A series of unusually large atlases produced by and for the Qing court during the eighteenth century reflect the court's growing desire for new representations of its imperial space as it projected its power and influence into Inner and Central Asia. The first of these, printed in several editions at the end of the Kangxi period (1662-1722), followed empire-wide land surveys covering the Manchu homelands up to the Amur River, all of the Chinese provinces, and the lands of the Khalkha Mongols, as well as depicting (largely unsurveyed) Korea, Tibet, and parts of what we today call Xinjiang. The production of a significantly reworked version under the Yongzheng emperor (r. 1723-35) radically expanded the Kangxi-era atlas's geographical scope without ordering new surveys, incorporating areas far beyond the Qing regime's reach: the entire Junghar and Russian Empires from Kamchatka to Riga and down to the Black Sea (Figure 1). Versions from the Qianlong reign (1735-96) revised the Yongzheng atlas's depictions of Inner Asia -based upon limited new surveys -and extended its scope to incorporate the Northern Subcontinent and parts of the Arabian Peninsula. 1 * I thank Juul Eijk and Fresco Sam-Sin at Leiden University for their help with the Manchu language; Zhang Xinyu and Song Hanxiao, students at the University of Macau, for their practical assistance in arranging source materials; and John Cirilli and Elke Papelitzky for their help with the final text.1. One may view, explore, and search the three large multi-sheet atlases on QingMaps. org. Cams, Rodenburg, and Sam-Sin, QingMaps.org. Maps on this platform were digitally assembled with permission from Wang Qianjin and Liu Ruofang, Qingting san da shice quantu ji.
This article focuses on the role of spatial dynamics in effectuating the integration of two different sets of land surveying techniques. During the later stages of the Qing-Zunghar wars of the 1690s, the Kangxi emperor (r. 1661-1722) repeatedly asked French Jesuit missionaries, who had been sent to China in 1685 under the patronage of the French King Louis XIV, to join his imperial campaigns targeting the Khalkha-Mongolian borderlands. In the shadow of these imperial journeys, missionaries systematically determined latitudes with Paris-made instruments while Qing officials measured road distances all along the way with graduated ropes. A next step in the evolution of imperial cartographic practice came after the Qing- Zunghar wars had come to an end, when an all-out effort was launched by the emperor to integrate the newly conquered Khalkha Mongols and their lands into the Qing polity. As part of the effort, missionaries were asked to produce a map of the new frontier by integrating European and East Asian practices, which led to the discovery of a technical incompatibility. In 1702, the problem was solved by the precise measurement of the terrestrial degree and, immediately after, the restandardization of the Qing’s most basic unit of length, the chi 尺. Thus, I argue that the turn of the eighteenth century saw the crystallization of a new or hybrid Qing cartographic practice, driven by the need to explore the new Khalkha frontier. More concretely, I show how selected techniques as developed by the French Academy of Sciences were gradually absorbed into a pre-existing framework of Qing land surveying, a process that was shaped and facilitated by exchanges in via throughout the vast Mongolian frontier.
This introduction gives a brief overview of the articles included in this issue. It also briefly introduces both the general context of the New Qing History debate and its recent development.
scite is a Brooklyn-based organization that helps researchers better discover and understand research articles through Smart Citations–citations that display the context of the citation and describe whether the article provides supporting or contrasting evidence. scite is used by students and researchers from around the world and is funded in part by the National Science Foundation and the National Institute on Drug Abuse of the National Institutes of Health.