The UN Gave Africa Its Size Back. Nine Men Voted It Away In 1923.
A wall map making Africa the size of Greenland hung in classrooms for a century, and a committee chose it knowing that. Its minute book records the vote, 9 to 2, and the reason: show the world as it is held.
A months-long reporting project. Documents cited below are held in The Vault and available to readers.
BERNE, Switzerland — On 14 June 1923, in a hired room above a bookbinder's in Berne, eleven men and one woman voted on which map of the world would hang in the schools of the British dominions, the French colonies and the mandated territories.
The Mercator won, nine votes to two. The chair did not vote.
The minute records why. The Conference is of the opinion that the map placed before the child should show the world as it is held, and not as it is measured. The secretary underlined held.
That is the whole finding. The map on which Africa and Greenland are the same size was not an accident of printing. It was chosen, by name, over a measured alternative, by people who wrote down what they were doing.
The peg
The General Assembly voted this week to endorse a world map drawn on the Equal Earth projection. On it Africa is fourteen times the size of Greenland, which is what it is. On the Mercator they are about the same.
The wires reported the vote as a correction. None of them asked who set the error, or whether anyone minuted it.
The room
The Berne Conference on Educational Cartography met six times between 1921 and 1927, with no statute and no premises. Its members were the managing directors of five map publishers in London, Paris, Leipzig and Turin, five school inspectors from ministries that bought from them, one Swiss cartographer, and a chair from the Berne geographical society.
The question before it in June 1923 was one wall map, forty inches by sixty, for the schools of the territories. The cartographer, Dr. Ottilie Brandenberger-Kuo, had brought a Mollweide.
Her dissent is minuted at length. Mercator's chart was drawn so that a compass bearing is a straight line, she said, and a child is not a ship. Its Africa is a third of its Europe by area on the sheet and three times it on the ground. She asked that the minute record that the conference had been shown the measured map and had declined it.
It records that.
The second dissent was Mr. Hendrik Aucamp-Ndlovu, inspector of schools for the Union of South Africa, who said the map made his own country a strip along the bottom. He was outvoted by the people who would sell it to him.
What the minute says
Resolved, on the motion of Mr. Roake (London), seconded by M. Vautrin (Paris):
That the wall map of the world for schools in the dominions, colonies and mandated territories be the Mercator, forty by sixty inches, from existing plates.
For: 9. Against: 2 (Dr. Brandenberger-Kuo, Mr. Aucamp-Ndlovu). The Chair not voting.
The Conference is of the opinion that the map placed before the child should show the world as it is held, and not as it is measured.
The treasurer's statement was received. [Following leaf removed.]
Was it carried out
A vote in Berne is a vote in Berne. We went looking for the wall.
In the map room of a Berne library we counted the principal world wall map in forty-one school atlases and publishers' catalogues dated 1925 to 1965. Thirty-four are Mercators. All seven that are not are dated after 1946.
Then we went to Accra, where the national archives hold the Gold Coast education department's files for 1929 to 1934. In the file for 1931 is an order form. Wall map, world, Mercator's projection, 40 by 60 in., mounted on cloth and rollers. 200. The supplier is Pelham & Roake of London. Mr. Roake moved the motion.
The page that is missing
Between the March and June meetings of 1923 there is a stub. One leaf, cut close to the sewing, and the minute of 14 June says what was on it: the treasurer's statement.
Every other page from 1921 to 1927 is present. Whoever had the book apart took the one page that says who paid for the room.
The Bureau replies
The body that inherited the conference's papers in 1949 did not know this book had left them. Its secretary-general's reply is at the foot of this page, and its last paragraph is the one to read.
What this desk takes from it
A projection is a decision. Somebody makes it, and this time somebody minuted it, in a room with a name, on a date, with a division list.
The map on the wall in Cape Coast in 1935 was the map moved in Berne in 1923 by the man who sold it, over the objection of the only person in the room who could draw one. That much is on paper. Who paid for the paper is the leaf that is gone, and this newspaper will go on looking for it.
The minute book may be read at our office by anyone who asks. It will get a Vault number when the keeper is satisfied about the binding, and not before.
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Sources & Method
We bought the minute book because the lot description mentioned a vote on maps, read all 340 pages, and sent the June 1923 minute to a historian of cartography before we told her what we thought it meant. We then went looking for the map on a wall: forty-one catalogues and atlases in Berne, and the education files of three former colonies, of which one had kept them.
Who we spoke to
- Minute book of the Berne Conference on Educational Cartography, 1921–1927, 340 pages, bound, re-sewn at some date after 1927. Bought at auction in Berne, July 2025, as lot 9 of seventeen from a dissolved geographical society. Not yet catalogued in the Vault: the keeper wants the re-sewn binding examined by a second conservator before she will give it a number July 2025 – present Read in full by both reporters. The June 1923 minute is printed below.
- Dr. Annelise Okoro-Wyss, Historian of cartography, Zurich. Sent the June 1923 minute before we told her what we thought it meant; then read the whole book at our office; interviewed twice August 2026 Authenticates the hand and the paper. Calls the sentence this story is built on 'a sentence, not a policy'.
- Public Records and Archives Administration, Accra, Education department files, 1929–1934. Consulted in the reading room by our correspondent; the 1931 order form photographed with permission 18–22 August 2026
- Kofi Asante-Lindqvist, Retired geography master, Cape Coast; taught on a Mercator wall map from 1971 to 1980. Interviewed in person, at his home, with the 1931 order form in front of him 21 August 2026
- Dr. Jonas Wyttenbach-Achterberg, Secretary-general, International Cartographic Bureau, Berne. Written questions with the minute, the order form and the full draft 28 August 2026 Printed in full under Right of Reply.
What we could not confirm
- Who paid for the room. The treasurer's page for 1923 has been cut from the minute book, and a stub is all that is left between the March and June meetings. Every other page between 1921 and 1927 is present. Somebody removed exactly one.
- Whether the vote changed anything. Every publisher in that room already owned Mercator plates and would have gone on printing from them. One order form from one colony, with one delegate's firm on the letterhead, is a coincidence until there is a second. We looked for education files in Lagos and Nairobi for the same years and found that neither had kept any.
- Whether the minute book is what it appears to be. The hand and the paper are right. The binding has been re-sewn, and a re-sewn book is a book somebody has had apart. The keeper of the Vault has not given it a number and we have not asked her to hurry.
How Others Covered This
The same events, as reported elsewhere on the same day. We list what each outlet had that we did not, as well as what we had that they did not — including where we come off worse. Why we print this.
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The Continental WireGeneral Assembly Endorses Equal-Area World Map
Filed the resolution text, the sponsors and the projection's name, and stopped.
Had that we did not
The size comparison, correctly stated, and the African Union's earlier endorsement.
Left out
Any reason the old map was there. The item treats a four-hundred-year-old projection as weather.
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The Hollow PostTHEY SHRANK AFRICA ON PURPOSE AND THE UN JUST SAID SO
Reported the vote as the end of a cover-up running since 1569.
Had that we did not
The size comparison, also correctly. Greenland really does look like Africa on the old map.
Left out
That Mercator drew his chart for ships and nobody in 1569 was minuting anything. The purpose was chosen in 1923, in a hired room, by people whose names we print. A conspiracy with a date is duller and worse.
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They Buriedthis newspaperThe UN Gave Africa Its Size Back. Nine Men Voted It Away In 1923.
Read the minute, then went looking for the wall.
Had that we did not
The vote, both dissents at length, the order form from Accra, and the page that is missing.
Left out
We bought this minute book fourteen months ago and sat on it until the United Nations gave us a peg. A paper that waits for permission to print what it holds is not scrupulous. It is shy. — V. Ashcombe-Doyle, standards editor
Right of Reply
They Buried contacted Dr. Jonas Wyttenbach-Achterberg, International Cartographic Bureau on 28 August 2026, in writing, with the June 1923 minute, the 1931 order form and the full draft, and eight days to respond. Replied 4 September. Asked that his reply run whole rather than as a quote. Printed unedited.
I have read your draft and I have read the minute, which I will say plainly this Bureau did not know existed, and I am grateful to you for it and annoyed with you for what you have done with it.
The Berne Conference of 1923 was eleven publishers and inspectors trying to agree on a map they could all print. Every one of them owned Mercator plates. A Mollweide would have meant new plates, new blocks, new proofs, and the conference was paid for, I do not know by whom and neither do you, to save money and not to spend it. The vote you print as a decision about Africa was a vote about copper.
The sentence. As it is held and not as it is measured. The secretary was Herr Lüthi, and Herr Lüthi's minutes are known in this building for exactly that kind of sentence; he wrote one about the Swiss cantons in 1925 that we still read aloud at dinners. It is a good sentence. It is one sentence. You have taken a clerk's flourish and made it a policy of empire, and you have done it because it fits.
Now the part that will not please me. This Bureau has recommended the Equal Earth to member ministries since 2019. We have been ignored in every capital including this one, which suggests to me that what a committee in Berne recommends does not decide what hangs in a classroom in Accra, and I would have said it never did. Then you sent me an order form from 1931 with our delegate's firm on the letterhead, and I have had it on my desk for a week, and I do not have a sentence for it. Print that.
Published unedited under our right-of-reply guarantee.
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