The Ethnographic Map of Europe () is a 1918 ethnographic map published in Lausanne, Switzerland, by the Lithuanian politician and public figure Juozas Gabrys-Parà ¡aitis. In addition to depicting all the various ethnicities living in Europe and Asia Minor, it also served to justify the widest extension of a renascent independent Lithuania to the participants of the Paris Peace Conference, just as Lithuania was regaining its independence.
The preparation and publication of the map were carried out under the auspices of the Lithuanian Information Bureau and financed by the Lithuanian diaspora in the United States, as well as by the German-organized . The map was printed by the well-known Swiss publishing house . The publication was deliberately dedicated to US President Woodrow Wilson, who had proclaimed the principle of national self-determination and was considered the main arbiter in the post-war reorganization of Europe.
Gabrys's main goal was to visually demonstrate the maximum territorial expanse of the Lithuanian state in order to compel other countries to take its interests into account.
When compiling the map, Gabrys used data from the 1897 Russian Empire census and a map by the German researcher ; however, these sources were adapted to serve specific political goals. The main feature of the 1918 map was the absence of shading for mixed ethnic territories, a technique the author had still used in 1917. Ethnographic Lithuania was depicted in solid red, with minimal shading, and its borders included the entire Vilna Governorate along with the city of Vilnius (with the exception of the Dzisna and Vileyka uyezds), as well as most of the Grodno, Suwaà Âki, and Minsk governorates. This area almost entirely coincided with the administrative boundaries of the German occupation zone of Ober Ost.
All geographical names within the boundaries of this defined Lithuania were presented in a dual format: the Lithuanian name was printed in bold, accompanied by its Russian or German equivalent. For the rest of Europe, only the local original names were used.
The map was actively distributed among Western diplomats, as between 1918 and 1919, it went through five editions, with only the cover color changing. The publication provoked categorical protests from Polish and Belarusian national figures, who disputed the territorial claims, because they themselves claimed that territory. Polish linguist Kazimierz Nitsch pointed out that Gabrys artificially doubled the Lithuanian ethnic territory compared to its actual extent, which negatively reflected on Polish interests on the international stage.
Belarusian nationalists, who failed to succesfully establish the Belarusian People's Republic, criticized the map for not depicting the Belarusians in a way that they saw fit. In October 1919, the Kaunas-based journal Chasopis Ministerstva belaruskikh sprau (edited by Jazep Varonka) published an indignant review titled "A False Map":