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This map charts the journey of Holt S. Hallett as he searched for a suitable route for a railway to transport British goods from Burma to Thailand and China. He wrote the book ‘A Thousand Miles on an Elephant in the Shan States’ about his expedition.

A map of Siam (Thailand) and parts of Burma (Myanmar), Cambodia and Laos, focusing on the river networks, and the mountain ranges which are represented by hachures: short lines/dashes that give a sense of the shape and steepness of terrain.

This map of mainland Southeast Asia has colour-coded borders: Burmah (Myanmar) in red, Siam (Thailand) in brown, and Anam (Vietnam) in green. The British territory of Penang is also bordered in red. Independent areas are bordered in grey.

On this hand-drawn and coloured map of Asia, the colours differentiate the colonial territories of the European powers: for example, New Guinea is divided into Dutch, British and German areas, and Borneo is split between the British and Dutch.

This mid-19th century map of Asia has colour-coded borders that show the beginnings of the emergence of the modern nation states of Southeast Asia, such as Laos, Burmah (Burma), Siam (Thailand) and Malaya (Malaysia).