Not Just a Jesuit Atlas of China: Qing Imperial Cartography and Its European Connections

Abstract

In the literature, the ‘Overview Maps of Imperial Territories’ or Huangyu quanlan tu 皇輿全覽圖, is mostly referred to as ‘the Jesuit atlas of China’. The reason is that this early eighteenth-century atlas of all Qing China’s territories plus Korea and Tibet is assumed to have resulted from European missionaries importing European cartographic practices. In this essay, I argue that this view is outdated and can no longer be sustained. By revisiting the background of the missionaries’ involvement in cartographic exchanges between Asia and Europe, the techniques used for surveying Qing territories and the production of the resulting atlases, I show that the mapping project behind the ‘Overview Maps of Imperial Territories’ is best understood as a creative answer to the unique needs of Qing frontier management and imperial control, made possible by the integration, in mensurational and in representational terms, of European and East Asian cartographic practices.

Bien plus qu’un ‘Atlas jésuite de la Chine’: la cartographie impériale des Qing et ses connections européennes

Dans la littérature, les ‘Cartes générales des territoires impériaux’ ou Huangyu quanlan tu 皇輿全覽圖, sont généralement mentionnées comme ‘l’Atlas jésuite de la Chine’. La raison en est que cet atlas de tous les territoires de la Chine des Qing, plus la Corée et le Tibet, daté du début du XVIIIe siècle, est supposé être l’œuvre de missionnaires européens ayant importé les pratiques cartographiques européennes. Dans cet essai, je montre que cette thèse est dépassée et ne peut plus être soutenue. En revisitant les fondements de l’implication des missionnaires dans les échanges cartographiques entre l’Asie et l’Europe, les techniques utilisées pour lever les territoires Qinq et la production d’atlas qui en résultèrent, je montre que le projet cartographique qui sous-tend les ‘Cartes générales des territoires impériaux’ est mieux appréhendé comme une réponse innovante aux besoins spécifiques de gestion de la frontière Qinq et du contrôle impérial, rendue possible par l’intégration des pratiques cartographiques de l’Europe et de l’Extrême-Orient en termes de mesure et de représentation.

Nicht nur ein Jesuiten-Atlas von China: die Kartographie der Qing-Dynastie und ihre europäischen Verbindungen

In der Literatur wird die ‘Umfassende Karte der kaiserlichen Gebiete’ oder Kangxi Huangyu Quantu 皇輿全覽圖 gewöhnlich als ‘Jesuiten-Atlas von China’ bezeichnet. Dahinter steht die Annahme, dass dieser Atlas des frühen 18. Jahrhunderts, der die gesamten Territorien der Qing-Dynastie sowie Korea und Tibet wiedergibt, ein Resultat kartographischer Techniken sei, die von europäischen Missionaren aus ihrer Heimatkultur mitgebracht worden waren. In diesem Beitrag belegt der Autor, dass diese Sicht überholt ist und nicht länger aufrechterhalten werden kann. Er untersucht die Hintergründe für die Einbindung der Missionare in den Austausch kartographischen Wissens zwischen Asien und Europa, die Techniken, die bei der Aufnahme der Territorien der Qing-Dynastie zum Einsatz kamen und die Herstellung der daraus resultierenden Atlanten. Der Autor zeigt, dass das hinter der ‘Umfassenden Karte der kaiserlichen Gebiete’ stehende kartographische Projekt am besten als kreatives Reagieren auf die einzigartigen Bedürfnisse der Verwaltung und der kaiserlichen Kontrolle in den Grenzregionen des Reiches zu verstehen ist, wobei Problemlösungen mess- und sichtbar durch die Verbindung von europäischen und ostasiatischen kartographischem Techniken befördert wurden.

No solo un atlas jesuita de China: la cartografía imperial Qing y sus conexiones europeas

Dentro de la literatura, los ‘Mapas generales de los territorios imperiales’ o Huangyu quanlan tu 皇輿全覽圖, son frecuentemente mencionados como ‘El atlas jesuita de China’. La razón se debe a que este atlas de los primeros años del siglo XVIII de todos los territorios de la China Qing, más Corea y el Tibet, se consideró que era el resultado de la importación de prácticas cartográficas europeas por parte de los misioneros europeos. En este artículo argumento que esta visión está superada y no puede ser sostenida por más tiempo. Al revisar los antecedentes de la participación de los misioneros en los intercambios cartográficos entre Asia y Europa, las técnicas usadas para el levantamiento de los territorios Qing y la producción de los atlas resultantes, muestro que el proyecto cartográfico de los ‘Mapas generales de los territorios imperiales’ se comprende mejor como una respuesta creativa a las necesidades únicas de la gestión de la frontera Qing y al control imperial, hecho posible por la integración en términos mensurables y representativos de las prácticas cartográficas europeas y de Asia oriental.

Keywords:

• China
• Qing Empire
• Kangxi emperor
• Jesuit missions
• Sino-Western relations
• land surveys
• surveying instruments
• Académie des sciences
• Huangyu quanlan tu
• Jesuit atlas
• Kangxi atlas
• Manchu

Acknowledgements

This article presents a condensed argument, tailored to historians of cartography, from the author’s forthcoming book Companions in Geography: East–West Collaboration in the Mapping of Qing China (c.1685–1735) (Leiden and Boston, Brill, 2017).

Notes

1. Laura Hostetler, Qing Colonial Enterprise: Ethnography and Cartography in Early Modern China (Chicago, University of Chicago Press, 2001), 33–37.

2. Walter Fuchs, Der Jesuiten-atlas der Kanghsi-zeit: Seine Entstehungsgeszchichte nebst Namensindices für die Karten der Mandjurei, Mongolei, Ostturkestan und Tibet (Beijing, Fu-jen University, 1943); Joseph Needham, Science and Civilization in China, vol. 3: Mathematics and the Sciences of the Heavens and the Earth (Cambridge, Cambridge University Press, 1959); Cordell D. K. Yee, ‘Traditional Chinese cartography and the myth of Westernization’, in The History of Cartography, vol. 2, bk. 2: Cartography in the Traditional East and Southeast Asian Societies, ed. John B. Harley and David Woodward (Chicago, University of Chicago Press, 1994), 170–202; Theodore Foss, ‘A western Interpretation of China: Jesuit cartography’, in East Meets West: The Jesuits in China 1582–1773, ed. Charles E. Ronan and Bonnie B. C. Oh (Chicago, Loyola University Press, 1988), 209–51.

3. Hostetler, Qing Colonial Enterprise (see note 1), 205–11.

4. Han Qi, ‘Cartography during the times of the Kangxi emperor: the age and background’, in Jesuit Mapmaking in China: D’Anville’s Nouvelle [sic] Atlas de la Chine (1737), ed. Roberto M. Ribeiro and John O’Malley (Philadelphia, St Joseph’s University Press, 2014), 51-62; Bai Hongye 白鸿叶 and Li Xiaocong 李孝聪, Kangxi chao ‘Huangyu quanlan tu’ 康熙朝《皇舆全览图》 (Beijing, Guojia tushuguan chubanshe, 2014); Stephen Whiteman, ‘Kangxi’s auspicious empire: rhetorics of geographic integration in the early Qing’, in Chinese History in Geographical Perspective, ed. Du Yongtao and Jeffrey Kyong-McClain (Lanham, Lexington Books, 2013), 33–54; Laura Hostetler, ‘Contending cartographic claims? The Qing empire in Manchu, Chinese and European maps’, in The Imperial Map: Cartography and the Mastery of Empire, ed. James R. Akerman (Chicago, University of Chicago Press, 2009), 93–133; Benjamin A. Elman, ‘Ming-Qing border defense, the inward turn of Chinese cartography, and Qing expansion in Central Asia in the eighteenth century’, in Chinese State at the Borders, ed. Diana Lary (Seattle, University of Washington Press, 2008), esp. 38, 42, 45; Peter Perdue, China Marches West: The Qing Conquest of Central Eurasia (Cambridge, Harvard University Press, 2010), 449–53.

5. Later, Jesuits Guilio Aleni (1582–1649) and Francesco Sambiasi (1582–1649) further edited Ricci’s map. For a full overview of cartography in the Jesuit missions to China, see Henri Bernard, ‘Les étapes de la cartographie scientifique pour la Chine et les pays voisins: depuis le XVIIe jusqu’à la fin du XVIIIe siècle’, Monumenta Serica 1:2 (1935): 428–77. For Sambiasi’s maps, see Ann Heirmann, Paolo de Troia and Jan Permentier, ‘Francesco Sambiasi, a missing link in European map making in China?’, Imago Mundi 61:1 (2009): 29–46.

6. There is a high degree of similarity with maps in Chinese geographical works at the time, such as those included in the Guangyu tu 廣舆圖.

7. Eugenio Lo Sardo, Atlante della Cina di Michele Ruggieri, S.I. (Rome, Istituto Poligrafico e Zecca dello Stato, 1993).

8. For a comprehensive overview of both missionaries’ lives and work, see Noël Golvers, ‘Michael Boym and Martino Martini: a contrastive portrait of two China missionaries and mapmakers’, Monumenta Serica 59 (2011): 259–71.

9. Martino Martini, Novus Atlas Sinensis: Tavole (Trento, Centro Studi Martino Martini, Università degli Studi di Trento, 2003).

10. For Jesuit-authored textual material on geography as taught in Europe at the time, an important work to mention is the Zhifang waiji 職方外紀, first compiled by Diego de Pantoja (1571–1618) and Sabatino de Ursis (1575–1620).

11. Lin Dongyang 林东阳, ‘Ferdinand Verbiest’s contribution to Chinese geography and cartography’, in Ferdinand Verbiest (1623–1688): Jesuit Missionary, Scientist, Engineer and Diplomat, ed. John W. Witek, Monumenta Serica Monograph Ser. 30 (Nettetal, Steyler Verlag, 1994), 135–64.

12. Noël Golvers, ‘An unnoticed letter of F. Verbiest, S.J., on his geodesic operations in Tartary (1683/1684)’, Archives internationales d’histoire des sciences 50 (2000): 86–102.

13. Mario Cams, ‘Restituting church buildings and negotiating church factions: missionary mapmakers and the making of local networks (1712–1716)’, Frontiers of History in China 4:9 (2014): 489–505.

14. Virgile Pinot, Documents inédits relatifs à la connaissance de la Chine en France de 1685 à 1740 (Paris, Geuthner, 1932), 7–9. Questions 2, 13, 14, 15, 16, and 20–28 (out of 28) are related to geography. See also Isabelle Landry-Deron, La preuve par la Chine: La ‘Description’ de J.-B. du Halde, jésuite, 1735 (Paris, Éditions EHESS, 2002), 150–59.

15. Guy Tachard, Voyage de Siam, des pères jesuites, envoyez par le roy aux Indes & à la Chine. Avec leurs observations astronomiques, et leurs remarques de physique, de géographie, d’hydrographie, & d’histoire (Paris, Arnould Seneuze et Daniel Horthemels, 1686), 9–10. See also Catherine Jami, The Emperor’s New Mathematics (Oxford, Oxford University Press, 2012), 102–8 and 151–56.

16. E. A. Kniajetskaia and V. Chenakal, ‘Pierre le Grand et les fabricants français d’instruments scientifiques’, Revue d’histoire des sciences 28:3 (1975): 250–57. The article includes a list of instruments purchased from the Chapotot workshops. An online catalogue of the State Hermitage Museum includes several instruments from these workshops. The catalogue is accessible via http://www.hermitagemuseum.org/wps/portal/hermitage/explore/collections/col-search/.

17. For example Antoine Gaubil, Correspondence de Pekin (Geneve, Droz, 1970), 33; Qinggong Xiyang yiqi 清宫西洋仪器, Gugong bowuyuan cang wenwu zhenpin daxi 故宫博物馆藏文物珍品大系 (Shanghai, Kexue jishu chubanshe, 2011), 21, 23, 29–32, 70–71, 76, 83, 128–32.

18. For Jesuit map making after Nerchinsk, for example, see Eugenio Lo Sardo, ‘Antione Thomas’s and George David’s maps of Asia’, in The History of the Relations between the Low Countries and China in the Qing Era (1644–1917), ed. Willy F. Vande Walle and Noël Golvers (Leuven, Leuven University Press, 2003), 75–88; Francisco Roque di Oliveira, ‘Seventeenth-century Jesuit surveys for a secure overland route from Europe to China’, in In the Light and Shadow of an Emperor, ed. Arthur K. Wardega and António Vasconcelos de Saldanha (Newcastle upon Tyne, Cambridge Scholars Publishing, 2012), 468–501. For Gerbillon’s daily observations, see Jean-Baptiste du Halde, Description géographique, historique, chronologique, politique, et physique de l’empire de la Chine et de la Tartarie chinoise, 4 vols. (Paris, Le Mercier, 1735), 4: 87–251.

19. As a result of the tutoring sessions, a number of tables and treatises were produced that are directly relevant to land surveying, such as the Practice of Instruments for Measuring Heights and Distances (Celiang gaoyuan yiqi yongfa 測量高遠儀器用法) and the Tables of Distance between the Horizon and the Terrestrial Sphere (Dipingxian li diqiu mianbiao 地平线离地球面表), both produced as surveyor’s manuals. See Jami, The Emperor’s New Mathematics (note 15), 142–43 and 191–95.

20. This is confirmed by several Qing and European sources, including du Halde, Description (see note 18), 4:241–42; Acta Pekinensia: Western Historical Sources for the Kangxi Reign (Macau, Ricci Institute, 2013), 36; John W. Witek, ‘An Eighteenth Century Frenchman at the Court of the K’ang-hsi Emperor: A Study of the Early Life of Jean François Foucquet’ (doctoral dissertation, Georgetown University, 1973), 528; Kangxi chao manwen zhupi zouzhe quanyi 康熙朝滿文朱批奏摺全譯 (Beijing, Zhongguo shehui kexue chubanshe, 1996), 476.

21. Du Halde, Description (see note 18), 4:218, 227–28; Joachim Bouvet, Portrait historique de l'empereur de la Chine (Paris, Estienne Michallet, 1697), 198–200; Witek, ‘An Eighteenth Century Frenchman at the Court of the K’ang-hsi Emperor’ (see note 20), 464–65. For examples of large instruments kept at the Palace Museum in Beijing, see Qinggong Xiyang yiqi (note 17), 149–58. For proportional compasses, rulers and squares, see Qinggong Xiyang yiqi (note 17), 64–91. A gilt-brass semicircular sundial with compass produced at the imperial workshops and dated 1701 is included in Feng Mingzhu 馮明珠, Kangxi dadi yu taiyangwang Luyi shisi tezhan: Zhongfa yishu wenhua de jiaohui 康熙大帝輿太陽王路易十四特展: 中法藝術文化的交會 (Taipei, National Palace Museum, 2011), 150.

22. ‘l’Empereur de la Chine commença, il y a environ cinq ans, d’ériger dans son propre Palais une espece d’Academie de Peintres, de Graveurs, de Sculpteurs & d’Ouvriers en acier & cuivre pour les Horloges & autres instrumens de Mathématiques. Pour piquer leur émulation, il leur propose le plus souvent pour modéles des Ouvrages d’Europe, & entr’autres de ceux qui ont été faits à Paris … il se fait apporter regulierement tous les jours à une certaine heure, lors qu’il est à Pé-king; ou de deux jours l’un, lors qu’il est dans quelqu’unes de ses Maisons de plaisance, ceux qui sortent des mains de ces nouveaux Académiciens. Il les examine luy-même; il reprend dans chacun ce qu’il y a de défectueux; il approuve ce qui merite de la loüange: il retient ceux, où il ne trouve rien à redire & qui passent l’ordinaire’ (Bouvet, Portrait historique de l’empereur de la Chine (see note 21), 131–32). This is confirmed in an account by Jean François Foucquet (1665–1741). See Witek, ‘An Eighteenth Century Frenchman at the Court of the K’ang-hsi Emperor’ (note 20), 464–65.

23. Gerbillon’s accounts of three such imperial campaigns, all targeting the Mongolian heartland, were edited and inserted in Du Halde, Description (see note 18), 4:252–288, 304–355, 356–384.

24. ‘自独石口至喀伦, 以绳量之有八百里, 较向日行人所量之数日见短少。自京师至独石口为路甚近, 约计不过四百二十三里。皇太子可试使人量之。喀伦地方用仪器测验北极高度, 比京师高五度。以此度之, 里数乃一千二百五十里 …’ Siku quanshu 四庫全書 digital database, Kangxi yuzhi wenji, juan 2. Quoted in Qin Guojing 秦国经, ‘18 shiji Xiyangren zai cehui Qingchao yutu zhong de huodong yu gongxian 18’, 世纪西洋人在测绘清朝舆图中的活动与贡献’, Qingshi yanjiu 清史研究 (1997:1): 38. Kalun is a rendition in Chinese of the Manchu word karun (meaning frontier or border). Mark Elliott, ‘Frontier stories: periphery as center in Qing history’, Frontiers of History in China 9:3 (2014): 336–60. Since precise measurements in terms of li are given here, I have chosen to translate this as ‘border post’. This is a reference to the border of Qing and Khalka territories, as confirmed in Gerbillon’s published diaries (see du Halde, Description (note 18), 4: 314).

25. ‘pour faire la carte de päys des Kalkas, ses nouveaux suiets’. Yves de Thomaz de Bossièrre, Jean-François Gerbillon, S.J. (1654–1707): Un des cinq mathématiciens envoyé en Chine par Louis XIV (Leuven, Ferdinand Verbiest Foundation, 1994), 140. In his diaries, Gerbillon further mentions that the main instrument that was used during the 1698 survey was ‘a semi-circle which the emperor had provided, well graduated and with a telescope … [mounted] above the alidade’ (du Halde, Description (see note 18), 4: 397). Gerbillon’s full account of this journey can be found in du Halde, Description (see note 18), 4: 385–422.

26. The techniques for measuring the terrestrial degree near Beijing appear to have differed greatly from those used by Picard. For a contemporary account of the exped-ition, see H. Bosmans, ‘L’œuvre scientifique d’Antoine Thomas de Namur, S.J. (1644–1709)’, Annales de la société scientifique de Bruxelles 44 (1924–1925): 169–207. See also John W. Witek, ‘The role of Antoine Thomas, SJ, (1644–1709) in determining the terrestrial meridian line in eighteenth-century China’, in Vande Walle and Golvers, The History of the Relations between the Low Countries and China in the Qing Era (note 18), 89–103.

27. Recent scholarship confirms that in the case of the Qing, other practices introduced by individuals and goods arriving from afar were likewise selectively appropriated into existing frameworks. For mathematics, see Jami, The Emperor’s New Mathematics (note 15); for medicine, see Beatriz Puente-Ballesteros, ‘Jesuit medicine in the Kangxi court (1662–1722): imperial networks and patronage’, East Asian Science, Technology and Medicine 34 (2011): 86–162.

28. Richard J. Smith, Mapping China and Managing the World: Culture, Cartography and Cosmology in Late Imperial Times (London, Routledge, 2013), 48–88; Yee, ‘Traditional Chinese cartography and the myth of Westernization’ (see note 2); Needham, Science and Civilization in China (see note 2).

29. Fuchs, Der Jesuiten-atlas der Kanghsi-zeit (see note 2), 1: 16 and 60.

30. Wang Qianjin 汪前进, ‘“Huangyu quanlan tu” cehui yanjiu《皇舆全览图》测绘研究’ (doctoral dissertation, Chinese Academy of Sciences, 1990). The Sanson-Flamsteed projection was probably first introduced by French Jesuits, at least one of whom is known to have taken a map of Asia with him, drawn on the basis of a Sanson-Flamsteed projection in 1699.

31. Mario Cams, ‘18th century Qing atlas production and its European connections’, in History of the Mathematical Sciences: Portugal and East Asia V, ed. Luís Saraiva (Singapore, World Scientific Publishing, forthcoming 2017).

32. Fuchs, Der Jesuiten-atlas der Kanghsi-zeit (see note 2), 1:25–27.

33. I have been able to identify two versions of the Qinding huangyu quanlan, in four extant copies, each containing only a small part of the entire work. First, there is the draft version, kept at two institutions: three bound parts (ce 册) are at the Library of Congress, Washington, while another set of more than ten ce is at the Sichuan University Library. Library of Congress (LC), Chinese Rare Books Dept., B118 W19, accessible online via http://www.wdl.org/en/item/4662/. A second, printed, version is kept at the National Library of China in Beijing and at the National Central Library in Taipei in, respectively, 3 and 8 juan (National Library of China (NLC), Rare Books Dept., SB 09779; National Central Library (NCL), Rare Books Dept., 000024). Manchu memorials dealing with the Qinding huangyu quanlan are also extant. Kangxi chao manwen zhupi zouzhe quanyi (see note 20), 434, 741 (National Library of China (NLC), Rare Books Dept., SB 09779; National Central Library (NCL), Rare Books Dept., 000024).

34. As Cordell Yee noted, cartography in continental East Asia is characterized by two tendencies, mensurational and textualist, both of which are reflected in the atlas and its textual route book companion. Yee, ‘Traditional Chinese cartography and the myth of Westernization’ (see note 2), esp. 109.

35. Ripa is often mentioned as the cartographer behind the copperplate atlas. It is important to note, however, that Ripa could only have supervised the process of copper-plate engraving and printing. Giovanny Stary, for example, has convincingly shown Ripa’s ‘total ignorance of the Manchu language’, one of the two scripts used for the atlas (Giovanni Stary, ‘Manchu toponomy in the atlas of Matteo Ripa’, in La missione cattolica in Cina tra i secoli XVIII–XIX: Matteo Ripa e il Collegio dei Cinesi, ed. Michele Fatica and Francesco D’Arelli (Naples, Instituto Universitario Orientale, 1999), 188, 191).

36. Mark C. Elliott, ‘The limits of Tartary: Manchuria in imperial and national geographies’, The Journal of Asiatic Studies 59:3 (2000): 603–46, esp. 624.

37. The earliest known version, dating from 1726, is the Gujin tushu jicheng 古今圖書集成. Maps included in the Gujin tushu jicheng were later published separately throughout, it seems, the 18th and 19th centuries with titles such as Neifu (yu) ditu 内府(輿)地圖, (Da Qing) yu ditu (大清) 輿地圖 or Qing yitong yutu 清一統輿圖. Furthermore, under subsequent emperors, further versions of the Qing atlas were produced, all building on, or adding to, the Kangxi-era atlases. See Cams, ‘18th century Qing atlas production and its European connections’ (note 31).

38. Du Halde, Description (see note 18).

39. Nouvel atlas de la Chine, de la Tartarie chinoise et du Thibet (The Hague, Henri Scheurleer, 1737). The complex genealogy of maps that underlies d’Anville’s China maps and its pirated version is reconstructed in Mario Cams, ‘The China maps of Jean-Baptiste Bourguignon d’Anville: origins and supporting networks’, Imago Mundi 66:1 (2013): 51–69.