Mr. Selden's Map of China, page 1
This book is for my uncommon reader,
Fay Sims.
It is also dedicated to the memory of
Neil Burton, fellow traveller always one
step ahead.
Item. I give and bequeathe to the said Chancelor Masters and Schollars a Mapp of China made there fairly and done in colloure together with a Sea Compasse of their making and Devisione taken both by an englishe comander who being pressed exceedingly to restore it at good ransome would not parte with it.
codicil to John Selden’s will
11 June 1653
Contents
Dramatis Personae
Dramatis Loci
Timeline
Preface
1. What’s Wrong with this Map?
2. Closing the Sea
3. Reading Chinese in Oxford
4. John Saris and the China Captain
5. The Compass Rose
6. Sailing from China
7. Heaven is Round, Earth is Square
8. Secrets of the Selden Map
Epilogue: Resting Places
Acknowledgements and Sources
Plate Section
Footnotes
Appendix I. Boxing the Chinese Compass
Appendix II. Coast Comparison
Illustrations
Also by Timothy Brook
Dramatis Personae
Will ADAMS (1564–1620): English pilot shipwrecked in Japan in 1600 while serving on a Dutch ship; captained several voyages for the East India Company between Japan and South-East Asia, 1614–18
Richard COCKS (1566–1624): English merchant and head of the trading post established by the East India Company in Japan between 1613 and 1623
GIOLO [geeolo] (c. 1661–1692): Pacific Islander captured by Muslim slave traders in the 1680s and sold into service in Mindanao; died in Oxford in 1692
Thomas HYDE (1636–1703): Oriental scholar, appointed Assistant Keeper of the Bodleian Library in 1659 and Keeper in 1665, a post he held until 1701; appointed Laudian Professor of Arabic in 1691 and Regius Professor of Hebrew in 1697; annotator of the Selden map
Ben JONSON (1572–1637): poet, satirist, playwright, entertainer at the court of King James I, bosom friend and admirer of John Selden
William LAUD (1573–1645): appointed Bishop of London in 1628, elected Chancellor of Oxford in 1630, consecrated Archbishop of Canterbury in 1633; executed by Parliament in 1645
LI Dan [lee dan] (b. 1560s; d. 1625): ‘China Captain’ of Japan, or head of the Chinese community in Hirado; landlord of the East India Company factory; business associate of Richard Cocks; mentor of Zheng Zhilong, whose son Zheng Chenggong founded the Eastern Calm kingdom on Taiwan
Samuel PURCHAS (before 1577–1626): chaplain turned editor who published a series of popular collections of travellers’ tales, starting in 1613 with Purchas his Pilgrimage and culminating in 1625 with Purchas his Pilgrimes; erstwhile friend of John Selden and acquaintance of John Saris
John SARIS (1579/80–1643): employee of the East India Company in Bantam, 1605–9; commander of the Company’s Eighth Voyage, 1611–14
John SELDEN (1584–1654): lawyer, Orientalist, legal historian, parliamentarian, constitutional theorist, author of The Closed Sea
Michael SHEN Fuzong (c. 1658–1691): son of a Nanjing doctor and disciple of Jesuit missionary Philippe Couplet; sojourned in Europe between 1683 and 1691; annotator with Thomas Hyde of the Selden map
John SPEED (1542–1629): engraver, cartographer, historian of England; publisher of England’s first world atlas in 1627
ZHANG Huang [jang hwong] (1527–1608): native of Jiangxi province, failed examination candidate, head of the prestigious White Deer Grotto Academy; compiler of the massive encyclopaedia Tushu bian (‘Documentarium’)
ZHANG Xie [jang syeh] (1574–1640): native of Zhangzhou, denizen of Moon Harbour, graduate of the 1594 Fujian provincial examination; author of Dong xi yang kao (‘Study of the Eastern and Western Seas’)
Dramatis Loci
BANTAM, also Bantan, Bantem: a city-state at the western end of Java; the first trading port for Europeans arriving in the South China Sea and home for John Saris, 1604–9; eclipsed by Batavia after 1619
BATAVIA (Jakarta): a port city in west Java, occupied by the Dutch in 1619 and made the base of operations of the Dutch East India Company (VOC)
HAINAN ISLAND: large island off the south coast of China’s Guangdong province, known as Qiongzhou prefecture in the Ming dynasty
HIRADO: port town in Kyushu, near Nagasaki; as of 1609, one of the few ports in Japan where Chinese and European traders were permitted to reside; home for a time of Li Dan and Richard Cocks
PARACEL ISLANDS, also Western Shoals (Xisha), also Hoàng Sa Islands: a scattering of tiny islands in the north-western quarter of the South China Sea claimed by China and Vietnam
RYUKYU ISLANDS: a string of islands, of which the largest is Okinawa, between Japan and Taiwan; an independent kingdom that submitted tribute to Ming China but was under Japanese domination from the sixteenth century; formally annexed to Japan in 1895
SPRATLY ISLANDS, also Southern Shoals (Nansha): a scattering of tiny islands north-west of Borneo in the South China Sea, claimed by China, Vietnam, Brunei, Malaysia, Taiwan and the Philippines
THE TEMPLE: area of London between Fleet Street and the Thames, former home of the Knights Templar and latterly the precinct of the Inner and Middle Temples, two of the four Inns of Court to which English barristers are affiliated; site of John Selden’s office in the Inner Temple and of his grave in the Temple Church
TERNATE: a small island in the Moluccas (Malukus), or Spice Islands, centre of the spice trade in the seventeenth century; first ‘discovered’ by Portuguese in 1512; visited by Francis Drake in 1580 and John Saris in 1613; co-occupied by Spain and the Netherlands from 1607 to 1663
Timeline
1600
East India Company (EIC) founded in London
Will Adams shipwrecked on the coast of Japan
1602
Dutch East India Company (VOC) founded in Amsterdam
Thomas Bodley opens the Bodleian Library in Oxford
John Selden leaves the University of Oxford for the Inns of Court in London
1603
Jacob van Heemskerck seizes Portuguese vessel Santa Catarina at Johor
1604
John Saris arrives in Bantam as an employee of the EIC
1607
the VOC sets up a base on Ternate
1608
Jodocus Hondius in Amsterdam publishes his atlas, Map of the World
1609
Zhang Huang dies
Huig de Groot publishes Mare Liberum (‘The Free Sea’)
John Saris returns to London from Bantam
Tokugawa shogunate annexes Ryukyu
1611
John Saris leaves London in command of the EIC’s eighth voyage to Asia
1612
William Shakespeare stages The Tempest for James I
John Selden is called to the Bar
1613
John Saris reaches Japan, appoints Richard Cocks as EIC factor at Hirado
Samuel Purchas publishes Purchas his Pilgrimage, dedicated by John Selden
Zhang Huang’s encyclopaedia Tushu bian (‘Documentarium’) published
1614
Ming court slashes funding for naval patrols along the coast
John Saris returns to England
1617
Zhang Xie completes his Study of the Eastern and Western Seas
1618
James I questions John Selden on his The Historie of Tithes
1619
VOC seizes control of Jakarta, renames it Batavia
1620
the Wanli emperor dies
Ben Jonson stages News from the New World Discovered in the Moon for James I
1621
John Selden detained by James I for ‘reasons of State knowne unto himself’
1624
Richard Cocks dies on his return voyage to England
Li Dan’s trading network collapses
1625
Samuel Purchas publishes Purchas his Pilgrimes with two maps of China
1627
John Speed publishes his atlas, Prospect of the World
1628
Ming China reimposes a ban on ocean-going ships
1629
John Selden imprisoned by order of Charles I
1630
William Laud elected Chancellor of the University of Oxford
1635
John Selden publishes Mare Clausum (‘The Closed Sea’)
1644
the Manchus invade Ming China and absorb it into their Qing dynasty
1652
Marchamont Nedham publishes an unauthorised translation of The Closed Sea
1654
John Selden dies in London
1659
Selden’s library delivered to the Bodleian Library
Thomas Hyde appointed Assistant Keeper of the Bodleian Library
1661
Zheng Chenggong drives VOC from Taiwan, founds Eastern Calm kingdom
1665
Thomas Hyde appointed Keeper of the Bodleian Library
1683
Qing dynasty destroys Eastern Calm kingdom, annexes Taiwan
Elias Ashmole opens the Ashmolean Museum in Oxford
1687
Michael Shen visits Thomas Hyde in Oxford to catalogue the Chinese books
< br /> 1691
Michael Shen dies off Mozambique en route back to China
1692
Giolo arrives in London, dies in Oxford
Preface
Rarely does an old map make front-page news, but the map of the world that Martin Waldseemüller produced in 1507 did just that when the Library of Congress acquired it in 2003. The Waldseemüller map has been called America’s birth certificate, and it cost the nation $10 million. It is beautiful, certainly, printed from twelve woodblocks so finely carved that the Jesuit schoolteacher who rediscovered the map in 1901, Joseph Fischer, assumed it to be the handiwork of the great artist Albrecht Dürer. It wasn’t, but it was worthy of the mistake. As many as a thousand copies of this enormous map of the world may have been printed from these woodblocks, yet the only copy to survive is the one now on display in the foyer of the Library of Congress.
The map fetched the price it did because of one tiny detail. This is the first map on which the name America appears. Martin Waldseemüller inscribed it on a blank space in South America, roughly where we would locate Paraguay. Quite how much of the wraith-like landform snaking its way up the left-hand side of the map from the Antarctic to the Arctic the term was meant to name is unclear, but the Congress of the United States agreed that it covered enough to satisfy them. So there it is: a new name for a new continent, and all because Waldseemüller was a big fan of the explorer–geographer Amerigo Vespucci. Had he been an enthusiast of Christopher Columbus, he might have called the new continent Columbia. But no, for him Vespucci was the discoverer of the New World.
Nine years after the map was published, Waldseemüller abandoned his innovative model of the world for a very different design, thereby rendering the 1507 original redundant. It was now a map without a future. This one copy survived only because a free-spirited priest-turned-mathematician named Johannes Schöner bought and preserved it some time before he died in 1547. He put it in a leather-bound portfolio, which ended up in Wolfegg Castle in southern Germany. It came to light only because in 1901 the castle archivist, Hermann Hafner, heard that a schoolteacher just across the border in Austria was interested in historical documents and offered him the run of the castle library. That schoolteacher, Joseph Fischer, was a Viking enthusiast looking for sources on the early Norse voyages. Without all these serendipitous connections, the map might never have crossed the five centuries that separate us from Waldseemüller. Johannes Schöner, the actor in this history closest to its beginning, feared the indifference with which objects by which one can investigate the past – indeed anything – could be treated. ‘You know the times’, he complained in 1533. The arts and sciences ‘are so silent and neglected, it may be feared that the idiots will wipe them out’.
The book you are about to read revolves around a different map, the Selden map, so called because an English lawyer by the name of John Selden bequeathed it to the Bodleian Library in Oxford in 1654. The most important Chinese map of the last seven centuries, it maps the slice of the world that Chinese at the time knew, from the Indian Ocean in the west to the Spice Islands in the east, and from Java in the south to Japan in the north. It exists today because it came into the hands of John Selden, who shared Johannes Schöner’s passion to ensure the survival of knowledge, and not just English knowledge but all knowledge, even Chinese, although it was a language he couldn’t read. It is fortunate that he did so, for unlike the thousand Waldseemüllers that were printed, the Selden map is a singleton, drawn and painted by hand, the only one of its kind.
It is a large map, measuring 160 cm (63 in.) in length and 96½ cm (38 in.) in width. That makes it only half the size of the Waldseemüller (16⅔ sq. ft compared to 34 sq. ft), but still it must count as the largest wall map of its time and place. As neither China nor Europe produced sheets of paper that large, making wall maps on this scale required ingenuity. The largest sheet of paper available to the man who drew the Selden map was 65 × 128 cm (25½ × 50½ in.). He solved the size problem by taking two sheets, cutting one lengthwise down the middle and gluing one of the halves down the side of the other sheet, then trimming the length of the remaining half and gluing it along the bottom. Waldseemüller worked with smaller sheets of paper (42 × 77 cm, 16½ × 30½ in.). Rather than glue them together, he divided his map into twelve sections, printed it on twelve sheets from twelve separate woodblocks and left it to the buyer to assemble them into a single map. Then map design changed, and all the buyers but one threw their dozen sheets away. Schöner’s set survived only because it disappeared into a library, which is just what happened to the Selden map. Both have now re-emerged – Waldseemüller’s a century ago, Selden’s just a few years back – to great public interest.
Both maps are terrifically important, in different ways. Waldseemüller drew his map just at the moment when the New World was coming into view. Europe’s novel encounter with the world forced him to bend the existing mapmaking template to breaking point, and then to abandon it nine years later in favour of a new geometry better capable of encompassing the entire globe. So too in its way the Selden map bore the impact of China’s encounter with the same world, seen from the other side of the globe. The man who drew the map acknowledged long-established traditions of how to draw China, but he also stepped outside that tradition to picture the lands that lay beyond China in a fashion no other Chinese cartographer had ever done. Not unlike Waldseemüller, he re-designed the world in response to an avalanche of new data about how the lands and seas beyond his native place actually lay on the surface of the earth. He also created a thing of considerable if subtle beauty, wallpapering the land mass of eastern Asia with mountains, trees and flowering plants – and the occasional whimsical detail. The two errant butterflies fluttering about in the Gobi Desert are my favourites.
It took a century for the map that names America to find its new home in the Library of Congress, where it occupies what many regard as its rightful place in the pantheon of foundational documents celebrating their nation. Will fate touch the Selden map in the same way? Painstakingly (and expensively) restored in 2011, it is now on display in the Bodleian Library. Will its story end there? Should some decide that this map has a foundational role to play in the celebration of China’s national identity, its future could become complicated. But the Selden map is not China’s birth certificate. Neither the Chinese name for China – Zhongguo – nor the name of the reigning dynasty – Ming – appears on it, but then China has been around for so long that neither would carry significant weight at this late moment in its history.
Not a birth certificate, then, but potentially an adoption certificate? China is currently in dispute with every maritime nation in East Asia over who may rightfully claim sovereignty over the thousands of islands that dot the East and South China Seas. The best-known, because most noisily contested, are the Diaoyu Islands north-east of Taiwan, and the Paracel and Spratly Islands in the South China Sea. As the Selden map is the only detailed and geographically specific Chinese depiction of these waters before the nineteenth century, some hope that this long-lost map may be the winning card in the diplomatic game China plays with its neighbours. Over the course of this book I will indicate my doubt in this regard and show that the Selden map has nothing to say about such topics. But patriotic sentiment and national interest are powerful forces against knowledge for its own sake, so who can say? The Selden map has been valued for insurance purposes at three-fifths the price of the Waldseemüller map. This is an arbitrary estimate for an object that has been off the market for almost four centuries. If it ever goes back on, the bidding will surely go much higher.
I have not devoted an entire book to a single map in order to deliver an Antiques Roadshow punchline. Rather, I take the map as an occasion to explore the age in which it was made. It was an age of remarkable creativity and change. New vistas were opening, old horizons faltering, accepted truths giving way to controversial new ideas. Ordinary people in their hundreds of thousands were on the move in search of work, survival and adventure. Ships in their tens of thousands were sailing from every port in Europe and Asia. Commodities produced on one continent were reshaping economies on another. Against this background William Shakespeare was premiering The Tempest, Ben Jonson inventing the musical to amuse King James I, and John Donne being pressured by that same monarch to give up love poetry for sermon-writing, and excelling at both. John Selden was among this crowd, living life to the full in London and dutifully churning out poems while he was supposed to be studying law. The poems were decidedly second-rate: the younger man had yet to find his metier. His monumental achievements in Oriental scholarship and constitutional law lay ahead of him. But he too would change the fabric of English society just as surely as these more famous authors did. And as all this unfolded, the map that bears his name would come into his hands.
