Kunyu Wanguo Quantu is a Chinese world map printed in 1602. It was created by the Italian Jesuit missionary Matteo Ricci and his Chinese collaborators, the mandarin Zhong Wentao, and the technical translator Li Zhizao. It is the earliest known Chinese world map based on European cartography. It has been praised for its "rarity, importance and exoticism". The map was crucial in expanding Chinese knowledge of the world. Shortly after its publication, copies of the map reached Korea and Japan where they had significant intellectual impact.
Description
The 1602 Ricci map is a very large, 5 ft (1.52 m) high and 12 ft (3.66 m) wide, woodcut using a pseudocylindrical map projection showing China at the center of the known world. It is the first map in Chinese to show the Americas. The map's mirror image originally was carved on six large blocks of wood and then printed in brownish ink on six mulberry paper panels, similar to the making of a folding screen. It portrays both North and South America and the Pacific Ocean with reasonable accuracy. China appropriately is linked to Asia, India, and the Middle East. Europe, the Mediterranean, and Africa also are well delineated. Diane Neimann, a trustee of the James Ford Bell Trust, notes that: "There is some distortion, but what's on the map is the result of commerce, trade and exploration, so one has a good sense of what was known then." Ti Bin Zhang, first secretary for cultural affairs at the Chinese Embassy in Washington, D.C., said in January 2010: "The map represents the momentous first meeting of East and West" and was the "catalyst for commerce".
Details The map includes images and annotations describing different regions of the world. Africa is noted to have the world's highest mountain and longest river. The brief description of North America mentions "humped oxen" or bison (駝峰牛; tuófēngniú), feral horses (野馬; yěmǎ), and names Canada (加拿大; Jiānádà). The map identifies Florida as 花地 (Huādì), the "Land of Flowers". Several Central and South American places are named, including Guatemala (哇的麻剌; Wādemálá), Yucatan (宇革堂; Yǔgétáng), and Chile (智里; Zhīlǐ). The map's cartographer, Matteo Ricci, gave a brief description of the discovery of the Americas. "In olden days, nobody had ever known that there were such places as North and South America or Magellanica (using a name that early mapmakers gave to a supposed continent including Australia, Antarctica, and Tierra del Fuego), but a hundred years ago, Europeans came sailing in their ships to parts of the sea coast, and so discovered them." The Museo della Specola Bologna has in its collection, displayed on the wall of the Globe Room, original copies of panels 1 and 6 of the six panels comprising the 1602 Ricci map. During restoration and mounting, a central panel—a part of the Doppio Emisfero delle Stelle by the German mathematician and astronomer Johann Adam Schall von Bell—was inserted between the two sections by mistake. In 1958, Pasquale D'Elia, sinologist at the University of Rome certified the authenticity of the Chinese maps in this museum's possession, (see op. cit.) stating that "it is the third edition of a geographical and cartographical work that made Ricci famous throughout China. He had already made a first edition in 1584 at Shiuhing, followed by a second in 1600 at Nanking, and two years later a third in Peking. In 1938, an exhaustive work by Pasquale d'Elia, edited by the Biblioteca Apostolica Vaticana, was published with comments, notes, and translation of the whole map. The maps carry plentiful instructions for use and detailed illustrations of the instruments that went into their production, as well as explanations regarding conceptions of "systems of the terrestrial and celestial world". There is a long preface by Matteo Ricci in the middle of the map, where it depicts the Pacific Ocean. D'Elia's translation reads:
"Once I thought learning was a multifold experience and I would not refuse to travel [even] ten thousand Li to be able to question wise men and visit celebrated countries. But how long is a man's life? It is certain that many years are needed to acquire a complete science, based on a vast number of observations: and that's where one becomes old without the time to make use of this science. Is this not a painful thing? And this is why I put great store by [geographical] maps and history: history for fixing [these observations], and maps for handing them on [to future generations].
Respectfully written by the European Matteo Ricci on 17 August 1602." The figure of the Nove Cieli (Nine Skies) is printed to the left of the title, illustrated as per sixteenth-century conceptions. The accompanying inscription explains the movement of the planets. The right-hand section (panel 6) has other inscriptions giving general ideas on geography and oceanography. Another inscription records an extract of the Storia dei Mongoli regarding the motions of the Sun. In the top of the left-hand section (panel 1), there is an explanation of eclipses and the method for measuring the Earth and the Moon. Both sections carry the characteristic Jesuit seal, the IHS of the Society of Jesus. At the bottom left, in the Southern Hemisphere, is the name of the Chinese publisher of the map and the date: one day of the first month of autumn in the year 1602. The map also incorporates an explanation of parallels and meridians, a proof that the Sun is larger than the Moon, a table showing the distances of planets from the Earth, an explanation of the varying lengths of days and nights, and polar projections of the Earth that are unusually consistent with its main map.
History
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