Timothy Brook - Mr. Seldens Map of China: Decoding the Secrets of a Vanished Cartographer

MR SELDENS
MAP OF CHINA

TIMOTHY BROOK is the award-winning author or editor of twelve books on China, including Quelling the People: The Military Suppression of the Beijing Democracy Movement and Opium Regimes: China, Britain, and Japan, 18391952. Editor-in-chief of a six-volume series on China published by Harvard University Press, he has held the Shaw Chair in Chinese Studies at Oxford and is now Republic of China Chair of History at University of British Columbia in Vancouver, Canada.

ALSO BY TIMOTHY BROOK

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)

Decoding the Secrets of a Vanished Cartographer

Timothy Brook

Copyright 2013 Timothy Brook

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LIBRARY AND ARCHIVES CANADA CATALOGUING IN PUBLICATION

Brook, Timothy, 1951, author
Mr Seldens map of China : decoding the secrets of a vanished
cartographer / Timothy Brook.

Includes bibliographical references and index.
Issued in print and electronic formats.
ISBN 978-1-77089-353-5 (bound). ISBN 978-1-77089-354-2 (html)

1. Cartography South China Sea History Sources. 2. Geography, Ancient South China Sea Maps. 3. South China Sea Maps, Manuscript Early works to 1800. 4. South China Sea Discovery and exploration Maps Early works to 1800. 5. Selden, John, 15841654 Private collections. I. Title. II. Title: Map of China. III. Title: Seldens map of China. IV. Title: Mister Seldens map of China.

GA1121.B76 2013 912.16472 C2013-903643-1 C2013-903644-X

Cover design: Patti Ratchford
Cover images: Studio of Peter Lely, portrait of John Selden National Portrait Gallery, London; The Selden Map The Bodleian Library

We acknowledge for their financial support of our publishing program the Canada Council for the Arts, the Ontario Arts Council, and the Government of Canada through the Canada Book Fund.

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

1. The Selden map (Bodleian Library)

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

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

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

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

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

7. Portrait of Thomas Hyde (Bodleian Library)

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

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

10. The compass rose on the Selden map

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

12. John Seldens Chinese compass (Bodleian Library)

13. The routes on the Selden map

14. 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

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

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

17. The Calicut cartouche on the Selden map

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

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

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

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

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

23. 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

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

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

26. The Selden map geo-referenced

27. Prince Giolo, 1692

28. 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