It is impossible to project a globe onto a sheet of paper without compromise. Distances, areas, directions and angles cannot all be preserved at once. Something must be sacrificed when three dimensions are forced into two. Hence, there is nothing improper about preferring one map projection over another. But the quarrel over the Mercator projection soon becomes identity politics. And so it inherits every vice of that style of argument: it is anachronistic, reductionist, and charged with unspoken insinuations about colonial guilt and the inherited sin of white people. The Mercator projection of 1569 was a stroke of genius for the purpose it was meant to serve. Mercator’s map was a navigational instrument. Its decisive property was that it rendered directions and angles truly: a line of constant compass bearing appears as a straight line. To secure that property, a faithful representation of area had to be given up. But as already said: one cannot have everything when a sphere must be drawn as a plane. One has to choose. It is therefore almost intolerable to hear the insinuation that Mercator was some kind of racist, intent on striking Africans with an inflated Greenland. We should honour Gerardus Mercator for what he was: one of the great cartographers in the history of the craft. The author of a projection whose charts, for centuries, helped generations of seafarers across the open ocean - long before longitude could be determined with any reliability at sea.