This satirical map from 1870 shows a Europe in crisis, bristling with tensions which would, come July that year, erupt into the Franco-Prussian war. The conflict’s political fall-out – French humiliation at the loss of Alsace-Lorraine and British fears about a now unified and much more powerful Germany – would play a major role in the outbreak of world war one more than 40 years later. For all its serious subject matter the map manages to lend a little humour to the affair, with each nation anthropomorphised as a comical caricature. Prussia is depicted as the enormous walrus-like figure of the “Iron Chancellor” himself, Otto von Bismarck. France, kitted out as a Zouave soldier from French north Africa, is seen heroically repelling the Prussian sprawl (it is worth pointing out that the map was first published in France). (Source: RwPixel / Library of Congress)