This poster, designed by the British illustrator James Gardner, was originally published by Imperial Airways in 1937. This particular copy is a print from 1938, a year later.
Imperial Airways was the airline with the world’s most extensive network in the 1930s, covering 40,000 kilometres in 1938, but it was a company focused on luxury passengers and with low passenger numbers. Between 1934 and 1939, it carried only around 10,000 passengers a year on some 500 flights. Imperial Airways lagged behind other European airlines such as KLM and Lufthansa, but the reality is that its importance was more geopolitical than commercial: it highlighted the connectivity between different parts of the British Empire.
Gardner’s world map contains three layers of information simultaneously. Political borders are omitted, and only the Empire’s territories are shown, shaded in red. To better illustrate the choice of different routes, the map also depicts the world’s most significant landforms in shades of black and grey. Finally, Gardner includes the Imperial Airways routes, but on a very large scale to convey a sense of their scope:
- The routes in operation in 1937 are shown in red and yellow, whether they were operated by Imperial Airways or other partner airlines.
- Routes planned or under consideration by Imperial Airways or other partner airlines are shown in a paler shade of red or dotted yellow.
- Routes operated by other airlines are shown in green.
To some extent, this map is not merely a description of Imperial Airways’ routes, but an attempt to put on paper a position of power and reach that was far from reflecting the reality of the airline. Just two years after this map was published, Imperial Airways was taken over by the British Overseas Airways Corporation, another airline that would eventually become part of what is now British Airways.
You can find this map and others like it in this article: Airline map monograph.
Sources
Español 
English (UK)