The Republic of Maldives is an island nation consisting of a group of atolls in the Indian Ocean. The Maldives are located south of ► India's Lakshadweep islands, and about seven hundred kilometers (435 mi) south-west of ► Sri Lanka. To the west the ► Seychelles and the ► British Indian Ocean Territory are located. The twenty-six atolls encompass a territory featuring 1,192 islets, roughly two hundred of which are inhabited by people.
This section holds a short summary of the history of the area of present-day Maldives, illustrated with maps, including historical maps of former countries and empires that included present-day Maldives.
The WIKIMEDIA COMMONS Atlas of the World is an organized and commented collection of geographical, political and historical maps available at Wikimedia Commons. The main page is therefore the portal to maps and cartography on Wikimedia. That page contains links to entries by country, continent and by topic as well as general notes and references.
Every entry has an introduction section in English. If other languages are native and/or official in an entity, introductions in other languages are added in separate sections. The text of the introduction(s) is based on the content of the Wikipedia encyclopedia. For sources of the introduction see therefore the Wikipedia entries linked to. The same goes for the texts in the history sections.
Historical maps are included in the continent, country and dependency entries.
The status of various entities is disputed. See the content for the entities concerned.
The maps of former countries that are more or less continued by a present-day country or had a territory included in only one or two countries are included in the atlas of the present-day country. For example the Ottoman Empire can be found in the Atlas of Turkey.
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