Kunyu Wanguo Quantu
Kunyu Wanguo Quantu is a large world map produced in Ming-dynasty China in 1602.
The map was drawn and manufactured by Chinese court artists, geographers, and scholars, integrating China’s long-established cartographic traditions and extensive knowledge of East Asia, Southeast Asia, the Indian Ocean, and the eastern coast of Africa. It is the earliest known Chinese world map based on Chinese cartography. Matteo Ricci, an Italian Jesuit missionary, contributed textual information on Europe, parts of the Atlantic, and the Americas, which Chinese scholars—including Li Zhizao—translated, adapted, and incorporated into the Chinese conceptual and geographic framework.
Although Western geographic information is present, the map’s overall composition, visual style, technical execution, and the majority of its geographic content remain fundamentally Chinese. Kunyu Wanguo Quantu is therefore best understood as a Chinese world map enriched with limited European data, rather than a European cartographic creation. It has been referred to as the Impossible Black Tulip of Cartography, "because of 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, 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 Huādì, 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, 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, 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 Nove Cieli 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 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, 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 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 Yudi Shanhai Quantu 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 Jesuit - and one of the first Westerners - to 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, 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 Shanhai Yudi Tu ;
- a 1600 revised version of the 1596, usually named Shanhai Yudi Quantu, engraved by Wu Zhongming;
- a 1602 larger and much refined edition of the 1584 map, in six panels, printed in Beijing, called Kunyu Wanguo Quantu;
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 Konyo Bankoku Zenzu, was made in Japan circa 1604. Within this Japanese export copy, Japanese Katakana is utilised for foreign location names throughout the Western world.
The Gonyeomangukjeondo 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 Aristotleian 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 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 Kunyu Wanguo Quantu may be found in China, Korea, London, and Vienna; 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.
In 1607 or 1609 the Shanhai Yudi Quantu, is a Chinese map which was published in the geographical treatise Sancai Tuhui. The Shanhai Yudi Quantu was influenced highly by the work of Matteo Ricci. Matteo Ricci had several of his own maps entitled Shanhai Yudi Quantu. The locations in the map have been identified and translated by Roderich Ptak in his work, The Sino-European Map, in the Encyclopedia Sancai tuhui:About 1620 Giulio Aleni made the world map Wanguo Quantu, putting China at the center of the world map, following Ricci's format and contents, but in a much smaller size. This map was included in some editions of Aleni's geographical work, Zhifang waiji. His 1623 preface states that another Jesuit, Diego de Pantoja, on the command of the emperor, had translated a different European map, also following Ricci's model, but there is no other knowledge of that work.
In 1633, the Jesuit, Francesco Sambiasi, composed and annotated another world map, entitled Kunyu Quantu, in Nanjing.
In 1674, Ferdinand Verbiest developed the Kunyu Quantu, a similar map, but with various improvements. It consists of eight panels, each 179 cm x 54 cm, together displaying two hemispheres in Mercator projection. The two outer scrolls individually depict cartouches that contain several kinds of information on geography and meteorology. The making of Verbiest's Kunyu Quantu was intended to meet the interest of the Kangxi Emperor, as Verbiest's introductory dedication implies. There currently are at least fourteen or fifteen copies and editions of this map known in Europe, Japan, Taiwan, America, and Australia.