The idea that retaining a map which distorting the sizes of countries is a Eurocentric conspiracy against equatorial countries was originally made by Peters whe

The idea that retaining a map which distorting the sizes of countries is a Eurocentric conspiracy against equatorial countries was originally made by Peters when pushing his equal area projection in the 1970s and 80s It's a pretty tendentious argument though, since in addition to it obviously not being the original intent, people don't draw the conclusion that Greenland is a mighty state, the US is subordinate to Canada and the Middle East is a small and inconsequential backwater from map projections, and if people did gauge power and wealth from map projections, the Mercator projection would actually understate the actual relative power and influence of Western Europe anyway (and Peters massively overstates arid underpopulated regions and is barely any better at putting India's sixth of the world population in context). Plus of course, the Mercator projection is still better for local navigation anyway.