Abstract
The author will introduce his book Regnum Chinae: The Printed Western Maps of China to 1735 (Brill, 2022). It is the first comprehensive work, in any language, providing source criticism of every single western map of China produced in the Early Modern period, connecting them with their Chinese sources, unravelling their publication history and the wider knowledge networks allowing their production and circulation. It also investigates, within a broader material culture perspective, the intersection between the history of the book and the history of museums and collections. While the bulk of the book consists of the analysis and contextualization of individual maps, the first part provides the fullest account so far of the production and exchange of geographic knowledge of the Chinese territory in China and in the West. The author has written the first introductory chapter and assigned the remaining eight to the main specialists in the field, both Westerners and Chinese.
The author will first explain the relevance of printed cartography of China in East-West intellectual exchange, then present the methodology of the book and its main general results, finally moving to a few printed and manuscript maps of exceptional importance to which he has dedicated specialized studies.
Speaker Profile :
Marco Caboara is Senior Lecturer in the History of Cartography and the History of Science at the Division of Humanities of the Hong Kong University of Science and Technology. Previously, and until recently, he has been the Head of Special Collections at the Hong Kong University of Science and Technology Library, whose jewel is the Western antique maps of China Collection.
Growing up in Genova, where a short walk would bring you from the prison where Marco Polo wrote his Milione to the house of Christopher Columbus, Dr. Caboara has cultivated a lifelong interest in travel and especially in the relationship between Europe and China.
He studied History, Linguistics and Chinese at Scuola Normale Superiore in Pisa, Beijing University, and City University of Hong Kong and received his Ph.D. from the University of Washington, Seattle with a study of the linguistic features of Classical Chinese Bamboo Manuscripts.
The past few years have been happily spent on the research and development of the library’s map collection and on the recently completed Regnum Chinae: The Printed Western Maps of China to 1735 (Brill, 2022).
