Reason for a Vintage Globe with Weird Geography?

Question

I picked up an old globe for a friend who loves maps at a vintage store for a Christmas gift.  It's one of those tin ones that the Ohio Art Company used to make (still makes? not sure, but they're the ones who created Etch-A-Sketch), and when I bought it I didn't look too closely at the actual boundary lines ofthe countries.  When I gave it to my friend he really liked it, but pointed out that parts of the globe contradicted each other.  Palestine had turned into Israel, which should place it after  WWII, but Thailand and Myanmar are still Siam and Burma, Africa is made up of mostly European colonies (I thought it was mostly de-colonized after WWI?), and Manchuria is it's own country.   It's like someone cobbled together parts of different maps and painted it on this globe to confuse some poor little schoolkid.  

Can anyone explain this really weird map?  Date it, maybe, or give a reason why the people at the Ohio Art Company clearly didn't have a grasp on geography?

trimetrov · Accepted Answer

I have to agree with answer #2.  Maps and globes made from between the mid 1930's all the way until the 1960's contained a lot of information that was either quickly outdated or outright disputed. 

World War II carved up a lot of new territories, and as the African nations separated, a map might have been accurate for only a few months. 

Ohio Art isn't exactly well-known for cartography - no doubt their globe is a mish-mash of the best information they could put together at that time.

oldironclub · Answer

I have an atlas from 1941 that shows Israel (as Israel), Siam, Burma, and colonies in Africa, so the globe you describe could be from about the same time. National borders changed a lot just prior to, during, and just after WWII, so maps and globes from that period could easily look strange to people today.

Eduardo A · Answer

Sometimes mapmakers make serious mistakes when laying out maps, you'd be surprised, also if it is a reproduction of an old map, there are bound to have mistakes, there are cases where old maps have imaginary lands such as Mu, Avalon, Atlantis and such, one map I saw once had Great Britain drawn as a teacup! 
Another reason could be that the company that manufactured the globe, mass produced them and really didn't give a thought to what type of map to use...

Reason for a Vintage Globe with Weird Geography?

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