When viewing many maps of the USA showing states a lot of the borders are very defined or angular. When viewing counties of England on a map they are more free flowing and ‘loose’.
Is this for ease of dividing territory on maps? A regional thing? Scale (ie US state compatible to England in size, never mind an English county) ? Are these straight borders actually reminiscent in any way of the actual state lines?
Just curious. As someone brought up studying English history a lot of maps consist of irregular shapes with ‘softer’ borders vs the defined angular borders of maps of the US.
For the most part, you'll notice that eastern states in America have those irregular borders, where as western states are typically defined with straight border lines. This has 2 direct reason. along with many other secondary reasons. The first of which being the eastern states are much " Older " and more densely populated, so the borders were more intensely debated. With that debate Americans decided that Natural landmarks such as mountains and rivers provided a clearly defined border. This is where you get those jagged and jutting border, much like they are in Europe. The 2nd, mostly pertaining to western states. Was that, There is massive amount of land with relatively little or no human population. Its easy to just draw a square and say " This is now Colorado " With little to no conjecture from its local population.