Ah, so I had recently discovered BVHTrees! And was very much looking forward to to using them for the next phase: efficiently detecting overlaps of all objects in one collection (e.g. countries, in this example) with another (e.g. lakes). docs.blender.org/api/current/… looks very promising. While it is evidently much, much better at detecting, I am still on my own with regards to actually making the modifications, correct?

It worked, but it boggles my mind that there is not a simpler way.

I added a link to my particular SVG file at the bottom of my post. I feel that my question concerns more how to do this with many curves making up a plane, rather than doing it with a single plane/curve. I apologize if I did not articulate this well in my original post.

Ah, so when I attempt to implement the link, I get stuck at the same place (adding the deform modifiers). If I join the (4958 total) curves together I lose the ability to select individual nations/states on the globe once it is formed. But if I do not join the curves, I cannot use deform modifiers on a group of curves, only individual ones. As in, the option is not present.

Thanks for the fast reply! I am trying it right now, will reply with my results as soon as I am finished.

I tried that before and it went horribly wrong (so wrong that I could not replicate it and I wish I'd taken screenshots). Tried again and it worked fantastically; post has been updated to reflect this.