Sunday, July 5, 2009

Citroen and their Balkan confusion

I was sent the link here, which shows a scan from a publication which appears to come from the car manufacturers Citroen and to date from 2009.

All looks fine until one looks more closely at the Balkans on this map.



Slovenia has expanded southwards, absorbing Croatia proper (including the capital, Zagreb) and Istria. Croatia has become but a rump of its former self, but has absorbed about half of Bosnia-Hercegovina, which is but a memory, as it's nowhere to be found on this map.

Citroen have succeeded where Slobodan Milosovic failed, and created a greater Serbia, including the Croatian area of Slavonia (and thus giving it a common border with Slovenia), Montenegro, Kosovo and a big chunk of Bosnia. In fact, only Macedonia is shown correctly, and even then the border has been drawn very approximately.

In fact, it looks as though somebody has taken a pre-1991 map showing Yugoslavia, and drawn in some borders where they think they might be, clearly more in hope than in expectation. Is a reminder needed of the number of people who died or were pushed out of their homes to fix the current borders of those countries? Should Citroen be thoroughly ashamed of publishing such a map?

Should road users everywhere be worried that the level of quality control during the manufacture of their cars matches that applied to their publications?

I do wonder how such errors get through the net - are people too lazy to reach for an atlas?

1 comment:

Keith Underdown said...

The EU or European Parliament once manage to publish a report with a map of Europe on the front cover but without Wales.

Did not go down well with us Cymry and Cymraesau (Welsh Men and Women)