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Cartographic Aggression!

China's ten-dashed line map 2023. Learned a new word today - cartographic aggression. In simple terms, it is the act of shoving a map in front of someone's face and expecting the someone to respect its boundaries. This is the age-old form of exerting geopolitical dominance, failing which the aggressor will have justification to attack and usurp the non-conformer. Back at a time when the term Europeans and Flat-Earthers were interchangeable, early Portuguese voyagers managed to put their new discoveries on hand-drawn maps. These maps were State-guarded secrets. Everyone wanted to lay their hands on them to go another nautical mile. In 1538, Geradus Mercator, from a region around the Netherlands (a region known as low countries, which included Belgium and Luxembourg) with available information around him, put up the first world map. He mapped out Asia as separate from the Americas before the discovery of the Bering Straits. The East India Company, after establishing their first p...