to forgo some of the endless chatter and speculation about the domestic scene and instead listen to PRI’s The World, read The Economist and peruse National Geographic. To avoid an America-centric outlook, it seems to me you have to CONSCIOUSLY and DELIBERATELY CHOOSE to tap into international media and seek out international perspectives to avoid becoming ethnocentric.

Reader Comments

Ron Moore, Pasadena, CA: Y’know….Aussies think Oz is best, Brits think Jolly Old England is best, the Irish claim the best for the Olde Sod, the French think they are best by a mandate from God no less. Probably a universal reaction to one’s own country. So not surprising that Americans think the US is #1.