1957 Luong Vietnamese Pictorial Map of World Ethnicities

This is a 1957 Lượng Vietnamese pictorial map of the world's ethnicities. The map, situated at center, depicts the entire world and is framed by illustrations of different representatives of the world's ethnicities (read: nationalities) in traditional dress. Dashed lines from most of the sketches connect the figures with their country of origin, although not all are marked in such fashion. The United States, for example, is situated in the top left corner and is personified by a man in an outfit straight out of an Old West John Wayne movie and a Native American chief in a headdress as tall as he is. The French, who, if the date we have assigned to this map is correct were just beaten by the Vietnamese in the French Indochina War, are just to the right of the Americans. Numerous other traditional costumes are illustrated for countries all over the world, including Germany, Russia, China, India, Tibet, Algeria, Morocco, and Mexico. Each caricature is labeled, interestingly, in either Vietnamese or French, but never both. A table in the lower left corner of the map provides the viewer with the population of the Earth at of 1957 and a list of the five most populous continents and the four most populated countries. The whole is surrounded by a border made up of national flags which, just as curiously, are labeled in either Vietnamese or French, but not both.

Publication History

This map was drawn by Lượng and published in 1957. This is the only known example.