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ABSTRACT
The rediscovery of the Selden Map of China (MS Selden Supra 105) in the Bodleian Library in 2008 provides an opportunity to reassess the history of Chinese cartography and debates about maritime dimensions of the Ming Empire. The map depicts a network of Chinese shipping routes, reaching from Japan to Aceh, Sumatra, and suggests previously unknown map-making techniques. In this article I draw attention to the map's unique components, notably its portrayal of shipping routes and vegetation, consider its sources, and suggest a possible patron and location of composition.
La redécouverte de la carte de Chine de Selden (MS Selden Supra 105) à la Bodleian Library en 2008 donne l'occasion de réexaminer l'histoire de la cartographie chinoise et les débats autour des étendues maritimes de l'empire Ming. La carte décrit un réseau de routes maritimes chinoises, allant du Japon à Aceh, et implique des techniques de cartographie jusqu'alors inconnues. Dans cet article j'attire l'attention sur les éléments exceptionnels de la carte, notamment sa représentation des routes maritimes et de la végétation, j'envisage ses sources et je suggère un éventuel commanditaire.
Die Wiederentdeckung der Selden-Karte von China (MS Selden Supra 105) in der Bodleian Library 2008 gibt uns die Möglichkeit, die Geschichte der chinesischen Kartographie und die maritimen Ausmaße des Ming-Imperiums neu einzuschätzen. Die Karte zeigt ein Netz chinesischer Schifffahrtslinien von Japan bis Aceh und lässt den Einsatz bisher unbekannter Kartentechniken vermuten. In diesem Beitrag beschäftigt sich der Autor vor allem mit den ungewöhnlichen Teilen der Darstellung, besonders den Eintragungen der Seerouten und der Vegetation, mit den Quellen der Karte und er stellt Überlegungen hinsichtlich des möglichen Auftraggebers an.
El redescubrimiento del mapa Selden de China (MS Selden Supra 105) en la Bodleian Library en 2008 ofrece la oportunidad de reevaluar la historia de la cartografía china y debatir acerca de las dimensiones marítimas del Imperio Ming. El mapa muestra una red de rutas marítimas chinas que van de Japón a Aceh, y sugiere unas técnicas de realizar mapas hasta ahora desconocidas. En este artículo quiero llamar la atención sobre los elementos singulares de este mapa, en particular, su representación de las rutas de navegación y de la vegetación, considero sus fuentes, y sugiero un posible patrón.
Acknowledgements
My thanks are due to David Helliwell, the Bodleian Library and the Pilgrim Trust for seeing the importance of restoring the map. This article has benefited from much advice, especially from Stephen Davies, Vera Dorofeeva-Lichtmann, Go Bon Juan, Robert Minte, John Moffett, Hyunhee Park, Haun Saussy, Patricia Seed, Peter Shapinsky, Richard Smith, Sarah Tyacke, Charles Wheeler, Jack Wills, Frances Wood, and the editors of Imago Mundi. I am also indebted to the conveners and participants of several symposia: ‘The Rediscovery of the Selden Map,’ Georgia State University, Atlanta, March 2011 (Nick Wilding); ‘Discovering the Selden Map of China Colloquium’, Bodleian Library, Oxford, September 2011 (David Helliwell); ‘Pirates, Silk, and Samurai: Maritime China in Global History Conference’, Emory University, Atlanta, October 2011 (Tonio Andrade); and ‘Cartography and Creativity’, Duke University, Durham, March 2012 (Philip Stern and Sumathi Ramswamy). This article was commissioned at the Discovering the Selden Map of China Colloquium, Bodleian Library, Oxford, September 2011.
Notes
1. Nathan Sivin and Gari Ledyard, ‘Introduction to East Asian Cartography’, in The History of Cartography, vol. 2, book 2: Cartography in the Traditional East and Southeast Asian Societies, ed. J. B. Harley and David Woodward (Chicago, University of Chicago Press, 1994), 23.
2. Gavin Menzies, 1421: The Year China Discovered the World (London, Bantam, 2002). On Menzies, see Geoff Wade, ‘The Liu/Menzies world map: a critique’, e-Perimetron 2:4 (2007): 273–80. Menzies’ primary cartographic evidence comes from the Piri Reis chart and Fra Mauro maps as well as the Wu beizhi and the Korean Kangnido map tradition (c.1402).
3. Bodleian Library, MS Selden Supra 105. When David Helliwell, Curator of Chinese Collections at the Bodleian, and I opened the map, I noticed the unusual sea routes marked on it. Helliwell has been systematically recata loguing the seventeenth-century collection of Chinese materials in the Bodleian and in Europe more generally; see his ‘Chinese Books in Europe in the 17th Century’, http://www.bodley.ox.ac.uk/users/djh/17thcent/17theu.htm, and the 15 February 2012 entry for his blog Serica, http://oldchinesebooks.wordpress.com/2012/02/. Because the map itself has no title in Chinese, Helliwell has accepted 東西洋航海圖 (Dongxi yang hanghai tu) coined by Chen Jiarong as the Chinese name for the map.
4. For shipping data, see Iwao Seiichi, Shuin-sen Boeki-shi no Kenkyu (Tokyo, Ko Bun Do, 1958), 107 and passim; Li Tana, Nguyen Cochinchina (Ithaca, NY, Southeast Asia Program Publications, 1998), 62–65. The diplomatic documents can be found in Hayashi Akira et. al., Tsuko ichiran vol. 8 (Tokyo, Kokusho Kankokai, 1912–1913), 481–87.
5. See Stephen Davies, ‘The construction of the Selden map: some conjectures’, Imago Mundi, 65:1, 97–105.
6. At the time of going to press (summer 2012), I have been unable to consult Timothy Brook's book, Who Drew the Selden Map? (London, Profile Books), which has been advertised as due for publication in 2013.
7. British Library, MS Sloane 853, fol. 23.
8. See Thomas Hearne, ‘An Extract and particular Account of the rarities in the Anatomy School’, Bodleian MS Rawl. C 865, reprinted in R. T. Gunther, Early Science in Oxford, vol. 3 (Oxford, Hazell, Watson and Viney, 1925), 264–74; and Thomas Hearne, Hearne's Remarks and Collections, vol. 1, ed. C. E. Doble (Oxford, Clarendon Press, 1885), 70. The passage in Hearne implies that the Anatomy School actually received a copy of the map: ‘Today Mr. Halley coming to ye Library, Dr Hudson shew'd him Mr. Selden's large MSt Map of China (whereof there is a Copy amongst Dr. Bernard's MSS. That is to be put into the Anatomy Schoole) to wch Dr. Hyde added some Explicatory Notes. Mr. Hally having taken a view of it, concluded it to be full of faults, from some wch he knew to be so from his own observations’.
9. ‘Codicil’, 11 June 1653, in David Wilkins, Works of John Selden, vol. 1 (London, 1726), lv. The compass that accompanied the map is now Oxford Museum for the History of Science, 44055.
10. The original (lost) manuscript circulated in the summer of 1619 at the request of Buckingham, the new Lord High Admiral, but James I wanted it changed, and it was rejected on its second submission. See G. L. Toomer, John Selden: A Life in Scholarship, vol. 1 (Oxford, Oxford University Press, 2009), 388–432; David Berkowitz, John Selden's Formative Years (Washington, Folger Library, 1988), 54–55, 308–9. Selden tells his version of the story (mistakenly remembering it as 1618) in Vindiciae Joannis Seldeni (London, Cornelius Bee, 1653), 15–28. Selden finally published a revised version during the ship-money controversy under Charles I as Mare Clausum seu De dominio maris (London, William Stanesbeius, 1635). The English edition appeared in support of the first Navigation Act as Of the Dominion, Or, Ownership of the Sea, transl. Marchmont Nedham (London, William Du-Gard, 1652), at which time Selden's map could be seen in his house, Carmelite, in Whitefriars. The relevant passages on the measurement of the sea are in book 1, chapter 22, (1635), 91–97; (1652), 135–45.
11. Grotius's work had been translated into English by Richard Hakluyt from Mare Liberum (Leiden, 1609), a second edition appeared in 1618. See Hugo Grotius, The Free Sea, transl. Richard Hakluyt, ed. David Armitage (Indianapolis, Liberty Fund, 2004).
12. Samuel Purchas, ‘The Map of China, 皇明一统方舆備览, taken out of a China Map printed with China characters, etc. gotten at Bantam by Capt. John Saris’ [Huang Ming yitong fang yu bei lan, ‘Comprehensive directional view map of the Imperial Ming’], in Purchas his Pilgrimes, vol. 3 (London, William Stansby, 1625), 400–1.
13. The word tu was used as a general term for maps, but it could also refer to a wide range of diagrammatic material in printed primers and encyclopaedias, for stellar diagrams and even ancestral charts (宗支圖本, zhongzhi tuben). See Francesca Bray, ‘Introduction’, in Graphics and Text in the Production of Technical Knowledge in China, ed. Francesca Bray, Vera Dorofeeva-Lichtmann, Georges Métailié (Leiden, Brill, 2007), 1–5; Vera Dorofeeva-Lichtmann, ‘The political concept behind an interplay of spatial “positions”’, Extrême-Orient, Extrême-Occident 18 (1996): 9–33; and Michael Lackner, ‘Die Verplanung des Denkens am Beispiel der tu’, in Lebenswelt und Weltanschauung im frühneuzeitlichen China, ed. H. Schmidt-Glintzer (Stuttgart, Franz Steiner Verlag, 1990), 134–56.
14. Bianyong Xuehai qunyu [便用學海群玉, ‘Convenient to use: seas of knowledge, mines of jade’,], revised by Wu Weizi (Fujian: Xiong Chongyu from Jianyang, 1607), juan (chapter) 2. See Koos Kuiper, Catalogue of Chinese and Sino-Western Manuscripts in the Central Library of Leiden University (Leiden, Leiden University Library, 2005), 70–75. For similar encyclopaedias, see Wu Huifang, Ming-Qing shiqi de minjian shenghuo shilu (Taipei, National Cheng-chi University, 2001), 641–59. The surviving copy of the encyclopaedia, now at Leiden University Acad. 226, was most likely obtained in Batavia by the Dutch missionary collector Justus Heurnius in the late 1620’s. It, like many of the books in the Bodleian's collection from the same period, is a good example of the kinds of materials brought to overseas Chinese settlements in Southeast Asian ports. On such printing, see Lucille Chia, Printing for Profit: The Commercial Publishers of Jianyang (Cambridge, Harvard University Press, 2002); and on the Chinese books circulating in Manila, see idem, ‘Chinese books and printing in the early Spanish Philippines’, in Chinese Circulations, ed. Eric Tagliacozzo and Wen-Chin Chang (Durham, NC, Duke University Press, 2011), 259–82. Examples of printed maps that circulated outside of China include sheet maps like Yu Shi, ‘Gujin xinsheng zhi tu’ [Map of China past and present] (Longxi County, Fujian, Jinsha Studio, 1555), and the Purchas, ‘The Map of China’ (see note 12), as well as the 1579 version of Luo Hongxian's atlas Guang yutu quan shu.
15. John Moffett has called attention to the fenye markings on the map. On fenye versus geomancy or the ‘Form’ vs. ‘Compass’ schools, see especially Richard Smith, Fortune-tellers and Philosophers: Divination in Traditional Chinese Society (Boulder, Colorado, Westview Press, 1991), 67–70, 134–39; and John B. Henderson, ‘Chinese cosmographical thought: the high intellectual tradition’, in Harley and Woodward, History of Cartography (note 1), 2:2: 210, 216–24
16. Emma Teng, Taiwan's Imagined Geography (Cambridge: Harvard University Asia Center, 2006), 58.
17. Specifically a notation in the northern islands of the Ryukyus, 野故門水流東甚緊 (Yegu men shuiliu dong shen jin, 'Yegu passage, eastward current, very tight’) and one between Luzon and Taiwan, 此門流水東甚緊 (ci men liushui dong shen jin, ‘This passage, flowing east, extremely tight’): see and A remarkably similar formulation with different directional headings occurs in Bernhard Varenius, Geographia Generalis (Amsterdam, Elzevier, 1650), 201, who writes, ‘Similis motus versus Boream observatur in ostio freti Manilentis ad Philippinas. Ita in Japone motus incitatissimus a portu Xibuxia versus Arimam’ [A similar motion towards the north is observed in the Strait of Manila near the Philippines. Likewise in Japan a strong motion from the port of Xibuxia towards Arima’. Francois Caron, head of the VOC's Hirado factory in the 1620’s seems a likely source for Varenius's information. In an empty space east of Luzon is the inscription 化人番在此港往來呂宋 (Huarenfan zaichi gang wanglai Lusong, ‘Spanish foreigners go back and forth from this harbour to Luzon [Manila]’), indicating the trans-Pacific silver route.
18. Davies, ‘The Construction of the Selden map’ (see note 5)
19. Declination is notoriously difficult to determine in this period. The English theorist of magnetism William Gilbert in De Magnete (London, 1600) complained about the inaccuracy of Portuguese figures. Several Spanish and Portuguese, including the Italian Jesuit Christoforo Borri, were actively collecting new measurements in the 1610s, and in London in 1635 Henry Gellibrand discovered that magnetic declination not only varied according to place but shifted over time. Joseph Needham could only find two ‘Chinese’ measurements of declination in the early seventeenth century, both for Beijing, from Xu Guangxi (confusingly 5˚40′ʹ east) and Mei Wending scoffing at Adam Schall's claim to have found over 7˚ of western declination by sundial measurement. See Alexander Wylie, ‘The Magnetic Compass in China.’ Chinese Researches (Shanghai, 1897), 157, cited by Joseph Needham, with Wang Ling and Kenneth G. Robinson, Science and Civilisation in China, vol. 4: Physics and Physical Technology, pt. 1, Physics (London, Cambridge University Press, 1962), 310. Like Needham, I have not found the originals of these suspicious citations. The new calculations of A. Jackson, A.R.T. Jonkers and M. Walker, ‘Four centuries of geomagnetic secular variation from historical records’, Philosophical Transactions of the Royal Society of London, ser. A, 358 (2000): 957–90, suggest a figure closer to −5˚ on a line running west of Beijing down through Malacca on the western Malay Peninsula and across central Sumatra.
20. See Zhang Xie, Dongxi yangkao (东西洋考; 1617–1618), 9:1; translated in Needham, Science and Civilisation in China (note 19), 4:1: 291–92.
21. Davies, ‘The construction of the Selden map’ (see note 5)
22. British Library, MS Sloane 853, fol. 23.
23. Ibid.
24. Nüwa and Fuxi were believed to live on Kunlun mountain (see left, no. 3). They are best known from the Tang dynasty (618–906) tomb paintings and banners recovered at Astana in Xinjiang, China. See Uyeno Aki, ‘Paintings of Fu-hsi and Nu-wa from Astana’, Bijutsu kenkyu 292–293 (March 1974–May 1974).
25. Compare Zhu Yu's Pingzhou Ketan (1119), which argues that the ‘south pointing needle’ (zhinan zhen) is used when weather makes it difficult to see the sun, stars and coast. Cited in Needham, Science and Civilisation (see note 19), 4:1: 279.
26. See the suggestive comments in Roger Hart, The Chinese Roots of Linear Algebra (Baltimore, The Johns Hopkins University Press, 2011), in the context of broader observations by Kapil Raj, Relocating Modern Science: Circulation and the Construction of Knowledge in South Asia and Europe (Basingstoke, Palgrave Macmillan, 2007); Mary Poovey, A History of the Modern Fact (Chicago, University of Chicago Press, 1998), 29–91; and Jack Goody, The East in the West (Cambridge, Cambridge University Press, 1996), 49–81.
27. Geng (literally ‘change’ as in changing of the ship's watch) indicated both time and distance. As a measure of distance, it usually fell between 14 and 20 miles depending in part on the strength of monsoon winds and currents. Mei-Ling Hsu, ‘Chinese marine cartography: sea charts of pre-modern China’, Imago Mundi 40 (1988): 112 n2.
28. Shunfeng Xiangsong (順風相送), Oxford, Bodleian Library, Laud Or. 145, inscribed ‘Liber Guil. Laud Archibpi Cant et Cancillar Universit Oxon 1637’, and reprinted in Xiang Da, ed. Liang zhong hai dao zhen jing (Beijing, Zhonghua shu ju, 1961), 78–80.
29. On the use of the word zhen to describe compass-bearings in the section on Zheng He in Mao Yuanyi's massive Wu beizhi (武備志, ‘Treatise on Armament Technology’, preface 1621, presented to throne 1628), see Joseph Needham, with Wang Ling and Lu Gwei-djen, Science and Civilisation in China, vol. 4: Physics and Physical Technology, pt. 3: Civil Engineering and Nautics (Cambridge, Cambridge University Press, 1971), 564. Digital versions of the maps can be seen at the Library of Congress's American Memory site, http://memory.loc.gov/cgi-bin/query/h?ammem/gmd:@field(NUMBER+@band(g7821rm+gct00058)). On the Wu beizhi more generally, see the translation by J. G. V. Mills of Ma Huan's Yingyai Shenglan (compiled 1451) of the 1413, 1421 and 1431 expeditions. The first printed edition was Jilu huibian, ed. Shen Jiefu (c.1617). The history of the editions is in Mills, ed. and transl., Ying-yai sheng-lan: The Overall Survey of the Ocean's Shores 1433 (London, Hakluyt Society, 1970), 37–41. Mills (239) and Needham referred to the charts as the ‘Mao Kun’ map, believing it derived from a scroll in the collection of Mao's grandfather (d. 1601). On navigational notations on charts, see J. J. L. Duyvendak, ‘Sailing directions of Chinese voyages’, T'oung Pao 34 (1938): 230–37, which compares the ‘Mao’ charts with the Shunfeng Xiangsong (see note 28); and in the same issue ‘The true dates of Chinese maritime expeditions in the early fifteenth century’, 341–42. The scholarship around the Wu beizhi maps emerged in a series of debates among Mills, Duyvendak and Paul Pelliot (also in T'oung Pao) in the 1930’s, which had in the background questions about British, Dutch, French and potentially Japanese empires in Southeast Asia.
30. See in particular Angela Schottenhammer, The Emporium of the World: Maritime Quanzhou (Leiden, Brill, 2001); Billy So, Prosperity, Region and Institutions in Maritime China: The South Fukien Pattern (Cambridge, Harvard University Press, 2000); John Chaffee, ‘Song China and the multi-state and commercial world of East Asia’, Crossroads: Studies on the History of Exchange Relations in the East Asian World 1 (2010): 33–54; E. B. Vermeer, ed. Development and Decline of Fukien Province in the Seventeenth and Eighteenth Centuries (Leiden, Brill, 1990); Wang Gungwu, ‘Merchants without empire: the Hokkien sojourning communities’, in The Rise of Merchant Empires, ed. James Tracy (Cambridge, Cambridge University Press, 1990), 400–21; Hugh Clark, Community, Trade and Networks: Southern Fujian Province (Cambridge, Cambridge University Press, 1991).
31. Zhang Xie, Dongxi yangkao (see note 20), 6:21, 7:22, 9:2; Ng Chin-Keong, Trade and Society: The Amoy Network on the China Coast, (Singapore: Singapore University Press, 1983), 47.
32. For a description of the silver cycle, see Dennis Flynn and Arturo Giráldez, ‘Cycles of silver: global economic unity through the mid-eighteenth century’, Journal of World History 13:2 (2002): 391–427; Richard von Glahn, Fountains of Fortune (Berkeley, University of California Press, 1996); William Atwell, ‘International bullion flows and the Chinese economy circa 1530–1650’, Past and Present 95:1 (1982): 68–90.
33. The key work defining the South China Sea through the eastern and western routes was Chen Dazhen, Dade Nanhai zhi (c.1307), a description of the Dade era (1297–1307) of the Yuan dynasty. See also Wang Dayuan, Daoyi zhilue (Quanzhou, 1349), and its reference to southern ‘island peoples’. For the revival of this concept, see Wang Gungwu, ‘The Nanhai trade: early Chinese trade in the South China Sea’, Journal of the Malayan Branch Royal Asiatic Society 31:2 (1958): 1–135; and Wang Gungwu, ‘Early Ming relations with Southeast Asia—a background essay’, in The Chinese World Order, ed. John Fairbank (Cambridge, Harvard University Press, 1968).
34. The ports labelled are 北港 (beigang, ‘northern port’ or Tayouan Bay) and 加里林 (jiali lin, ‘Jiali forest’ or Soulang near the future Fort Zeelandia), in addition to the adjacent 彭島 (Pengdao for Penghu or the Pescadores).
35. In this respect, the Selden map can be recognized as an example of what Denis Wood and John Fels, The Natures of Maps (Chicago, University of Chicago Press, 2008), 6, have called the ‘cartographic construction of the natural world’, highlighting concepts of the natural as they emerge from maps.
36. Two popular historical novels from the 1590s that were profoundly influential among Chinese maritime merchants are Luo Guanzhong's fourteenth-century Yuanyi Sanguo zhi (研義三國志, ‘Three Kingdoms Romance’, 1522, 1592), and Luo Maodeng's Sanbao taijian Xiyangji tongsu yanyi (‘Sanbao the Eunuch's Travels to the Western Ocean’, 1597). The latter revived the story of Zheng He's travels and the associated geography. The former was popularized through a 1592 Fujianese illustrated edition by the publisher Liu Longtian. Selden's edition of it (Oxford, Bodleian Library, Sinica 51/1-6) was an offprint entitled 新鋟全像大字通俗研義三國志傳 (Xinqin Quanxiang Dazi Tongsu Yanyi Sanguozhi Zhuan, ‘newly engraved, fully illustrated, great-writing, everyday novel Three Kingdoms History narrative’). On the consumption of this kind of art on porcelains and in garden design, see Robert Batchelor, ‘On the movement of porcelains: rethinking the birth of the consumer society as the interaction of exchange networks, China and Britain, 1600–1750’, in Consuming Cultures: Global Perspectives, ed. John Brewer and Frank Trentmann (Oxford, Berg, 2006), 79–92; and Robert Batchelor, ‘A taste for the interstitial (間): translating space from Beijing to London’, in Spaces of the Self, ed. David Sabean and Malina Stefanovska (Toronto, University of Toronto Press, 2012).
37. My thanks to Catherine Delano-Smith for drawing my attention to these as we inspected the map at the ‘Discovering the Selden Map of China Colloquium’, Oxford, September, 2011.
38. For Li Dan's marriage, see Richard Cocks, Diary of Richard Cocks Cape-Merchant in the English Factory in Japan 1615–1622, ed. Edward M. Thompson (Hakluyt Society, 1883), 2: 27, 33. The manuscript of Richard Cocks’ diary is now British Library, Additional MS 31,300 and MS 31,301. On Li Dan (Li Tan) generally, see Iwao Seiichi, ‘Li Tan, chief of the Chinese residents at Hirado’, Memoirs of the Research Department of the Toyo Bunko 17 (1958): 27–83; Ang Kaim, ‘Shiqi shiji de fulao haishang’, in Zhongguo haiyang fazhan shi lunwen ji di qi ji, ed. Tang Xiyong (Taipei, Academia Sinica, 1999), esp. the letter from Li Dan to Yan Siqi, 74–75; Tonio Andrade, How Taiwan Became Chinese (New York, Columbia University Press, 2007), 12–13. Li does not seem to have converted to Catholicism, although he did have a son who went by the name Augustin. Iwao Seiichi (‘Li Tan’, 36) counts at least three daughters. Li seems to have been in a strong position to extend his commercial power-base though the building up of family networks.
39. On Kunlun, see Lihui Yang et. al. Handbook of Chinese Mythology (Oxford, Oxford University Press, 2008), 160–63. Kunlun Mountain is the prototype for the idea of the Western paradise in Chinese mythology.
40. The term ‘littoral society’ is from Charles Wheeler, ‘Re-thinking the sea in Vietnamese history. Littoral society in the integration of Thuan Quang, seventeenth– eighteenth centuries’, Journal of Southeast Asian Studies 37:1 (2006): 123–53; as well as idem, ‘The case for boats in Vietnamese history: ships and the social flows that shaped Nguyen Cochinchina, 16th–18th centuries’, in Of Ships and Men: New Approaches in Nautical Archaeology, ed. Paolo Calanca et al. (Paris, Ecole française d'Extrême-Orient, forthcoming). See also Bennet Bronson, ‘Exchange at the upstream and downstream ends: notes toward a functional model of the coastal state in Southeast Asia’, in Economic Exchange and Social Interaction in Southeast Asia: Perspectives from Prehistory, History, and Ethnography, ed. Karl Hutterer (Ann Arbor, University of Michigan Press, 1977), 39–52.
41. For examples of newly rising urban merchant aesthetics in the Ming period, see Craig Clunas, Superfluous Things (Urbana, University of Illinois Press, 1991); Timothy Brook, The Confusions of Pleasure (Berkeley, University of California Press, 1998); and in Tokugawa Japan, see Eiko Ikegami, Bonds of Civility: Aesthetic Networks and the Political Origins of Japanese Culture (Cambridge, Cambridge University Press, 2005).
42. ‘a navegaçam dos chines e gores [Ryukyu Islanders?], com suas lynhas ey caminhos deretos por omde as naos hiam, e ho sertam quaes reynos comsynavam huns cos outros’. Letter from Afonso de Albuquerque to King Manuel, 1 April, 1512, in Cartas de Affonso de Albuquerque, seguidas de documentos que as elucidam, vol. 1 (Lisbon, Academia Real das Sciencias, 1884), 64–65. See Armando Cortesão and A. Teixeira da Mota, Portugaliae monumenta cartographia (Lisbon, 1960), 1: 79–80, and 2: 122–30; J. H. F. Sollewijn Gelpke, ‘Afonso de Albuquerque's pre-Portuguese “Javanese” map, partially reconstructed from Francisco Rodrigues’ Book’, Vijdragen tot de Taal-, Land- en Volkenkunde 151:1 (1995), 76–99; and Joseph Schwartzberg, ‘Southeast Asian nautical maps’, in Harley and Woodward, History of Cartography (see note 1), 2:2: 828–29.
43. ‘ver verdadeiramente os chins donde vem e os gores, e as vossas nãos ho caminho que am de fazer pêra as ilhas do cravo, e as minas do ouro omde sam, e a ilha de jaoa e de bamdam, de noz nozcada e maças, e a leira deirrey de syam, e asy ho cabo da terra da navegaçam dos chins, e asy para omde volve, e como daly a diamte nam navegam’. Letter from Albuquerque to King Manuel, 64–65 (see note 42).
44. The idea of a snake with veins coming out of the Spratleys appears in Wang Dayuan, Dao yi zhi lue (Quanzhou, 1349), 93. Nan'ao qi is the term used for the Pratas Islands (see ) in the Zheng He maps of the Wu beizhi. The form is found as late as the 18th century.
45. For the Kadoya chart, see the reproduction in Nakamura Hiroshi, ‘The Japanese portolanos of Portuguese origin of the XVIth and XVIIth centuries’, Imago Mundi 18 (1964): 24–44, esp. fig. ; idem, Goshuinsen kokaizu (Tokyo, Nihon Gakujutsu Shinkokai, 1965), 550–51; and Peter Shapinsky, ‘Polyvocal portolans: nautical charts and hybrid maritime cultures in early modern East Asia’, Early Modern Japan 16 (2006): 4–26.
46. Gerristzoon's chart is Berlin, Staatsbibliothek zu Berlin–Preussischer Kulturbesitz, T.7557. See the reproduction in Sarah Tyacke, ‘Gabriel Tatton's maritime atlas of the East Indies, 1620–1621’, Imago Mundi 60:1 (2008): 49. Both Ortelius (1587) and Jan Huygen van Linschoten, Itinerario, Voyages ofte Schippvarert (Amsterdam, Cornelis Claesz, 1596), between 22–23, had made maps of East Asia as well. The Linschoten map appeared as ‘Insulae Moluccae &cra.’, re-engraved by Robert Becket in John Wolfe's translation of Linschoten (London, 1598), between 6 and 7.
47. The term wanlaogao for Ternate was still being used in the 18th century, see chapter 2 of Chen Lunjiong, Haiguo jian wen lu (1731), in Ming bian zhai cong shu 6 (Changsha,Yu shi, 1867).
48. The printed version entitled ‘Sinarum Regni alioruq regnoru et insularu illi adiacentium description’ and dateable to c.1597–1607, is now in the Hong Kong University of Science and Technology Library, G7400 1590.S54. The English copy, presumably produced in Madrid 1609 to demonstrate to the English the success of Spain against the Dutch in Ternate three years earlier reached Robert Cotton and is now in the British Library at Cotton Augustus, I.1.45. Sarah Tyacke has suggested Gabriel Tatton may have been the copyist (personal communication, 16 January, 2012). It is not inconceivable that Selden himself would have seen the English copy, as he frequently used the library.
49. See Cordell Yee, ‘Traditional Chinese Cartography and the Myth of Westernization’, in Harley and Woodward, History of Cartography (see note 1), 2:2: 173–74
50. Chen Jiarong, ‘Brief analysis of the composition, date, features, names and routes of the Selden Map of China’ (編繪時間﹑特色及海外交通地名略析, in Chinese), Hai jiao shi yan jiu 2 (2011): 52–66, suggests 1624. This approximate date was also the view of many participants at the Bodleian Library's ‘Discovering the Selden Map of China Colloquium’, September 2011, and at the ‘Pirates, Silk, and Samurai: Maritime China in Global History Conference’, October 2011. See also Timothy Brook, The Troubled Empire (Cambridge, Harvard University Press, 2010), 215–26; Tonio Andrade, Lost Colony (Princeton, Princeton University Press, 2001), 25. For the general context to these debates, see John Wills, ed., China and Maritime Europe, 1500–1800: Trade, Settlement, Diplomacy and Missions (Cambridge, Cambridge University Press, 2012).
51. Richard Cocks to John Saris, 15 February 15, 1617, in Purchas, Purchas his Pilgrimes (see note 12), 1: 410.
52. This was an argument made by the captain Juan Cevicos in a printed commentary to letters from the Edo-based Fransciscan Luis Sotelo (executed 1624) and Date Masamune. Sotelo had accompanied the Japanese embassy and snuck back into Japan on one of Li Dan's ships in 1622. See Juan Cevicos, ed., Discurso del Doctor Don Juan Cevicos, Comissario del S. Officio (Seville, Antonio Moreno, 1628).
53. In the general disarray surrounding the English shift from Banten to Jakarta, newly christened as Batavia after the Dutch seizure in 1618–1619, a decision had been made onboard the ship Unicorn in April 1619 to seize Chinese junks off Java as payments for debts of Chinese merchants in Banten.The complex story is in ‘Consultations at Bantam and Correspondence, 1618–1619’, British Library, IOR, G/21/3A, vol. 1: 29–34. The idea of a seizure of the Selden map off Banten or Sumatra, which I now regard as mistaken, went into my original memo about the map, sent to Timothy Brook, Benjamin Elman and Haun Saussy in February 2008, whence it was incorporated into some of the Bodleian's early website accounts of the map.
54. This history has to be pieced together from divers records, such as Histoire de la religion chrétienne au Japan (Paris, C. Douniol, 1869), 1: 450; Tetsujo Ugai, ed., Hekija Kankenroku, vol. 1 (Enzan zohan, 1861), 20; Jacinto Orfanel, Historia Eclesiastica de los sucessos de la christiandad de Japon (Madrid, Alonso Martin, 1633), 141–52; and documents transcribed in Anthony Farrington, ed., The English Factory in Japan, 1613–1623 (London, British Library, 1991) as well as the Diary of Richard Cocks (see note 38), and the letter of William Eaton to the East India Company from Hirado, 12 December, 1620 (BL, IOR E/3/7, fol. 277–278). For a reconstruction of the journey of the Elizabeth, see Tyacke, ‘Gabriel Tatton's maritime atlas’ (note 46), 58 (appendix 2)
55. The license-holder was an Osaka merchant named Jojin: see Tetsujo Ugai, Hekija Kankenroku (note 54), 20.
56. The chartmaker Gabriel Tatton had died on 12 September 1621 when, drunk, he fell overboard; see Tyacke, ‘Tatton's Maritime atlas’ (see note 46), 44. The captain of the Elizabeth, Edmund Lenmyes, died in Aceh on 25 April, 1623 on a voyage there from Batavia. Cocks died in the Indian Ocean on 27 March 1624 on the way back to London (and a potential trial) on the Royal Anne. See the respective ship's logs, BL India Office L/MAR/A XXXV and XXXVIII. Richard Cocks’ diary (see note 38) runs from June 1, 1615 to January 14, 1619 and from December 5, 1620 to March 24, 1622, thus omitting entirely the Elizabeth affair. Evidence of the survival and dispersal of Cocks's book collection can be seen in the copies of individual volumes of the Azuma kagami (Edo, 1605); volumes 41 and 42 are now in Trinity College Dublin, MS 1645, given by the Archbishop of Dublin John Parker; other volumes are in Cambridge University Library, FJ.274.17, acquired with the library of Bishop of Ely John Moore in 1715. These may have originally been sold off at the same time as the Selden Map, since the Cambridge volume is marked Oxford 1626 by a previous owner. Cocks mentions in 1616 buying 54 volumes for his library in Kyoto; compare Peter Kornicki, The Book in Japan (Leiden, Brill, 1998), 313, so presumably this was once a complete set.
57. The English seem to have been unaware of Li Dan's connection with the captured junk, to judge from Cocks, Diary (see note 38), 2: 324.
58. See the 6 April 1625 report of Wang San, an owner of a junk travelling from Quanzhou to Batavia, to the Dutch VOC printed in Daghregister gehouden in ‘t Casteel Batavia (The Hague, Martinus Nijiioff, 1896), 139–40, which also gives a good account of the junk trade).
59. Thompson, Diary of Richard Cocks (see note 38), 2: 60. See Iwao Seiichi, ‘Ming mo qiao yu Riben Zhina maoyi shang yiguan Augustin Li Guozhu zhi huodong’, in Helan shidai Taiwan shi lunwen ji, ed. and transl. Xu Xianyao (Taipei, Foguang renwen shehui xueyuan, 2001), 131–54; Andrade, How Taiwan Became Chinese (see note 38), 14; and Leo Blussé, ‘The rise of Cheng Chih-Lung’, in Development and Decline of Fukien Provence, ed. E. B. Vermeer (Leiden, Brill, 1990), 254.
60. In Table Talk, Selden defined ‘public interest’ by writing that ‘All might go well in the Commonwealth, if every one in the Parliament would lay down his own Interest, and aim at the general good … We destroy the Commonwealth, while we preserve our own private Interests and neglect the public’. Samuel Reynolds, ed., The Table Talk of John Selden (Oxford, Clarendon Press, 1892), 85. Sir Thomas Bodley opened his University library in 1602 for the benefit also of (gentlemen) scholars in the Republic of Letters. For an assessment of this publicness in a European context, see Gabriel Naudé, Advis pour dresser une bibliotheque (Paris, Targa, 1627).
61. See the developing argument in Jane Burbank and Frederick Cooper, Empires in World History (Princeton, Princeton University Press, 2010), 183; Lauren Benton, A Search for Sovereignty: Law and Geography in European Empires (Cambridge, Cambridge University Press, 2009); and Sailha Belmessous, Native Claims: Indigenous Law against Empire (Oxford, Oxford University Press, 2011). Burbank and Cooper build upon the critique of the Westphalian interpretation of international law in Benno Teschke, The Myth of 1648 (London, Verso, 2003). On the semi-independence of Dutch and English corporate structures, see Philip Stern, The Company-State: Corporate Sovereignty and the Early Modern Foundations of the British Empire (Cambridge, Cambridge University Press, 2011); and Kerry Ward, Networks of Empire. Forced Migration in the Dutch East India Company (Cambridge, Cambridge University Press, 2009). The interweaving of such relatively autonomous networks in the 18th century is explored in Paul Van Dyke's landmark, The Canton Trade: Life and Enterprise on the China Coast, 1700–1845 (Hong Kong, Hong Kong University Press, 2006).
62. On the death blow to Dutch ‘free-seas’ ambitions in East Asia, see Andrade, Lost Colony (note 50). In our own times, the volatile questions of fishing and petroleum rights along the very routes in the South China Sea and off Taiwan and the Ryukyus depicted on the Selden map and the issue of defining sovereignty and property rights in relation to the ocean are actively debated.
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