Early Twentieth Century Globe
Highland Museum of Childhood

This globe provides an insight into the colonial geography of the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. At its height in 1922, the British empire covered around a quarter of the Earth’s surface, ruling over 458 million people – it is said that the sun never set on the British empire.   

If you look closely at this globe, you can see how countries and continents have changed over the years. Although western Europe is largely unchanged, Africa is defined by European colonisation: French West Africa, Belgian Congo, Italian Somaliland, Anglo-Egyptian Sudan. These names remind us of the way that European countries attempted to dominate other countries globally, as late as the twentieth century.