Country shapes
Why a country is long and thin, wraps a river, or has a panhandle.
- Why Afghanistan has a panhandleA strip 13 km wide in places, drawn so the British and Russian empires wouldn’t touch.
- Why Alaska is AmericanRussia sold it to the United States in 1867 for $7.2 million, about two cents an acre.
- Why Bolivia has no coastBolivia had a Pacific coast until 1879. A tax on a Chilean nitrate company started the war that took it.
- Why Canada’s border is so straightAlberta and Saskatchewan were drawn on paper in 1905; their borders weren’t fully surveyed until the 1960s.
- Why Chile is so long and thinAbout 4,300 km long and on average under 180 km wide, set by the Andes and a war.
- Why Croatia is a crescentCroatia’s inner border is largely where the Ottoman Empire stopped, fixed by peace treaties in 1699–1791.
- Why DR Congo has only a tiny coastAfrica’s second-largest country has just 40 km of coast, a corridor Portugal granted in 1885.
- Why Egypt reaches into AsiaEgypt’s Sinai is in Asia. Britain threatened the Ottomans with its navy in 1906 to keep it Egyptian.
- Why Indonesia stretches so farIndonesia is 17,500 islands spanning one-eighth of the way round the Earth: 5,100 km from east to west.
- Why Italy is a bootThe boot is a mountain range, pushed up where Africa and Europe collide.
- Why Lesotho is a country inside South AfricaA mountain kingdom completely surrounded by South Africa, and never part of it.
- Why Malawi wraps a lake840 km long and as little as 10 km wide: the land Britain held around one lake and the river draining it.
- Why Malaysia is in two halvesMalaysia’s two halves are 640 km apart across the South China Sea, joined by an agreement signed in 1963.
- Why Mongolia sits between two giantsOuter Mongolia broke from China in 1911; Inner Mongolia stayed. That left Mongolia with just two neighbours.
- Why Namibia has a panhandleStraight lines on the map, and a 450 km strip Germany asked for to reach the Zambezi.
- Why Norway is so longNorway is one side of a mountain range: 1,700 km long, and only 6 km wide at one fjord.
- Why Oman comes in piecesOman’s exclaves follow which ruler each village chose when Britain drew the lines in the 1950s.
- Why Panama is an SPanama bends so much that the Panama Canal’s Pacific end is 40 km east of its Atlantic end.
- Why Russia is so bigNearly twice the size of Canada across 11 time zones, and once it reached into North America.
- Why San Marino is a country inside ItalyIts borders were set in 1463, and in 1797 it said no to more land from Napoleon.
- Why so many US borders are straightColorado was defined as a box on the globe. On the ground, surveyors’ errors gave it hundreds of sides.
- Why Somalia is a 7Somalia is shaped like a tilted 7: two colonial coasts joined in 1960, wrapped around Ethiopia’s Ogaden.
- Why Thailand looks like an elephant’s headThailand’s elephant-head outline is what Siam kept after giving land to France and Britain in 1893–1909.
- Why The Gambia follows a riverA country along both banks of one river, and what Britain kept when it split the region with France.
- Why Togo is a thin stripTogo has 51 km of coast and runs 515 km inland: a German colony squeezed between British and French ones.
- Why Vietnam is an STwo river deltas joined by a coastal strip only 50 km wide, built by centuries of expansion south.
- Why Zambia is shaped like a butterflyA wedge of DR Congo nearly splits Zambia in two, and its western edge was drawn by the King of Italy.
Why countries are shaped the way they are
A country's shape is its history drawn on the land. Chile is long and thin because it lies between the Andes and the Pacific. The Gambia is a strip along a river because that's what Britain held when the border with French Senegal was agreed. Namibia's Caprivi Strip exists because Germany wanted a route to the Zambezi in 1890.
Panhandles, corridors, wrap-around shapes and straight edges each tend to have a reason: a river someone wanted, a railway, a mountain range or a line drawn on a map far away. The articles here take one shape at a time and explain it.