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.Japan and China: mutual representations in the modern era Wataru Masuda p.17
Description
The 1602 Ricci map is a very large, high and 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 (), feral horses (), and names Canada (). The map identifies Florida as , the "Land of Flowers". Several Central and South American places are named, including Guatemala (), Yucatan (), and Chile (). 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:
The figure of the (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
Matteo Ricci (1552–1610) was a Jesuit priest. Ricci was one of the first Western scholars to live in China and he became a master of Chinese script and Classical Chinese. In 1583, Ricci was among the first Jesuits to enter China from Macao. The first Chinese world map was named and made in Zhaoqing in 1584 by Matteo Ricci with Chinese collaborators. Ricci had a small Italian wall map in his possession and created Chinese versions of it at the request of the governor of Zhaoqing at the time, Wang Pan, who wanted the document to serve as a resource for explorers and scholars.
On January 24, 1601, Ricci was the first Jesuitand one of the first Westernersto enter the Ming capital Beijing, bringing atlases of Europe and the West that were unknown to his hosts. The Chinese had maps of the East that were equally unfamiliar to Western scholars.
In 1602, at the request of the Wanli Emperor, Ricci collaborated with Mandarin Zhong Wentao, a technical translator, Li Zhizao, and other Chinese scholars in Beijing to create what was his third and largest world map, the Kunyu Wanguo Quantu.
In this map, European geographic knowledge, new to the Chinese, was combined with Chinese information unknown to Europeans to create the first map known to combine Chinese and European cartography. Among other things, this map revealed the existence of America to the Chinese. Ford W. Bell said: "This was a great collaboration between East and West. It really is a very clear example of how trade was a driving force behind the spread of civilization."According to John D. Day,John D. Day, “The Search for the Origins of the Chinese Manuscripts of Matteo Ricci’s Maps”, Imago Mundi 47 (1995), pp. 94–117 Matteo Ricci prepared four editions of Chinese world maps during his mission in China before 1603: a 1584 early woodblock print made in Zhaoqing, called Yudi Shanhai Quantu; a 1596 map carved on a stele, called ; a 1600 revised version of the 1596, usually named , engraved by Wu Zhongming; a 1602 larger and much refined edition of the 1584 map, in six panels, printed in Beijing, called ;“Kao Li Madou de shijie ditu”, p. 28
Several prints of the Kunyu Wanguo Quantu were made in 1602. Most of the original maps now are lost. Only six original copies of the map are known to exist, and only two are in good condition. Known copies are in the Vatican Apostolic Library Collection I and at the James Ford Bell Library at the University of Minnesota. The Vatican's 1602 copy was reproduced by Pasquale d'Elia in the beautifully arranged book, Il mappamondo cinese del P Matteo Ricci, S.I. in 1938. This modern work also contains Italian translations of the colophons on the map, a catalogue of all toponyms, plus detailed notes regarding their identification.Mappamondo. For earlier English translations of some of the colophons, see, for example, Lionel Giles, “Translations from the Chinese World Map of Father Ricci”, Geographical Journal 52 (1918), pp. 367–385; and 53 (1919), pp. 19–30.
Other copies of the 1602 map are located at: Japan, Kyoto University Collection; collection of Japan Miyagi Prefecture Library; Collection of the Library of the Japanese Cabinet; and a private collection in Paris, France. No original examples of the map are known to exist in China, where Ricci was revered and buried.
The maps received widespread attention and circulation. The governor General of Guizhou reproduced a copy of the map in a book about Guizhou published in Guiyang in 1604. Ricci estimated that more than 1,000 copies of the 1602 edition were reprinted.
Various versions of the map were exported to Korea and later Japan. The first Korean copy was brought back from Beijing by visiting ambassadors in 1603. It is 533×170 cm, on mulberry paper. This map was brought to Korea in 1603 by Lee Gwan-jeong () and Gwon Hui (), two envoys of Joseon to China. An unattributed and very detailed two page coloured edition of the map, known in Japanese as , was made in Japan circa 1604. Within this Japanese export copy, Japanese Katakana is utilised for foreign location names throughout the Western world.
The is a Korean hand-copied reproduction print by Painter Kim Jin-yeo in 1708, the 34th year of King Sukjong's rule of Joseon. It is owned and displayed at Seoul National University Museum, and is a National Treasure. The map shows five world continents and over 850 toponyms. It contains descriptions of ethnic groups and main products associated with each region. In the margins outside the ellipse, there are images of the northern and southern hemispheres, the Aristotelian geocentric world system, and the orbits of the Sun and Moon. It has an introduction by Choe Seok-jeong providing information on the constitution of the map and its production process.
Bell Library copy
The James Ford Bell Trust announced in December 2009 that it had acquired one of two good copies of the 1602 Ricci map from the firm of Bernard J. Shapero, a noted dealer of rare books and maps in London, for US$1 million, the second most expensive map purchase in history. This copy had been held for years by a private collector in Japan.
Ford W. Bell, president of the American Association of Museums (now the American Alliance of Museums) and a trustee of the James Ford Bell Trust started by his grandfather, James Ford Bell, the founder of General Mills, said in an interview with a reporter from Minnesota Public Radio's All Things Considered: "These opportunities don't present themselves very often. This map was the only one on the market, and the only one likely to be on the market. So we had to take advantage of that opportunity."
The map was displayed for the first time in North America at the Library of Congress from January through April, 2010. It was scanned by the Library of Congress Geography and Map Division to create a permanent digital image that will be posted on the internet later in 2010 in the World Digital Library for scholars and students to study. The map was then exhibited briefly at the Minneapolis Institute of Arts, before moving to its permanent home at the James Ford Bell Library at the University of Minnesota, where it has been on display since September 15, 2010.
Chinese maps published after 1602 Before his death at Peking in 1610, Matteo Ricci prepared four more world maps after the 1602 one:
Most of these maps now are lost. Later copies of the 1602 edition of the may be found in China, Korea, London, and Vienna;A reproduction of the Vienna map can be found in Österreichisch Nationalbibliothek (1995).Kartographische Zimelien. Die 50 schönsten Karten und Globen der Österreichischen Nationalbibliothek. Wien: Holzhausen. one copy of the map recently was discovered in the store-rooms of the Shenyang Museum in China. A world search is currently in progress by Kendall Whaling Museum of Massachusetts. Hong Weilian, earlier established a list of twelve total Ricci maps, which differs considerably from Day's findings.