The Minard Map

Alice K Cutter
Mon, 10 Oct 2022 02:01:07 +0000
Week 4, Digital Humanities, reflection

I’ve always known that it’s not a good idea to invade Russia in winter but never exactly how bad of an idea. After looking at The Minard Map I have a much better understanding. The Minard map is a graphic visualization of Napoleon Bonaparte’s advance and retreat from Russia in 1812-1813. When you first look at it you notice the striking tan and black bar that snakes its way across the image. As you look closer you realize that this shows the number of people in Napoleon’s army. What starts as a thick line representing lots of people in a matter of months (as shown on one of the axes) is reduced to a thin line. The map is an excellent way to visualize the disastrous campaign because it shows many different categories of information: geography, army’s direction, number of men in the army, time, and temperature. Today the map is considered one of the best visualizations and a landmark one. As someone who does not have a lot of experience looking at historical visualizations I think the chart does a great job at telling a story. You can see many of the perils faced on the journey to and from Moscow. The more you look at the diagram, the more you learn. For example, crossing the Berezina river on the retreat caused Napoleon’s army’s numbers to go from approximately 11% of initial army size to about 6%.

While not an addition to the diagram as is, I think an interesting related data visualization would be to compare Napoleon’s invasion to the Nazi invasion of Russia in 1941. It would be interesting to see if the same temperature factors or river crossings proved to be divisive moments in 1941 as they were in 1812-1813. Through comparison and visual aids, just by looking at an image one might be able to see how 100 years of technological advancement plays a role in the invasion of Russia.