The world in 1990

Why this year has a page

The year of Gulf War (dated events index, Wikidata).

Names on the map

As the map labels them, largest first by the area of the outline drawn. Areas are of the drawn outline, rounded, and approximate. The record column says which record draws the outline; a Wikidata item is given where the record links one.

What changed since 1989

Names counted are those the records date to the year or the day (CShapes, OpenHistoricalMap, Cliopatria). Outlines filled from the nearest historical-basemaps sheet are counted only when both years are years that sheet was drawn for — otherwise the change would be the switch between two sheets, not a change in the world. Names are compared as written, so a polity a record names differently in the two years (Carthaginian Empire, then Carthage) is in both lists.

← Earlier: 1989Later: 1992 →

Events dated to 1990

Every record of IntMap’s one index of dated events whose date falls in this year: what the border record (CShapes 2.0) states about its own outlines, IntMap’s war record, and the world events Wikidata dates — each with its source and the precision of its date.

1. 1990

   Human Genome Project

   research program for sequencing the human genome

   founded 1990 · Wikidata Q192446

2. 1990

   The map begins drawing Namibia; the map stops drawing South West Africa (South Africa)

   the border record (CShapes 2.0) · 1990-03-21

   On this day →
3. 1990

   The map stops drawing South Yemen; new borders for North Yemen

   the border record (CShapes 2.0) · 1990-05-22

   On this day →
4. 1990

   Gulf War

   1990–1991 conflict between Iraq and a 42-country coalition

   began 1990-08-02 · Wikidata Q37643

5. 1990

   The map begins drawing Germany; the map stops drawing West Germany, East Germany

   the border record (CShapes 2.0) · 1990-10-03

   On this day →

Sources and method

Borders and names: CShapes 2.0 (Schvitz et al. 2022, icr.ethz.ch/data/cshapes) · CC BY-NC-SA 4.0 + Cliopatria v0.2.1 (Seshat Global History Databank, github.com/Seshat-Global-History-Databank/cliopatria) · CC BY 4.0 · adapted by IntMap: simplified, BC years made astronomical, and the ground OpenHistoricalMap (1689–1885, and from 1886 where CShapes is silent) and CShapes (1886–2019) state removed on their own dates.

Which years have a page is worked out when the site is built, from three rules applied to the records themselves: every year the historical-basemaps atlas drew a world sheet for; every year whose change from the year before (names the dated records begin or stop drawing) is in the top 5% of all such year-to-year changes since the dated records begin, leaving out the years where one record hands over to another; and every year of a geopolitical, war or revolution event in the dated events index, up to the last year the border records cover (2019).

On each year the map is read on 1 July, the instant the app’s own year links open on. Names are the source’s own, translated where the source or IntMap’s name table has a translation. A name is what a record draws there, not a verdict of history.

World map in 1990 — the map, with the years it stays the same Historical maps by region Countries On this day

All data sources →