‘Halfway between Peking and Western Europe’: Sir Aurel Stein’s Maps of China

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Notes

1 This abstract is based on my forthcoming dissertation, ‘Halfway between Peking and Western Europe’: Imperial Knowledge Creation and the Geography of Buddhism in Sir Aurel Stein’s Maps of China, under the supervision of Professor Frances Garrett, Department for the Study of Religion, University of Toronto, which I expect to defend in 2024. I gratefully acknowledge financial assistance from the Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council in the form of a Joseph-Armand Bombardier SSHRC Canadian Graduate Scholarship – Doctoral under Grant 767-2014-2482-A28, and from the University of Toronto in the form of a School of Graduate Studies Research Travel Grant. I also thank my colleagues at the Map and Data Library, University of Toronto Libraries, for their expertise and encouragement.

2 Some works that examine Stein’s role as cartographer include Karl Ryavec, ‘The Present-Day Value of Maps Illustrating the Archaeological Surveys of Sir Aurel Stein in Xinjiang and Gansu,’ Journal of the Royal Asiatic Society 3, no. 2 (1993): 233–43; and Felix de Montety, ‘Mapping Other and Self: Language, Space and Identity in the Modern European Geographical Imagination of Central Asia’ (unpublished PhD dissertation, University of Nottingham, 2019).

3 Aurel Stein, Chinese Turkistan and Kansu: From Surveys Made during the Explorations of Sir Aurel Stein, K.C.I.E., 1900–01, 1906–08, 1913–15 (Dehra Dun: Surveyor General of India, 1918–1922). Republished with four new maps in Aurel Stein, Innermost Asia, 4 vols. (Oxford, Clarendon Press, 1928). Stein later published individual maps and his team created unpublished sketch maps from his fourth Central Asian expedition – see University of Oxford, Bodleian Libraries, MS D1 a.2 (14) – but he did not complete any mapping projects of Chinese Central Asia on the scope of his 1918–1922 maps after their republication.

4 Stein, Innermost Asia, 1: 176.

5 See University of Oxford, Bodleian Libraries, Stein MS. D1 a.3, for proofs of Stein, Chinese Turkistan; Aurel Stein, Memoir on Maps of Chinese Turkistan and Kansu from the Surveys Made during Sir Aurel Stein’s Explorations, 1900–1, 1906–8, 1913–5, (Dehra Dun: Trigonometrical Survey Office, 1923).

6 For Stein’s theses on Central Asia, see Valeria Escauriaza-Lopez, ‘Aurel Stein’s Methods and Aims in Archaeology on the Silk Road,’ in Sir Aurel Stein: Colleagues and Collections, ed. Helen Wang, (London: The British Museum, 2012), 1–7.

7 Aurel Stein, Ruins of Desert Cathay, 2 vols. (London: Macmillan & Co., 1912) 1: 175–6; Aurel Stein, Serindia, 5 vols., (Oxford, Clarendon Press, 1921), 3: 1241; Stein, Memoir on Maps, 77; Stein, Chinese Turkistan, Sheets 13, 17, 18.

8 See Aurel Stein, ‘The Desert Crossing of Hsüan-Tsang, 630 A.D.,’ Geographical Journal 54: 5 (1919): 265–77; Stein, Serindia, 3: 1143–1147.

9 Charles Oldham, ‘Review,’ Journal of the Royal Asiatic Society 3 (1925): 554–57; G[eorge] Macartney, ‘Explorations in Central Asia: Review,’ Geographical Journal 74:4 (October 1929): 391–94; Frederick William Thomas, ‘Review: Innermost Asia,’ Journal of the Royal Asiatic Society 4 (1929): 944–51.

10 Kenneth Mason, ‘Appendix A,’ in Stein, Memoir on Maps, 107–50; Kenneth Mason, ‘The Surveys of Sir Aurel Stein: Review,’ Geographical Journal 64, no. 2, (August 1924): 165–68.

11 Library and Information Centre of the Hungarian Academy of Sciences (Budapest), Letter, Stein to Mason, 9 July 1929, 7/ fols. 115–116.