Lines of Intent

This project presents an interactive data visualization examining how political borders across Central Europe, the Middle East, and Post-colonial Africa were redrawn through war, empire, and diplomacy across 18 key historical moments between 1914 and 2003. The central argument is that borders are not natural or permanent — they are human decisions, made in specific rooms on specific dates, and the visualization is designed to make that visible.

Methodology: Three regions were selected to represent distinct patterns of geopolitical change: the collapse of European empires following the World Wars, the imposition of colonial mandates across the Middle East, and the decolonisation of Africa. Each region is examined across six historically significant dates corresponding to treaties, wars, independence movements, or territorial settlements.

Techniques: The hand-drawn sketchy aesthetic was produced using the roughsf R package, which converts spatial geometries into pencil-style paths via the rough.js engine. This rendering choice is intentional and borders drawn in pencil look provisional and erasable, reinforcing the project's argument. The interactive animation was built entirely in R using Quarto: boundary data was serialised to GeoJSON and embedded as JavaScript variables alongside the rough.js library into a single self-contained HTML file, rendered in the browser with no external network dependency.

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For inquiries regarding the contents of this dataset, please contact the Corresponding Author listed in the README.txt file. Administrative inquiries (e.g., removal requests, trouble downloading, etc.) can be directed to data-management@arizona.edu


This item is part of University of Arizona Libra… and was awarded first place in the graduate/professional student category.