Maps structure and help us envision our understanding of the geographic space around us. The earliest maps in Chinese were excavated from tombs dating back to the fourth to the first century BCE and were produced on a variety of material ranging from bronze to silk and wood. The first extant maps of the whole Chinese empire and the first world maps date to the twelfth century CE. From the seventeenth century onwards, Chinese mapmakers exchanged their knowledge with mapmakers from Europe who visited the Ming and Qing empires, placing the developments of Chinese mapping into the global history of science.
Beyond simply studying what was depicted on a map, we can analyse maps to understand the history of contacts between China and other parts of the world, the history of territoriality and borders, as well as China’s material culture. In this course, we will look at the history of mapping from China, starting from the earliest examples. While we will focus on the mapping before the twentieth century, we will also touch upon questions of understanding space more generally in written sources as well as current developments such as Baidu maps and the mapping of the ten-dash line.