For encapsulating a worldview there is nothing quite like a world map. As with other forms of cartography, mappaemundi--whether medieval or modern, Asian or Western--tell us about values and attitudes, aims and aspirations, hopes and fears; but they express them on a particularly grand, indeed global, scale. To the extent that such productions in any given society share affinities across space and time, they reveal significant features of that culture's self-image (and, of course, its conceptions of the "other"); and to the degree that they do not, they suggest changes, ruptures, tensions, and conflicts within the larger cultural system. With these considerations in mind, I would like to look at the evolution of Chinese maps of the world during late imperial times--from the twelfth to the twentieth centuries--focusing on two basic questions: How did changing conceptions of "the world" shape the contours of Chinese cartography, and how did changing (as well as enduring) cartographic practices affect Chinese conceptions of the world?

The Jingban tianwen quantu was produced in the 1780s or early 90s by a Chinese scholar named Ma Junliang, who received the prestigious jinshi civil service examination degree in 1761. He was well-known for his skill as a mapmaker.