Tufteing the subcontinent

Map of the world with each country scaled by population size

Above is a map of world populations: “the larger the country, the bigger its population. Each grid square represents a million people.” [Link]

When you eyeball the map, a few things leap out at you in a way that they don’t when presented with a table of numbers:

  • India has 1 billion people, or roughly 1/6th of the world’s population
  • Pakistan and Bangladesh together have slightly more people that the US. If there was still a “United Pakistan” it would displace the US as the world’s third largest country.
  • There are more people living on the subcontinent than there are on most other continents. More South Asians than Europeans, Africans, North Americans or South Americans. As a matter of fact, there are more Indians than people in these other continents.

The same website also presents similar maps of past and future population levels of the world from 100,000 years ago, 2,000 years ago, 350 years ago (1650), 100 years ago (1900), and even a projection of the world’s population 150 years from now in 2150. [via BoingBoing]

28 thoughts on “Tufteing the subcontinent

  1. another good one is the Peters projection, in all its non-third-world-marginalizing glory

    the standard mercator projection exaggerates area at high latitudes, so western and northern countries seem falsely large… greenland aint that big

  2. Wonderful post Ennis!!!!!!

    I think these here are cartograms, which are quite different from projections. It’s true that the Mercator happens to make Greenland huge, but most people aren’t aware that the reason it was created was to make navigation easy, not anything more sinister. Since navigation dominated the early production of maps, it became the default map.

    One thing to note about these cartograms–they seem to lump the Islands of Indonesia and Malaysia onto the Asian continent, so you might not realize that the little orange square int the AD 1650 is actually Australia.

    I kind of wish they had made each country its own color, instead of each continent.

  3. Razib? I imagine you know …

    My guess is that it’s in the 10s of millions, and at the low end. It’s much smaller than the Chinese diaspora …

  4. The license we give Razib these days. 🙂
    Razib, man, you can just throw out any number you want and we’ll take it…

  5. The license we give Razib these days. 🙂 Razib, man, you can just throw out any number you want and we’ll take it…

    HA HA HA HA!!!!!

  6. i do recall a # around 10 million or so being regularly referenced by people like joel kotkin and stuff, but we can get a good impression by the nations out there with the most browns.

    USA 1.7 mil cite canada 1 mil cite UK 2.2 mil (4% of england wales pop. according to UK census, so 55 mill * .04) (from cia factbook) south africa 1.1 mil mauritius .8 mil guyana .375 trin & to. .44 mil fiji .4 mil

    that’s 8 mill for a lowbound. though i doubt you would hit more than a million in other places, there aren’t that many browns in east africa, other parts of europe (pakistanis in norway), hong kong, southeast asia, etc.

    also, re: the chinese diaspora, if you delete south east asia, the diaspora is a LOT more comparable to the browns. the thing is that SE asia being part of the chinese diaspora is like adding tamils in sri lanka to the brown diaspora, places like thailand (around 5-10% chinese), malaysia and indonesia have always had large chinese populations which shuttle back and forth between them and fujian province. the chinese enclaves are really part of greater china, and western malaya is now majority chinese, as is singapore. bangkok is a strongly chinese tinted city, though intermarriage between the chinese and thai is high so there is a lot of blurriness (the thai royal family has recent chinese ancestry, though it has been involved in anti-chinese activism in the 20th century).

  7. It’s true that the Mercator happens to make Greenland huge, but most people aren’t aware that the reason it was created was to make navigation easy, not anything more sinister. Since navigation dominated the early production of maps, it became the default map.

    true, it’s been wrongly used as a general map, regardless of intention the ends were negative

    on the wiki they mention that everyone’s moving away from them, good news

  8. Malaysia is 7% Indian nevertheless, so thats another 1.6 million, which makes the 10m figure reasonable.

  9. ah, good catch!

    Don’t worry, you still da man 🙂 Also the Middle East, though I believe the majority of the fellas there are guest workers, not sure. My bro just got back from Dubai and said it may as well be a Pakistani city.

  10. this is awsome. but it doesn’t take into account the countries that are poly-ethnic b/c of immigration. that just messes the color scheme all up

    i think its very interesting to compare argentina to mexico in terms that go beyond “those countries have brown people in them”. same with the UK or the US or France. Those countries are not monolithic.

    i wish India had a tradition of immigration like the US or UK, and there was a swiss diaspora living in calcutta that created a hybrid indian-swiss dance music that was sweeping the country

  11. Not to sound negative, but isn’t this further cause for racism? Looking at future projections from that site, the so called ‘white’ populations are drastically shrinking. I’m not even white and that causes a little concern to me. Not from a racial context, but because it just appears so odd.

  12. I’m not even white and that causes a little concern to me. Not from a racial context, but because it just appears so odd.

    But why? A low birthrate is a consequence of western-style prosperity, though it has infected Russia as well, which is not so prosperous at the moment.

    The very young world will have to deal with a very old (and presumably conservative) West and Japan in the next fifty years. Such a small number of people with such a disproportionately large share of the world’s land will be called into question, and maybe even challenged by continued illegal immigration or otherwise.

    Look at giant Indonesia with its hundreds of millions perched above (relatively) sparsely populated Australia. How long can that last?

  13. this is awsome. but it doesn’t take into account the countries that are poly-ethnic b/c of immigration. that just messes the color scheme all up

    Why? They’re just listing the number of people in each country, not their ethnicity. There is no claim that the country is monoethnic …

  14. “Why? They’re just listing the number of people in each country, not their ethnicity. There is no claim that the country is monoethnic … “

    Nationalism and ethnicity are related in a lot of people’s minds. I thought it would be interesting to make each nation, especially the multi-ethnic ones, reflect that they’re not comprised of just one group. just an idea, don’t worry about it

  15. Re: Indian populations around the world, I wonder if, several generations down the line, persons outside of India with Indian ancestry will stop classifying themselsves as any part Indian?

    I recently met a person who looked like she was assuredly of Indian descent. I asked her what her ethnicity was, and she said Afro-Carribean by way of Guyana. She said that maybe (emphasis hers) one of her ancestors was Indian. A sign of things to come?

  16. Re: Indian populations around the world, I wonder if, several generations down the line, persons outside of India with Indian ancestry will stop classifying themselsves as any part Indian?

    It’s very likely. Just look at African-Americans in the United States and some White Americans as well. At least 50% of the African-Americans in the US have some white ancestry and certain white families (notably, descendants of Thomas Jefferson and his kin) have black ancestry. The thing is, if it wasn’t for certain states’ racist laws like those of Lousiana, for example,(though I they’ve long since been repealed), whites/blacks would never remember that they’re 1/8 or 1/16 or 1/32 black/white.

  17. I recently met a person who looked like she was assuredly of Indian descent. I asked her what her ethnicity was, and she said Afro-Carribean by way of Guyana. She said that *maybe* (emphasis hers) one of her ancestors was Indian. A sign of things to come?

    Do you think this might be b/c of the different immigration experience of East Indians in the West Indians and also the high level of intermarriage?

  18. Re: Indian populations around the world, I wonder if, several generations down the line, persons outside of India with Indian ancestry will stop classifying themselsves as any part Indian?

    That would probably depend on the host population. Americans and Canadians seem very amenable to marriages with Indians; some other nationalities are not. In Trinidad, the Africans and the Indians are quite divided right now, though there obviously has been intermarriage.

    And then Indian themselves are not the most prone to marry out. Religion plays a part too. A Hindu may not want to marry a Christian or a Muslim, and vice versa.

    In India itself, if the matrimonials are any guide, the endogamy mandated by the caste system is showing no real signs of waning among Hindus, Sikhs, Muslims or Christians. Even the Dalit Buddhists look for spouses from their community.

  19. In India itself, if the matrimonials are any guide, the endogamy mandated by the caste system is showing no real signs of waning among Hindus, Sikhs, Muslims or Christians. Even the Dalit Buddhists look for spouses from their community.

    Ah, that is true. Religion is a much bigger factor in Indian marriages than it is in most other ethnic groups.

  20. “I recently met a person who looked like she was assuredly of Indian descent. I asked her what her ethnicity was, and she said Afro-Carribean by way of Guyana. She said that maybe (emphasis hers) one of her ancestors was Indian. A sign of things to come?”

    i’ve noticed that about Guyanese people with some indian ancestery as well. it seems like its got to do with the immigration experience of people who went there. I don’t know, but I think its kind of cool that Guyanese people feel that way

  21. The world is turning brown.

    Call it a flight of fancy but I forsee a world where Yellow and Brown dominate .

    If I were a member of the KKK ,I’d either be ca-ca ing my pants brown or micturating yellow .

    Footnote: Interesting read , btw.

  22. In India itself, if the matrimonials are any guide, the endogamy mandated by the caste system is showing no real signs of waning among Hindus, Sikhs, Muslims or Christians. Even the Dalit Buddhists look for spouses from their community. Actually No. The intercast arranged marriages are happening at much faster rates now. Though they still havent started happening btn say a higher caste and lower ones.

  23. Add another few million desis from the Gulf.

    Saudi Arabia – 1.4 million Indians, 1 million Bangladeshis, 900k Pakistanis, and 130k sri lankans. – 3.4 million South Asian.

    UAE – 50% of 4 million. (2 million “south asian”)

    Kuwaiti newspaper reports estimate the Indian (citizen population) of Kuwait to be 400-500,000, and the state department claims that 39% of the population of 2.8 million (~ 1.1 million) is non-Arab, and taking away 300k for Iranians, Filipino, and others, that leaves an upper bound of ~ 800k South Asians

    And add ~300k for Oman, Bahrain, and Qatar, for a maximum of 6.6 million South Asians in the Gulf, of which half or more are Indian citizens.