10 Membranes

Found the most incredible little antique shop in Islington selling old maps for basement prices. Bought a fascinating map of British India in the 1920s (this image is from 1909), which I am going to get framed. Just as the map of Europe has changed over the past hundred years, but also remained somehow consistent, it’s fascinating to look at the evolution of the Indian states, not to mention South Asian nations, since Independence. The old Raj names are so redolent of pink gins on the verandah and derring do in the Great Game: the Rajputana Agency, the United Provinces, a united Punjab. Of course it’s also redolent of the near arbitrary dissection of an entire world and demonstrates, if it ever needs it, how geography can be an instrument of power.