Blurring the Boundaries: Integrating Techniques of Land Surveying on the Qing’s Mongolian Frontier

Abstract

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.

Mongolian map-making as practice

“…In this period, the emperor's broad political strategy as well as his own sheer intellectual interest was the main inspiration for map production. As Cams describes (2017, 31–35), the emperor used both European and Chinese cartographic practices to determine precisely the border between the Inner Mongolian lands and Qalqa / Khalkha (Outer Mongolia) (see further below). The ability to make maps for military purposes, ones that accurately reflected the great distances the emperor would lead his Qing armies against the Zhungars, was crucial at this time.…”

“…He was disturbed when experiments showed that the two methods did not coincide, concluded that the Chinese standards used in astronomical and cartographic practice were faulty, and in 1698 redefined the length of the li by imperial decree so that there were exactly 200 li in one degree of terrestrial latitude. Subsequently, other key measurements such as the smaller chi were redefined to conform (Cams 2017, 36–37). Many land surveys and maps, using the new li , were executed by mixed teams of European missionaries and Qing officials between 1708 and 1717.…”