Description A late Ming watercolour map of East Asia, including China, Korea, Japan, the Philippines, Indonesia, Southeast Asia and part of India, probably executed in the 1620s. The map has no title, and is very large, approximately 1x1.5m. The text is in Chinese, but there are some Latin annotations by a later hand. The map shows shipping routes and compass bearings from the port of Quanzhou across the entire region. A panel of text on the left of the map near Calicut, its western extremity, gives directions of the routes to Aden, Oman, and the Strait of Hormuz.

Provenance The map came from the estate of the London lawyer John Selden (d.1654) in 1659, along with a large collection of Oriental manuscripts, Greek marbles, a Chinese compass, and the famous Aztec history known as the Codex Mendoza. It was most likely obtained in Southeast Asia through the East India Company's base at Banten, but was almost certainly produced in the port of Quanzhou in Fujian province, perhaps by sinicised Arabs. It probably arrived in London towards the mid-17th century.

Importance The map has always been known as an interesting curiousity from the time it arrived in the Library, but its importance was first recognised by the visiting American scholar Robert Bachelor in January 2008. He was the first to notice the shipping routes, which make the map unique among both Chinese and indeed European maps of the period, and has described it as "an object of globally recognizable significance".

The map was shown to Tim Brook on 9 May 2008, who with only days to spare completely rewrote his inaugural lecture as Professor of Chinese for 13 May 2008 to make the map and the related Laud rutter (MS.Laud Or.145) central to his argument. In his lecture, Professor Brook described the map as the most important Chinese historical document he had ever seen. Apart from the shipping routes, he pointed out that the map is the first to show China as part of a greater geographical area rather than as the entire known world.

The map was also shown to Zhang Zhiqing, Head of Special Collections in the National Library of China, on his recent visit. He said that the map was among the most important maps of China he had ever seen.

Condition The map was in very poor physical condition, largely as a result of its having been backed with linen, probably in the late 19th century under the librarianship of E.W.B. Nicholson. The adhesive had stiffened and cracked, so that the map would not lie flat, making it impossible to exhibit or even produce a perfect surrogate. It suffered whenever it was unrolled, and required extensive restoration. Following a successful fundraising effort, this is now being conducted by a team of expert conservators from the Bodleian Library, the British Library, and the British Museum, who all have hands-on experience of restoring high-profile East Asian objects. The work is expected to be complete by late summer, 2011. In September of that year, there will be a one-day conference to explain and draw together all that is known about the map, and it will be exhibited in the Proscholium of the Old Library.

David Helliwell
10 November 2010