Specialist Lecture on Chinese History and Culture (5)
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.