Regnum Chinae The Printed Western Maps Of China To 1735

This study reproduces and describes, for the first time, all the maps of China printed in Europe between 1584 and 1735, unravelling the origin of each individual map, their different printing, issues and publication dates.

From the 17th century onwards, in a context of increasingly intense trade and diplomatic contacts, the exchange of scientific ideas became a key element in the encounters between the European world and the cultures of the Far East. This volume investigates the ways in which scientific knowledge was transferred and disseminated to new audiences, whose cultural background was very different from that in which such knowledge had originally developed. A vital role in this process was played by the Jesuit mission in China, whose members included intellectuals with a keen interest in cross-cultural comparison. The study of the local languages enabled the transfer of knowledge in both directions, through translations of existing texts and the production of new ones for both Chinese and European audiences. The papers in the volume, authored by specialists in various fields of cultural studies, highlight the intellectual effort and strategies by which scientific works were made available and understandable beyond cultural differences. The volume will be welcome to those interested not only in cultural interactions between Europe and the Far East, but also in translation studies, particularly in the dissemination of scientific knowledge.

When European missionaries arrived in East Asia in the sixteenth century, they entered ongoing conversations about cosmology and world geography. Soon after, intellectuals in Ming China, Edo Japan, and Joseon Korea selectively encompassed elements of the late Renaissance worldview, leading to the creation of new artifacts that mitigated old and new knowledge in creative ways. Simultaneously, missionaries and their collaborators transcribed, replicated, and recombined from East Asian artifacts and informed European audiences about the newly discovered lands known as the “Far East.” All these new artifacts enjoyed long afterlives that ensured the continuous remapping of the world in the following decades and centuries. Focusing on artifacts, this expansively illustrated volume tells the story of a meeting of worldviews. Tracing the connections emanating from each artifact, the authors illuminate how every map, globe, or book was shaped by the intellectual, social, and material cultures of East Asia, while connecting multiple global centers of learning and print culture. Crossing both historical and historiographical boundaries reveals how this series of artifacts embody a continuous and globally connected process of mapping the world, rather than a grand encounter between East and West. As such, this book rewrites the narrative surrounding the so-called “Ricci Maps,” which assumes that one Jesuit missionary brought scientific cartography to East Asia by translating and adapting a Renaissance world map. It argues for a revision of that narrative by emphasizing process and connectivity, displacing the European missionary and “his map” as central actors that supposedly bridged a formidable civilizational divide between Europe and China. Rather than a single map authored by a European missionary, a series of materially different artifacts were created as a result of discussions between the Jesuit Matteo Ricci and his Chinese contacts during the last decades of Ming rule. Each of these gave rise to the production of new artifacts that embodied broader intellectual conversations. By presenting eleven original chapters by Asian, European, and American scholars, this work covers an extensive range of artifacts and crosses boundaries between China, Japan, Korea, and the global pathways that connected them to the other end of the Eurasian landmass.

In Companions in Geography Mario Cams revisits the early 18th century mapping of Qing China, without doubt one of the largest cartographic endeavours of the early modern world. Commonly seen as a Jesuit initiative, the project appears here as the result of a convergence of interests among the French Academy of Sciences, the Jesuit order, and the Kangxi emperor (r. 1661-1722). These connections inspired the gradual integration of European and East Asian scientific practices and led to a period of intense land surveying, executed by large teams of Qing officials and European missionaries. The resulting maps and atlases, all widely circulated across Eurasia, remained the most authoritative cartographic representations of continental East Asia for over a century. This book is based on Dr. Mario Cams' dissertation, which has been awarded the "2017 DHST Prize for Young Scholars" from the International Union of the History and Philosophy of Science and Technology, Division of History of Science and Technology (IUHPST/DHST).

For nearly two thousand years the Chinese Emporer, self-proclaimed ruler of `All under Heaven', demanded the obedience not only of his subjects within China but also of peoples throughout the known world. Maps played a crucial role in the administration of this vast system of states. Charts of foreign lands and images of the `barbarians' that populated them presented the world as the Chinese wanted it to be seen: with the Middle Kingdom as lord and other states as vassals paying tribute to it. In this richly illustrated history, Richard J. Smithshows how the Chinese depicted foreign lands and peoples in maps and encyclopedias through the centuries. He discusses the debates surrounding the production of maps, as well as their technical aspects and political, military and administrative uses. Reproductions of many of the most beautiful and noteworthy maps of the Chinese world accompany the text. More than simple refelections of the lands and peoples they depict, these maps and illustrations are documents that reveal the evolving values of the grand and powerful society that produced them

Charlotte Harris Rees is an independent researcher, a retired federal employee, and an honors graduate of Columbia International University. She has diligently studied the possibility of very early arrival of Chinese to America. In 2003 Rees and her brother took the Harris Map Collection to the Library of Congress where it remained for three years while being studied. In 2006 she published an abridged version of her father's, The Asiatic Fathers of America: Chinese Discovery and Colonization of Ancient America. Her Secret Maps of the Ancient World came out in 2008. In 2011 she released Chinese Sailed to America Before Columbus: More Secrets from the Dr. Hendon M. Harris, Jr. Map Collection. In 2013 she published Did Ancient chinese Explore America? Her books are listed by World Confederation of Institutes and Libraries for Chinese Overseas Studies.

This book analyzes the drawing data and methods of the Chinese ancient maps that are neglected by the previous researches, and reevaluates the drawing theories and methods, the influences, and accuracy of the maps that represents the scientificity of Chinese ancient cartographic drawings.