[1] The text states that the kingdom of Balnibarbi is part of a continent which extends itself "eastward to that unknown tract of America westward of California and northward of the Pacific Ocean",[2] and places it southeast of Luggnagg, which is "situated to the North-West".

[8] However Munodi reported that he was under pressure to tear down his house and tenant farms and rebuild them in the modern manner, or be censured for pride and incur the wrath of his majesty.

[9] Munodi explained that some forty years previously, some persons from the land had travelled to the flying island, and having come back with ”a very little smattering of mathematicks” but full of “volatile spirits” acquired in that region, had come to dislike the management of all things below, and fell to forming schemes to put “all arts, sciences, languages and mechanicks” on a new footing.

Maldonada is described in the text as being 150 miles from the capital, Lagado, on the kingdom's Pacific coast (i.e., to the south) and that the island of Luggnagg, which is 100 leagues distant to the north-west.

The target of Swift's satire in Balnibarbi is its “Projectors” (who are described as "inventors or planners of political, social, financial or scientific schemes... which are wild or impractical"[15]) rather than science per se, which is generally commended:[16] He also “aim(s) to discredit the Newtonian Whig intelligentsia...and to ridicule anything remotely connected to the Dutch”:[17] Higgins reports scholars have identified the academy as referring to the Royal Society in London, the Dublin Philosophical Society, and the University of Leiden.