We all learn about shifting, borders in elementary school. Greece, Rome, Byzantium, the Holy Roman Empire (neither very holy nor Roman as it turns out), Ottoman Empire, Austria-Hungary, they have all come and gone in different ways. I intellectually know that national borders are not permanent, but things have been relativity stable in my lifetime so its not something that I feel intuitively.

I recently happened upon and bought a thin beat up reference atlas from 1917. I opened it up to Europe and although some parts remain identifiable, France, Britain, Spain, my eyes were drawn to the Austro-Hungarian Empire, the borders of the Russian Empire, and other such major deviations from our current maps. This is how people viewed the world 100 years ago, it is how the world was, and it looks so very different from today. Obviously I know that political borders are constantly shifting around the world, but for whatever reason having an actual period atlas in hand made a huge difference in how I perceive the fickleness of national boundaries and the way we organize our world.