Brook - Mr. Seldens map of China decoding the secrets of a vanished cartographer

The Troubled Empire: China in the Yuan and Ming Dynasties (2010)

Vermeers Hat: The Seventeenth Century and the Dawn of the Global World (2008)

Death by a Thousand Cuts (2008; with Jrme Bourgon and Gregory Blue)

Collaboration: Japanese Agents and Chinese Elites in Wartime China (2005)

The Chinese State in Ming Society (2005)

Opium Regimes: China, Britain, and Japan, 18391952 (2000; with Bob Wakabayashi)

Documents on the Rape of Nanking (1999)

The Confusions of Pleasure: Commerce and Culture in Ming China (1998)

Praying for Power: Buddhism and the Formation of Gentry Society in Late-Ming China (1993)

Quelling the People: The Military Suppression of the Beijing Democracy Movement (1992)

Copyright 2013 by Timothy Brook

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Published by Bloomsbury Press, New York

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eISBN: 978-1-62040-144-6

First published in the U.K. by Profile Books Ltd in 2013
First U.S. Edition 2013
This electronic edition published in October 2013

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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 Seldens will
11 June 1653

. The Selden map (Bodleian Library)

. Extract from the codicil of John Seldens will, dated 11 June 1653 (Public Records Office, Kew)

. Portrait of John Selden as a young man ( National Portrait Gallery, London)

. Portrait of Ben Jonson ( National Portrait Gallery, London)

. Portrait of Huig de Groot (Grotius) as a young man (courtesy of Stichling Museum, Rotterdam)

. Studio of Peter Lely, portrait of John Selden ( National Portrait Gallery, London)

. Portrait of Thomas Hyde (Bodleian Library)

. Charles I touching for the Kings Evil ( Royal College of Physicians)

. Godfrey Kneller, portrait of Michael Shen, also known as The Chinese Convert, 1687 ( Royal Collection Trust)

. The compass rose on the Selden map

. The Laud rutter, Shunfeng xiangsong (Dispatched on Following Winds), title romanised by Michael Shen and translated into Latin by Thomas Hyde (Bodleian Library)

. John Seldens Chinese compass (Bodleian Library)

. The routes on the Selden map

. Map of England and part of Scotland illustrating the coastline under the jurisdiction of the Kings Chambers, in Selden, Of the Dominion, or, Ownership, of the Sea (1652), p. 366

. Map of Great Britain and its surrounding seas, in Selden, Of the Dominion, or, Ownership, of the Sea (1652), p. 185

. The starting point of the routes on the Selden map: Zhangzhou, Quanzhou and the Taiwan Strait

. The Calicut cartouche on the Selden map

. Samuel Purchas as he appears on the title page of his Purchas his Pilgrimes, 1625 ( National Portrait Gallery, London)

. The Hondius map, in Samuel Purchas, Purchas his Pilgrimes (1625), vol. III, p. 360 (British Library: The British Library Board)

. The Saris map, in Samuel Purchas, Purchas his Pilgrimes (1625), vol. III, p. 401 (British Library: The British Library Board)

. A Complete Map of Mountains and the Seas of the Earth (Yudi shanhai quantu)

. John Speed, Asia with the Islands Adjoining, 1626, courtesy of Taiwan Commercial Press

. General Topographical Map by Province of the Divisions and Correspondences of the Twenty-Eight Lunar Mansions of the Ming Dynasty, in Yu Xiangdou, Wanyong zhengzong (Complete Source for a Myriad Practical Uses) (1599), 2.2b3a

. Heaven is round, earth is square, in Zhang Huang, Tushu Bian (Documentarium) (1613), 28.2a

. Map of China, in Luo Hongxian, Guang yutu (Enlarged Terrestrial Atlas) (1555)

. The Selden map geo-referenced

. Prince Giolo, 1692

. T. Murray, portrait of William Dampier, 1698 ( National Portrait Gallery, London)

Will ADAMS (15641620): 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, 161418

Richard COCKS (15661624): English merchant and head of the trading post established by the East India Company in Japan between 1613 and 1623

GIOLO [geeolo] (c. 16611692): Pacific Islander captured by Muslim slave traders in the 1680s and sold into service in Mindanao; died in Oxford in 1692

Thomas HYDE (16361703): 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 (15721637): poet, satirist, playwright, entertainer at the court of King James I, bosom friend and admirer of John Selden

William LAUD (15731645): 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 15771626): 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 (1579/801643): employee of the East India Company in Bantam, 16059; commander of the Companys Eighth Voyage, 161114

John SELDEN (15841654): lawyer, Orientalist, legal historian, parliamentarian, constitutional theorist, author of The Closed Sea

Michael SHEN Fuzong (c. 16581691): 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 (15421629): engraver, cartographer, historian of England; publisher of Englands first world atlas in 1627

ZHANG Huang [jang hwong] (15271608): native of Jiangxi province, failed examination candidate, head of the prestigious White Deer Grotto Academy; compiler of the massive encyclopaedia