Not everything that happens over an area of hundreds of thousands of square miles can be contained on a sheet of paper. The cartographer selects the items he wishes to represent on theoretical grounds. His job is to synthesise, simplify and omit, and his final product is a filtered document. The map is simplified to make it legible. In so doing, the author imbues it with his own vision of the world and his own priorities.
Maps are subject to all kinds of manipulation, from the crudest to the most subtle.
They are eminently political objects, and governments rightly consider them an effective propaganda tool. A few examples from the Arab world will serve to illustrate this. The day after the invasion of Kuwait by Iraqi troops, Saddam Hussein appeared on television with a new official map on which Kuwait was shown as a province of Iraq. For many years the Moroccan government censured all publications containing maps that distinguished between Morocco and former Spanish Sahara. Even a dotted line between the two territories was enough for the publication to be banned.