World Maps and the Coloniality of Power
What if the world map in your room was upside down?
If the Earth is a spheroid, who gets to decide which regions lie at the top and which are pushed to the bottom? Who gets to decide the nomenclature of ‘Global North’ and ‘Global South?’ Why does Greenland, which is 14 times smaller than Africa, appear strangely equal?
Just turn the map upside down. The world does not change, but your worldview does.
For the longest time, world maps have implicitly conditioned our self-perception in foreign lands and perception of nations, which reflects in visions of being the ‘voice of the Global South.’ What I attempt to problematize in this article is the erection of binaries, the imposition of an inferior binary on the basis of a historical fact and more so, the tacit acceptance of that inferiority by those nations that now, have the will and the capacity to challenge such Eurocentric constructions.
Anibal Quijano’s concept of the coloniality of power (Quijano 2000) draws attention to the global hierarchies that position Europe and subsequently, the US, at the center of the politico-economic order. This is reinforced by the coloniality of knowledge, which exposes how Western epistemology positions itself as universal and neutral, thereby erasing the geo-political location from which it speaks, a position Walter Mignolo calls the “hubris of the zero point” (Mignolo 2000).
I seek to contend that Quijano’s coloniality of power extends beyond political and economic order to also accord favorable positions to Europe and US geographically on the world map. The Mercator’s projection which had long been the standard (until the ’Equal Earth’ projection of 2018) is a colonial construction that now appears as universal and thus, neutral (to borrow Mignolo’s coloniality of knowledge).
The Mercator Projection, which is a conformal projection (preserves angles), was introduced by Flemish mapmaker Gerardus Mercator in 1569 to help sailors navigate the world. In this sense, its very introduction served a colonial motive. Although it preserves angles (which makes it useful for navigation, including modern-day GPS navigation), it inflates the size of lands as we move away from the equator. Therefore, landmasses such as Greenland and Antarctica appear much greater than they actually are. This West-centric view has been criticized by Mark Monmonier in his 2004 work- Rhumb Lines and Map Wars: A Social History of the Mercator Projection, who calls it a clear example of ‘Western cultural hegemony.’ Indian Express reports that Rabah Arezki, former economist at the World Bank contends that the Mercator projection was a political tool that contributed to the ‘Scramble for Africa.’
Over time, the Gall projection (1855), the Robinson projection (1963) and the Winkel Tripel projection (1921) came to represent the structure of the world more accurately. In 2018, the ‘Equal Earth’ projection was backed by the United Nations which adopted a Togo-sponsored resolution, by 164 votes to one, with the United States voting against and six countries abstaining. The opposition of the US to the proposal warrants attention.
This piece raises more questions than it answers. Does geography have any role to play in the categorizations of Global South and North? If so, why are Australia and New Zealand considered Global North countries and why is China considered a Global South country? As India and China proclaim to be the ‘voices of the Global South’, why should we conform to an ascribed identity that continues to delegitimize our progress?
If decoloniality is the product of epistemic disobedience (as Mignolo argues), perhaps the first step is to walk up to that world map in your room and turn it upside down.
References:
Explained Desk. (2026, September 5). UN adopts Equal Earth map: Why no flat map can accurately depict Earth. The Indian Express.
Carpenter, Y. (2025, October 13). Colonialism, coloniality and decoloniality. Decolonial Centre. https://decolonialcentre.org/2025/10/13/colonialism-coloniality-and-decoloniality/
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