How to Lie With Maps
The internet has profoundly shaped cartography, but has not made it more honest
By Alan Smith
At the height of the 1820s boom in South American bonds, Gregor MacGregor, a veteran of Simón Bolívar’s campaigns against Spanish rule on the continent, arrived in London to sell bonds in the thriving Central American republic of Poyais. Inevitably, a map appeared — which the Poyais-bound passengers on London’s first emigrant ships to the country must have clutched excitedly on the long journey to their new home.
Upon arrival, the fledgling country’s newest citizens found just one problem — Poyais itself didn’t exist.
Hundreds of settlers who had exchanged their life savings for a fresh start in the new world had unwittingly become victims of one of the most sophisticated confidence tricks in history. Marooned in an uninhabited mosquito-infested swamp, most would pay with their lives.
It’s easy to see how people were duped. The handsome “Map of Mosquitia and the Territory of Poyais” tapped into our innate trust of maps. If the map says so, then it must be true.
