01x03 - Plunder and Possession

[bunniefuu]

August 2007.

A nuclear-powered Russian icebreaker
cuts its way through the Arctic Ocean.

On board, a mini submarine.

It's about to dive
two and a half miles to the seabed.

There, the Russians will plant
a titanium flag

directly beneath the North Pole

to symbolise Moscow's
claims to the Arctic.

But Russia isn't alone.

The United States, Canada,
Denmark and Norway

are all staking similar claims.

As the polar ice melts,

it's becoming much easier
to gain access to the gas,

oil and minerals beneath the seabed.

The scramble is on
to claim the right to exploit them.

And the first-ever
political map of the Arctic

is being drawn up to identify
the disputed territories.

I've been studying maps
for most of my life,

and this is the most intriguing attempt
I've seen to map the future.

This is an extraordinary map.

What this map shows
is all these different countries

looming up onto the North Pole,

Russia, USA, Canada,

Greenland, Scandinavian countries,

laying claim to different
bits of the pole.

All these different colours

show competing political
and economic interests.

Map making has always been
bound up with politics.

From attempts to map
the known world in the Middle Ages,

to the age of exploration and discovery,

to Imperial Britain's claim
to be the centre of the world.

And now the new Arctic map

brings together geography,
economics and international law

in an attempt to settle
the latest territorial dispute.

Map makers are now at the heart of a
really charged struggle

around political influence
and access to riches.

But it's not for the first time,

because the history of maps

is also the history of power,
plunder and possession.

Palermo Cathedral,
Christmas Day in the year 1130.

A Norman warrior is crowned Roger II,

King of Sicily,

one of the wealthiest and most
influential kingdoms in Europe.

Roger's kingdom
was composed of a rather

volatile mix of Christians,
Greeks and Muslims,

and Roger wanted to stamp
his authority across all of them,

but not just through brute force.

He commissioned a team of scholars

dedicated to the mapping
of the culture and territories

of the entire Mediterranean region,
and the world beyond it.

Roger entrusted
the making of the map

to the foremost
Muslim scholar of the day,

Muhammad al-Idrisi.

Over 15 years, Idrisi gathered
travellers' accounts of distant lands,

and the latest information about trade,

transport and political power
in each territory.

He then began work
on a series of regional maps

covering the whole
of the known world.

The maps stretch all the way
from China in the east,

to Spain in the west.

In an accompanying text,

Spain is described in great detail
as a land of "fine estates",

defended by
"well-fortified castles".

To the north, Britain is located
in the "Sea of Darkness",

and described as being the
"shape of an ostrich head".

Its inhabitants are said to be
"brave, active and enterprising",

"but all is in the grip
of perpetual winter".

The western Mediterranean
is dominated by Roger's kingdom.

Sicily's size is exaggerated.

Idrisi calls it
"the pearl of the age".

The maps were bound
together with the text

describing the regions of the world,

and became known as
The Book of Roger.

This is the book that
Roger asked him to write,

to put in all the information
that he had assembled

about the inhabited world
in his day.

And it consists of 70,
seven zero, maps,

each accompanied by
several pages of text

telling you about the cities,

how you get from one city to the next,

how long it takes you,

discussions of harbors,

a great deal about commodities,

resources.

The Book of Roger
is full of vivid geographical detail,

but Idrisi's maps clearly aren't
the result of a scientific survey.

What we see here is North Africa,

this is the Mediterranean.

Look at this coast,
that is anything but accurate,

it's just a wavy line

with the cities
just lined up on them.

So what he's actually giving you
is the sequence

of the harbors probably along here.

So the text is necessary
for any kind of detail.

Text and map are integral,

- extremely clever, innovative,
- simple but brilliant.

While Idrisi was working on his maps,

Roger was still expanding his kingdom,

gaining strategic footholds
in Greece and North Africa.

What do you think
that Roger is trying to do with Idrisi?

He's trying to get as much information
out of him as possible

about all of the areas of the world
that Roger didn't rule.

So that not only was Idrisi
commissioned to draw a map,

but he was commissioned to find out
everything he could about trade and

travel and distances
between cities and fortresses,

all the sorts of things that if
someone wishing to conquer an area

would need to know.

Roger of course had
political designs himself on Spain.

He dreamed of possibly conquering Spain,
possibly North Africa.

So the knowledge that Idrisi had

would have been very useful to Roger.

From his island kingdom
in the middle of the Mediterranean,

Roger was playing for high stakes
in international politics.

He'd realized that maps weren't
just about the quest for knowledge

and he appreciated that
you could now use maps

to put his tiny kingdom

onto a much larger world stage.

Roger's map of the known world
was being used

to describe and celebrate
his expanding empire.

But maps would later become
much more powerful tools of conquest.

The great leap forward came
at the turn of the 15th century

with the translation into Latin

of a rediscovered classical work

called simply The Geography.

Its author was a Greek scholar
called Claudius Ptolemy,

also known as
the father of geography.

Working in the great library of Alexandria
in Egypt in the second century,

Ptolemy built up
a vast knowledge of the world.

This is Bosom,

now a tiny village
on the Sussex coast.

It was once a bustling port
on the edge of the Roman Empire

called Magnus Portus.

And Ptolemy managed to plot
its position in his Geography



Someone has to come here,

someone has to do
lots of observations,

observing the stars,
observing the sun.

Then it has to get back to Ptolemy.

And then Ptolemy
has to do the geometry,

he has to do the mathematics

to work out what the correct latitude
and longitude should be,

given what the traveller
has reported.

So one line in this
is a huge amount of work.

Ptolemy's system of mapping was inspired
by his knowledge of astronomy.

He devised a grid of intersecting lines
to map the position of the stars,

and then transferred this web-like grid
to the globe.

Ptolemy used astronomy,
geometry and mathematics

to plot the positions of


He's sitting in Alexandria,

and he's actually marking
Magnus Portus.

Bosom here,
thousands of miles away.

It's like the spider
sitting in the middle of the web,

pulling it all in.

It's a purely geometrical principle,

and that's the genius
of what Ptolemy does.

He puts that across the earth,

he allows us to understand
where every location is

in relation to every other location,

and it's a fantastic,
enduring principle

which takes us right through
to the modern age of map-making.

Ptolemy was tackling the greatest
challenge of map-making,

finding a way to represent

the spherical shape of the earth
on a flat surface.

As you can see, a globe
doesn't look very flat, does it?

And the question is
whether you could actually take

the surface of a sphere and
flatten it out.

And the easy way to see that

is actually to peel off
part of the surface.

This is probably a
good enough bit, okay?

So here's a little piece of the earth.

It's about a quarter
of the whole thing.

If I try and flatten this out,
it doesn't want to go.

It really does not want
to be flattened.

What that means is that if you're
going to draw a map that's flat,

you can't get all of the geometry
of the real globe correct.

There's no way to map the globe
exactly onto a flat surface.

But Ptolemy perfected
a working compromise we still use today.

Projection.

Ptolemy's idea is
very straightforward.

Draw a grid on a piece of paper

and it doesn't have to be exactly

the same shape
as the grid on the sphere.

We have here

a diagram from his book
telling you how to do it.

These circles are lines of latitude.

These straight lines
are the lines of longitude.

So those correspond to
the lines on the sphere.

There's this catalogue of latitude
and longitude for various points.

You can just look at the grid and say,

ah, such and such a city should go here,
such and such a city should go there.

And you mark all the cities in,
all the points, bits of coastline,

rivers, everything is listed.

And then you kind of join up the dots
and you've got your map.

We're going to test
Ptolemy's calculations

against the pinpoint accuracy
of 21st century GPS.

North, 50 degrees, 49.6 minutes.

West, 0 degrees, 51.5 minutes.

Let's have a look at
what Ptolemy's geography tells us.

Magnus Portus has coordinates

longitude 19, latitude 53.

So why is the longitude
it seems so far out?

And the answer is he didn't put
his zero longitude where we do.

So this is coordinates
from nearly 2,000 years ago

and he's only a few degrees out.

So he's pretty close considering,

you know, the reports
you're getting from travelers

will not be fantastically well-observed
and fantastically accurate.

It's impressive for 2,000 years ago.

It's no wonder that Ptolemy was known
as the father of geography

because this map-making kit
that he put together

was one of the great
achievements of the classical world

and a pinnacle of Greek science.

And for the next 14 centuries,
it remained seriously unchallenged.

Instead, it was being used
throughout that period

to chart the known world,
to imagine it

and to even start to control it.

Once translated,

Ptolemy's geography was distributed
throughout Renaissance Europe

and fueled curiosity about the world
beyond the Mediterranean.

An hour before dawn,
the 3rd of August 1492,

three ships with a 90-strong crew

are leaving the Spanish harbor of Palos
and heading west.

Leading the expedition,
Christopher Columbus.

A new age of exploration
was just beginning.

Columbus was bound for China

and he was spied by the most
up-to-date map of the day,

the Martellus map.

The map extends
from the canaries in the west

to the east coast of China.

It also shows the first sea route round
the Cape of Good Hope to the far east,

newly discovered by the Portuguese.

The Martellus map convinced Columbus

that he could open up
a faster sea route

to the riches of Asia
by sailing directly west.

The expedition was driven

by Columbus's overweening desire
for fame, titles and riches.

But this was an incredibly
risky venture.

The sailors on board all three ships

were full of doubts and fears

and they referred to the voyage
as this mad fantasy.

In 1989,

Sir Robin Knox Johnston
single-handedly retraced

Columbus's journey across the Atlantic

using the same kind of instruments
that Columbus had used.

What was it that inspired you
to follow Columbus's voyage?

Well, primarily I wanted to see

how accurately they could navigate
in those days.

And so those waters were full.

We've never been focusing on that.

So they're right.

Now if I'm just going to do nothing
but just think about Columbus,

do this voyage like Columbus,
I'm going to pick stuff up.

Well, he leaves from near Cadiz
and goes down to the Canary Islands,

which is also Spanish, so that's a voyage
they make quite frequently,

but it's from here.

This is where he takes
his last food and water on board

and then he sets off into the blue.

It's pretty risky.

Oh, certainly it's risky,

but he was right in a way that,

you know, if you keep going west,

you would eventually
reach Japan or China.

Had he… Well, he didn't know
America was in the way,

but the theory was right.

You know, the Martellus map
would say to him,

if I keep going on this latitude
all the way around,

I'll pop out that side of the map.

Somewhere here.

Somewhere here.

The Martellus map
convinced Columbus that

China was much closer
than it really was.

Following Ptolemy's calculations,

Martellus underestimated
the circumference of the Earth

and it turned out to be a massive


What we're missing totally here
is the full extent of the Atlantic,

the whole of the Americas
and the Pacific Ocean.

Quite a lot we're missing.

- Ptolemy didn't know anything about it.
- Exactly.

He sort of guessed it'd be 21,

maybe 28 days,
ended up being 35.

But, you know, in 21 days
he's going to reach China.

Well, that's OK.

According to the distance
he's calculated to be.

But he passes that distance
and it's still empty ocean.

And the days go on,
one after another,

still no land,
still not sighting anything.

Crew getting fed up,
hey, we don't want to die here.

Here I am, 25 days at sea on my own.

I haven't seen a ship now
for well over a week.

And I think I've got about


And at this speed…

Oh, I'll make it in about 10 days,
that's it, maybe 11.

Cheers.

He just goes on
until he starts seeing,

birds, wait a minute,
they've got to come from land.

Watch where they go at night,

because they always
go home at night.

OK, that's where land is.

About 20 minutes ago,
at 8.20 exactly,

I sighted some land.

And at first I wasn't sure,
but now I'm absolutely sure it is land.

It's not to the northwest.

I expected it to be
down to the southeast, if anything.

Sir Robin Knox Johnston made land
after 34 days at sea.

Columbus and his crew
took a day longer.

♪ San Salvador, San Salvador

♪ May God forever keep me free.

Well done.

For Columbus, it now seemed
that the riches of the east were

spread out before him.

He eagerly went ashore in an armed boat,

and was greeted by crowds
of curious local people,

eager to see the new arrival.

Columbus named the new territory
San Salvador.

We now know it's an island
in the Caribbean.

Columbus was convinced
he landed in China,

and he had no idea
that his massive miscalculation

would make him the most
famous explorer in history.

Columbus had discovered
a new continent, America.

But such was the power of his belief
in the map that he was using,

that he went to his grave


still convinced that he'd discovered
a western passage to Asia.

To this day, we still celebrate Columbus
as the discoverer of America,

but it was a place that
he never believed even existed.

When Columbus returned to Europe,

the map of the world was redrawn.

This strange but
incredibly beautiful map

is the first ever
that records the land

discovered by Columbus
on his first voyage.

You can see here the Bahamas,
and over here, San Salvador.

It was made by Juan de la Cosa,

who went with Columbus
on his first voyage,

and all his subsequent expeditions
to the new world.

It was probably made to show
to the Spanish sovereigns,

Queen Isabella and King Ferdinand
back here in Spain,

to give them a sense of the extent
of the new world over here to the west.

And as if to emphasise the point,

the new world is like this big,
verdant green claw,

in complete contrast
to the rest of the map,

giving the Spaniards
a sense of entitlement,

the enticement of the new world.

As European powers vied for control
of these lucrative new territories,

maps became vital tools
in a global struggle for dominance.

In 1502,

an Italian undercover agent
smuggled this map out of Portugal.

It shows all the new
Portuguese discoveries,

from India to the Persian Gulf,

East Africa to Brazil.

But like all maps of this era,

it marks the vast
new world in the west

as largely uncharted territory.

In 1503, an Italian explorer
published a set of pamphlets

announcing his own discoveries
in the new world.

His name was Amerigo Vespucci.

Vespucci wrote,

and so we sailed on
till we reached a land

which we deemed to be a continent,

which is distant westwardly
from the Isles of Canary

beyond the inhabited regions.

This was a groundbreaking statement

because maps of the time
suggested that

the new world was somehow
connected to Asia.

All of these maps show that new world

without a complete west coast.

They are somehow
joining that new world to Asia.

So Vespucci's claim to have discovered
a separate fourth continent

was completely at odds
with what everybody really believed.

Vespucci's description
of a fourth continent

fired the imagination
of a German mapmaker,

Martin Waldseemüller.

In 1507,

he incorporated its outline
into a pioneering new work.

Waldseemüller's map is absolutely vast,

much bigger than this projection
actually shows.

When these 12 printed sheets
are all stuck together,

it stands one and a half metres tall

and two and a half metres wide.

And that was deliberate because
Waldseemüller wanted this map

to hang on the great aristocratic
courtly walls of Europe.

No European had yet seen the ocean
on the far side of the new world,

but here it was shown by Waldseemüller
for the first time.

In contrast to all the other maps
showing the latest discoveries,

this continent is shown
completely surrounded by water.

It's totally navigable.

This is the first map ever

that shows America as a separate
fourth continent.

And Waldseemüller labels it

for the very first time down here,
America,

in honour of Amerigo Vespucci.

The only surviving copy of
Waldseemüller's map of the world

was bought by the US
Library of Congress in 2003.

It was the first document of any kind

that introduces
the word America to the world.

The map is now known
as America's birth certificate.

Maps have played a crucial role

in forging national identities
across the world.

But sometimes mapmakers
purposefully bend the truth

to serve the interests
of powerful nations.

The year is 1529.

A fertile archipelago
in the Pacific Ocean

known as the Moluccas,
or Spice Islands,

is at the heart of a bitter dispute.

Spain and Portugal were battling over
two of the most valuable commodities

in 16th century Europe.

Nutmeg and cloves.

This was a very serious business.

Cloves may not seem
to be terribly priced today,

but at the time in the 16th century,

they were literally
worth their weight in gold,

used for medicinal and also
culinary purposes.

A summit was called to try to settle

the dispute between the two
imperial superpowers of the age.

The Portuguese initially
had the upper hand.

They were effectively
in control of the Moluccas.

But as the superpowers summit began,

the Spanish king
produced his trump card.

A new map of the world that
claimed to be more authoritative

than any other so far.

This beautiful hand-drawn map
had been specially made for the king

by a virtuoso mapmaker
called Diego Ribeiro.

It features finely drawn navigational
and scientific instruments,

as if to emphasise its authority.

For the map's primary purpose
was political.

Ribeiro's map shows how the two
superpowers had previously agreed

to divide the world into
two spheres of influence.

Here you can see the two flags
of the contending empires.

There's the Portuguese flag
and there's the Spanish flag.

Everything to the east
belongs to the Portuguese

and everything to the west of this line
belongs to the Spanish.

The Spice Islands
had always been placed

in the Portuguese
sphere of influence

on the far eastern side
of the world.

But on Ribeiro's new map,
they've moved.

Here they are, the Moluccas Islands,
all picked out here.

So what he's done

is he's actually put them
in the Spanish half

of the western hemisphere.

And you can tell because
here is the Spanish flag

and clearly laying claim

to all these islands here,
the Moluccas.

So convincing was Ribeiro's map

that the Portuguese
reluctantly accepted that

the Moluccas were
in Spanish territory.

Ribeiro had pulled off
a brilliant con trick.

His map had cooked the books.

And this is what I find
so fascinating about world maps.

We look at them and think that

we're seeing an accurate,
standardized representation of the earth.

But the more we dig down
beneath the layers of the map,

we start to see
selection going on,

we start to see manipulation
and even deception.

Beautiful scientific objects
they may be,

but it is that ability of the map

to fuse all those
different elements,

high politics, science, art, commerce,

that makes them so irresistible

to rulers throughout history.

In the early 16th century,

navigating at sea
was a perilous business.

Ships crossing the Atlantic

could find themselves
hundreds of miles off course

with deadly consequences.

Starvation.

Dehydration.

Shipwreck.

And maps were the problem.

Due to the curvature of the earth,

ships trying to follow
a straight line on a map

ended up veering
dangerously off course.

But in the mid 16th century,

there was a map-making revolution.

It would solve
this navigational problem

and inspire the creation of the most
influential map in history.

It still defines our vision of the world
in the 21st century.

The man behind this
revolutionary projection

is proudly celebrated

in his hometown of
Ruppelmonde in Belgium.

The map-maker Gerard Mercator.

He's known as the prince
of modern geographers,

but Mercator had a humble
start in life.

So here we come at a house
where Mercator was born

on the 5th of March, 1512.

Six o'clock in the morning,

it was a hospital for pool people.

That was the original use,
it was a hospital.

That was a hospital
and his uncle was here

a priest in the hospital.

Taught him here
mathematics and Latin.

And Mercator's uncle
made it possible

for this young boy,
pool boy, brilliant boy

to go to university and
become what he has become,

the map-maker of the navigation.

As a boy, Mercator often came here
to the quayside on the River Scheldt.

This is the harbour
where the young Mercator,

five, six years old,
got in touch with the world,

the sea, the sailing.

Of course, Columbus discovered America.

Certainly he must have talked
about it with the sailors,

talking about navigation,
and he had all that in mind.

And where does the river take us?

Well, the river take us
from here to Antwerp,

then to the sea.

And then to the whole world.

After studying mathematics,
geography and astronomy,

Mercator began making globes

for European royalty
and other wealthy patrons.

To do this, he outlined
the countries of the world

onto a series of long segments
of paper called gauze.

When joined together,

they would fit perfectly
around a globe.

This globe is made in 1541
by Mercator.

It's beautiful,
it's absolutely exquisite.

So how would you make
a globe like this?

When you make a globe like this,

you had to put on plaster,

and then you had to put on it
the gores,

who were engraved on copper.

To make a gore
it has to be very accurate.

But what's so amazing is that stream
continues on another sheet.

I can't see the joins here on the gores,
it's done with incredible skill.

Building on his work
as a globemaker, in 1569

Mercator devised a new method of
projection onto a flat surface

to help navigators at sea.

Mercator began by straightening
the lines of longitude, or meridians.

He then increased the spaces
between the lines of latitude,

moving away from the equator.

Here is the famous world map
from Mercator.

He made this map in 1569,

a new map for sailors in his time.

For the first time,

navigators would be able
to plot a straight line

between two points on a map

and safely reach their destination.

To achieve this, Mercator had struck
a cartographic compromise.

To ensure navigational accuracy,

his projection increasingly distorts
the size of countries

the further they are
from the equator.

They're actually mapped to infinity,
I mean they're vast.

And it's the same down here?

- On the pole.
- Yes.

So the south pole goes like this?

Just like that.

- So it's a way of stretching?
- Stretching the world.

But as a result, you do get
this massive distortion.

Mercator distorts the globe
in other ways too.

By deliberately placing the equator
south of the centre,

he gives Europe
a dominant position in the world.

These distortions have been retained

as the map projection has been
updated over the centuries.

There's no doubt,
as far as I'm concerned,

that the Mercator world map
is the most important one ever made.

It defines the history of cartography
for the next four centuries,

and it is used everywhere,
in school atlases,

the British Empire even adopts it

to get a sense of its
imperial dominion.

This is the map which,
for us in the west,

defines the world
as we understand it,

still to this day.

Designed for navigation,

Mercator's projection made maps
more useful as A*DS to exploration.

And no one understood this better

than the merchants of the
Dutch East India Company,

established in 1602.

They used the latest maps

to lead them to the
treasures of the east,

and the company quickly became
a mighty global force.

Well, at the beginning
of the 17th century,

maps stop being, or become less,

gorgeous hand-painted objects

to be exchanged,

to be presented as gifts
by ambassadors.

And they become
part of the paraphernalia

and business of travel.

So they are part of a commercial

toolbox for exploring the globe

with a view to making profit.

The vast corporate empire
of the Dutch East India Company,

or VOC as it was known,

stretched from Africa to Japan.

It was run from its headquarters
here in Amsterdam.

This was the hub of a
global information network,

where the company's own cartographers
drew up their own maps.

These maps were closely guarded
commercial secrets.

The ships of the
Dutch East India Company

had a combination of
small-scale maps

and large-scale maps on board.

The small-scale maps were

crossing the big oceans,

the Atlantic and the Indian Ocean.

This one was used
for crossing the Atlantic,

although there's only
a little piece left.

When they had crossed the ocean,
they needed larger-scale maps.

Of course,
the inland is hardly visible,

because that was of no use,

but everything on the shore
or in front of the shore

was very clear and very accurate.

Because this is really a map
about commerce,

it's about marking the coastline

and working out where you can land
and where you can trade your goods.

When you were nearing your goal,

it was very essential that
you have had a very accurate map.

In fact, it was a whole
circulation of communication

that took place.

So the pilots,

they took their charts again
back to Amsterdam,

and they said, this is wrong,
this is better,

I made that one better.

The chief chart maker,
he improved the maps

and sent the ships
with new improved maps.

As the Dutch mapped the world
with increasing accuracy,

they were also staking their claim
on new territory.

They're using
the equivalent of the tube map.

They can get wherever they want.

They can confidently

trade across the hinterlands
of before uncharted territories.

They know where people are.

That is a very modern idea,

that you are somewhere
extremely remote,

that you arrived at by sea,

but you know where other people are,

other Westerners
in relation to yourself.

In 1633,

the VOC hired Willem Blaeu
as its chief map maker.

Blaeu had his own successful
map making business,

and his new job gave him access
to highly classified information.

Rather odd that a man like
Willem Janszoon Blaeu,

that he both had his own business,

he made atlases and atlas maps,

and next to that
he was the chief cartographer

of the Dutch East India Company.

And whereas these maps were secret,

because that was
commercial capital,

these maps were in the end
little puzzle pieces

that fitted into the big puzzle
of the world map

that improved steadily on and on.

So Blaeu is using
this kind of raw material

to then put together
an updated version of the world map?

Yes.

Blau's atlas was a luxury object,

beautifully bound and engraved,

full of colour
and intricate typography.

Blaeu used the latest data gathered
by the Dutch East India Company

to update the map of the world

using Mercator's projection.

This was the first time

that a Mercator projection
was included in a world atlas.

In this way,
he popularised a projection

that wasn't popular at all.

It was a projection that was made

for the seafaring people,
for the pilots.

And now he included the map

on which he apparently
was so proud

in his atlas.

In the 1630s, Blaeu's atlas was
translated into many languages

and became a huge success.

And the Dutch East India Company

was now eclipsing
Portugal and Spain

in global trade.

The big innovation

from the middle of the 17th century
for the Dutch

is that they stopped
carrying in gold and silver

simply to buy and sell in the Indies
and carry the trade back.

They now trade across the Indies
with other nations,

with other Dutch
parts of the East India Company.

They transact
goods for other goods.

They use copper,
they use silk for spices.

There's a whole burgeoning,
really commercial marketplace,

which is remote from Holland.

They are an autonomous
bazaar in the East Indies,

and the maps have enabled that.

By the end of the 18th century,

the VOC had sent
over a million people

to work in the Asian trade.

They dispatched nearly 5,000 ships

and netted millions of tons
of goods and commodities.

The VOC brought
huge prosperity to Holland

and kick-started a sophisticated
international market.

But in the 19th century,

the failure to standardise maps
began to hold back

the development of an
efficient global economy.

Navigation relied on comparing
the time at your current location

with the time
on a fixed line of longitude,

called a prime meridian.

Britain's prime meridian
ran through Greenwich,

where the time was marked
once a day

by the time ball
at Flamsteed House.

Passing Flamsteed House
as the time ball fell here,

ships leaving the London docks

could now quite accurately
set their clocks

to 1pm Greenwich Mean Time.

But that, of course,
was just the British ships.

Trading nations all the way from France
right through to Japan

were still using their own
measurements of time,

according to their own prime meridians.

It was absolute chaos.

So, could the world's maps
be standardised around a single line?

In 1884,

representatives of 25 countries
came together

to decide where the world's
prime meridian should be.

The meridian lines that had ranged

across the world's maps
since Ptolemy

were now symbols of
imperial prestige.

Proceedings were dominated
by Britain and France,

who were by now the pre-eminent
imperial powers of the age,

with each lobbying for the supremacy
of their own prime meridian.

The French delegates
regarded themselves

as part of a long and extremely

distinguished tradition of
scientific map-making.

They were going to fight their corner
really hard.

They had no intention
of giving up the prime meridian

here in Paris to the British.

But Britain's claim found support
from the United States' delegate,

Commander William Sampson.

Commander Sampson argued that

the meridian should be selected,
which is now in most general use.

More than 70% of
all the shipping of the world

uses the Greenwich meridian.

Britain now had the advantage.

When it came to the vote,

only San Domingo
opposed the British claim.

The French abstained.

Britain was absolutely triumphant.

And this 1886 British Empire map

shows Britain
right at the centre of the world,

with the Greenwich meridian
running right down the middle.

And across the map, in red,
British imperial dominions.

And just to make the point very clear
about what's happening here,

Britannia is shown
lounging on a globe.

The French delegation
returned home to Paris

with their tails between their legs,

but they still refused
to concede defeat.

This French world map,

produced eight years
after the meridian conference,

stubbornly sticks to Paris
as the prime meridian,

and by implication,
France as the centre of the world.

It would be another
quarter of a century

before the French map makers

adopted Greenwich
as their prime meridian.

The international battle over the
prime meridian is long over,

and the mapping of the whole world
is almost complete.

But disputes over
unclaimed territory continue.

In 2007,

the age of discovery and plunder
was given a new lease of life,

when a Russian submarine
planted a titanium flag

on the seabed
directly beneath the North Pole.

And the rush by other nations

to claim rights over natural resources
beneath the Arctic ice

is now putting today's map makers

at the heart of a new struggle
for power and wealth.

The International Boundaries
Research Unit at Durham University

is drawing up new maps of the Arctic

in an effort to resolve
potential territorial disputes.

This is the political map
and this is the physical map.

That's correct, yes.

Why is this map so important now?

The need for the physical mapping

is because so little is known about

what lies under the Arctic,
because it has been covered by ice.

So global warming is creating
a much more politically charged area

around claims
to the North Pole here?

To some extent.

The opening up of the Arctic waters

means that the areas
where there's potential resources,

it's becoming much, much clearer.

So what are the resources
involved here?

It's huge.

I think it was something
like 20 billion

barrels of oil and gas
in the Arctic region.

Areas likely to be rich
in gas and oil

have already been partially mapped.

But who owns these resources?

It all depends on who can establish
their claim to the seabed.

The Durham team have created
the first political map of the Arctic

to show who
is currently laying claim to what.

We have the land
territories of Russia,

which has the longest
coastal frontage on the Arctic.

The USA through its sovereignty
over Alaska.

We have Canada
with the Canadian archipelago.

Then we have Greenland
under the sovereignty of Denmark.

And finally Norway

through its sovereignty
over the Svalbard archipelago.

States have rights over the resources

up to 200 nautical miles
from their coastline.

But in exceptional circumstances

it's possible for a country
to extend this boundary.

And that's what
the Russians are trying to do.

They're laying claim
to a raised area of the seabed

extending all the way
from Siberia to the North Pole.

It's called the Lomonosov Ridge.

The famous flag planting incident
on the North Pole seabed

came as part of Russia's attempt
to gather more evidence

that the Lomonosov Ridge

really is physically connected to the

continental margin of
Russian land territory.

Which caused quite a hostile reaction

from some of its neighbours,
particularly Canada.

Which said that why was Russia
claiming the North Pole as Russian?

Legally it has no effect at all.

Planting a flag,
certainly these days,

does not say anything about
title to territory.

I think having a good map on the table

in a negotiation
is extremely important.

As that ocean becomes more navigable

there's a risk of naval incidents.

Who knows what kind of
geopolitical games

could be played in the regions.

From medieval times
to the age of discovery,

and the era of empire,

mapmaking has always been
bound up with conquest,

imperial expansion and conflict.

This modern map in progress

depicts the fault lines of the future.

It's a warning of
potential conflict ahead

as the Arctic ice melts.

The lessons of history
would suggest that

where there's a world map,
plunder will surely follow.

But this time the mapmakers
are ahead of the game,

because when the ice melts
and the exploitation really starts,

there'll be an internationally
recognized chart of the region

to take the heat out of the conflicts
over mineral wealth

which will surely take place.

In the 21st century

mapmakers have become
peacemakers.