Jesuit Cartography and Its Limits
Many modern scholars, both Western and Chinese, have seen the arrival of the Jesuits in China during the late sixteenth century as a landmark in the history of Chinese map-making. In fact, however, their influence was rather limited. To be sure, Jesuit scientific methods, including sophisticated surveying techniques, enabled the Qing dynasty (1644-1912) to create a far more mathematically "accurate" map of the Chinese empire than had ever been produced before--the Huangyu quanlan tu (Map of a Comprehensive View of Imperial Territory; 1718). This massive work, the product of many years of dedication by both the Jesuits and Qing scholars, provided China's Manchu rulers with an important instrument of political and military control, and it remained the most authoritative atlas of the realm for nearly two centuries.

But from the standpoint of world maps, Jesuit mappaemundi--including Matteo Ricci's Yudi shanhai quantu (Complete Map of the Earth's Mountains and Seas; 1584), his Kunyu wanguo quantu (A Complete Map of the Myriad Countries of the World; 1602), Giulio Aleni's Zhifang waiji (Notes on [World] Geography, 1623), and Ferdinand Verbiest's Kunyu tushuo (Illustrated Discussion of the Geography of the Earth; 1674)--had little long-term influence. Whereas precise maps of the empire had obvious strategic value, especially for the expansive but alien and somewhat insecure Manchus, world maps had a different function altogether. They were designed primarily as visual statements about a great and glorious culture, a universal order focused squarely on the Chinese tributary system. Indeed, one gains the impression that most Chinese world maps were constructed as if they were to be seen by the emperor himself.

It is not surprising, then, to find that a number of Chinese scholars bitterly attacked the Jesuits for misrepresenting the world and China's place in it. According to one Ming scholar, Wei Jun, Ricci's map not only contained "fabulous and mysterious" information that could not be verified, but in locating China to the west of center and inclined to the north, it dislodged the "Central Kingdom" from its rightful position at "the center of the world." How, Wei asked, "can China be treated like a small unimportant country?" Similarly, the Huangchao wenxian tongkao (The Imperial Dynasty's Comprehensive Examination of Source Materials; 1787) denounced Ricci's account of the world as full of contradictions, misguided statements and "boastful lies" (dankuang). It accused him of belittling China, aggrandizing his own culture, and spreading misinformation in the course of his cartographic work.

Even individuals who claimed to have been directly inspired by the Jesuits often borrowed little of cartographic substance from them. One noteworthy example is a map by the scholar-official Liang Zhou, titled Qiankun wanguo quantu gujin renwu shiji (Universal Map of the Myriad Countries of the World, with Traces of Human Events, Past and Present; c. 1600). This work--which appears to have been created more out of defiance than admiration--bears no trace of meridians and arranges foreign locations topologically rather than topographically. About eighty transoceanic lands outside of China appear in this form, in addition to a hundred or so additional foreign places to the north and west. Locations such as North America (on the upper right-hand side of the map) and South America (on the lower right-hand side)--like the Land of Tall People, the Land of Small People, the Land of Women, and many other places drawn directly from the pages of the Shanhai jing--are shown as inconsequential islands surrounding the large nucleus of the Chinese empire.

One might well think that scholars of "empirical research" (kaozheng xue) in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries would appreciate Jesuit learning, and indeed many did; but most Chinese intellectuals drew quite selectively from the available pool of Western scientific knowledge. Ironically, a deep distrust of symmetry and regularity on the part of kaozheng scholars hostile to traditional cosmography led them to reject the notion of a lawful, uniform, and mathematically predictable universe. Thus, for instance, the great Qing intellectual, Wang Fuzhi, dismissed the round-earth concept of the Jesuits out of hand.

Meanwhile, a turn inward in Chinese thought after 1644 diverted attention away from Jesuit-style conceptions of the external world. Gu Yanwu, a towering figure in early Qing scholarship, makes no mention of Jesuit world maps in his otherwise comprehensive Tianxia junguo libing shu (Treatise on the Advantages and Disadvantages of the Commandaries and States of the Empire; 1662). This lack of a serious interest in the Western world encouraged Gu to describe Portugal (Fulangji) as simply a one-time tributary state, located "south of Java," whose early contact with China was for the purpose of studying trade routes and "buying small children to cook and eat."

Of course, cartographic decisions do not necessarily involve either/or choices. In fact, a spirit of compromise animated a number of Chinese map-makers in late imperial times. Beginning in the waning years of the Ming dynasty, Chinese scholars tried various techniques designed to unite Jesuit-inspired knowledge and more traditional Chinese cartographic renderings of space. An excellent example can be found in Cao Junyi's ambitiously titled Tianxia jiubian fenye renji lucheng quantu (A Complete Map of Allotted Fields, Human Events and Travel Routes [Within and Without] the Nine Borders Under Heaven; 1644). This handsome cartographic document, which continued to serve as a model for cartographers during the Qing period, acknowledges the existence of Europe, Africa, the Middle East and India, but the two latter areas are represented primarily by cartouches, and Africa--which appears only about one-tenth the size of China--hangs down on the west side of Cao's map as if it were little more than a protective flank. Europe, tiny and even more marginal, is barely recognizable in the upper northwest portion of the maMost of the place names in these distant areas have been derived from Jesuit sources; but in the southeastern seas there are a number of mythical countries taken directly from the Shanhai jing.

The map gestures toward mathematical accuracy by providing longitudinal lines and degrees, and by supplying the estimated distances of various "barbarian" countries from the southern Ming capital (modern-day Nanjing). Moreover, in his extensive written commentaries, Cao provides a great deal of solid administrative data and historically grounded information on China's strategic rivers, lakes, mountains and seas. At the same time, however, he is pains to locate his discussions of world geography within the traditional confines of both the Chinese tributary system and Chinese cosmology. Furthermore, in his discussions of "barbarians" he does not differentiate clearly between actual foreign countries and the lands and peoples described in the Shanhai jing. The general Sinocentric spirit of Cao's map is captured in the remarks of his contemporary, the cartographer Chen Zushou: "All the barbarian people within the Four Seas should come to pay tribute to the Chinese Emperor. Although they [the Jesuits] might describe the world as comprising Five Continents, yet four of them should surround the nucleus of China."

Another kind of cartographic compromise appears in the form of a large anonymous scroll known as the Sancai yiguan tu (Illustrations of the Unity of the Three Powers [Heaven, Earth, and Man]; 1722), archived in the British Library. Although this document consists primarily of a written text dealing with history, morality, cosmology and military affairs, it includes two red planispheres, a "Comprehensive Map of Heaven and Earth," and a "Perpetual Map of the Unified Qing empire." The former map is quite clearly based on Jesuit cartography, while the latter seems to represent an unusual amalgamation of the Song Huayi tu and Yuji tu traditions.


A similar approach appears in a map produced by Ma Junliang, a 1761 jinshi degree-holder who was well-known for his skill as a mapmaker. In the 1780s or early 90s, Ma produced a large and widely distributed woodblock print titled Jingban tianwen quantu (Capital Edition of a Complete Map [of the World Based on] Astronomy), which featured a traditional-style rendering of "the world" based more or less on the time-honored model of Liang Zhou. But Ma also offered on the same sheet of paper a pair of global maps--one derived from a loose rendering of Matteo Ricci's mappamundi that appears in the Ming encyclopedia Sancai tuhui (Illustrated Compilation of the Three Powers; c. 1607) and one borrowed from a similarly structured Chinese map of the eastern hemisphere, first published by Chen Lunjiong in his Haiguo wenjian lu (Record of Things Heard and Seen in the Maritime Countries; 1730).