Beschreibung:

THE KANGXI PROVINCIAL ATLAS OF CHINA Huangyu Quanlan Tu [Overview Atlas of Imperial Territories]. China, [Kangxi period, c.1717-1721]. A milestone cartographic achievement, an enormous handscroll atlas of China's territory almost 10 metres in length. In the middle of Kangxi’s reign, Manchu rule over Han China was relatively stable. However, during the negotiation of the Treaty of Nerchinsk (1689), it was realised that traditional Chinese maps were not able to clearly delineate the northeast border between Russia and China, Emperor Kangxi therefore initiated a nationwide field survey from 1708-1718, and invited 10 French Jesuits to provide technical support, including Jean-Baptiste Régis (1663-1738) and Pierre Jartoux (1669-1720). The survey adopted European triangulation methods and Nicolas Sanson’s projection, providing a detailed European approach to Chinese cartography rather than the traditional Sinocentric version. The coverage of the resulting Overview Atlas of Imperial Territories was expansive, extending from the north at the Amur River and Korea, to the south at Qiongzhou Prefecture (modern Hainan Province), from Taiwan in the east, to the west at Kumul Khanate. This extremely long handscroll contains 15 mapsheets showing 17 provinces and districts: Guangxi Province, Guizhou Province, Yunnan Province, Sichuan Province, Shaanxi Province, Shanxi Province, Rehe Region, Hetao Region, Kumul Khanate, Selenga River, Amur River, Ussuri River, Korea, etc. The first versions of this map were the very first drafts of individual regions completed by Jesuits and Qing officials on-site, followed by: the manuscript transcribed versions of individual districts and the whole nation; the first woodblock version (28 maps) in 1717; copperplate prints (with Manchurian annotations) produced by Matteo Ripa (1682-1746) during 1719-1721; the second woodblock version (32 maps) also produced during 1719-1721; coloured manuscript copies with textual commentaries; and a 20th-century woodblock version (36 maps) printed by Walter Fuchs (1902-1979); etc. The most prominent pictorial difference between the woodblock and copperplate prints lies in the depiction of mountains, which are composed of horizontally overlapped hills with angular peaks in the former, while those in the copperplate prints consist of vertically overlapped hills with round peaks. Another difference is that the copperplate version contains Manchurian texts (Li). The present lot is a woodblock. However, we have not been able determine if this is the first edition printed in 1717 with 28 maps, or one of the later ones in 1719 or 1721 with 4 more maps, as the present lot is incomplete, and the maps it contains are included in both versions. 'This enormous atlas of Qing China, printed in several versions, resulted from the largest mapping project of the early modern world and can be considered unique in at least three aspects. First, it was largely based on field surveys conducted by mixed teams of Qing officials and European missionaries and covers a large part of continental East Asia. Second, it is probably the most important example of early modern state-sponsored cartography, involving not just a few able cartographers but an entire state apparatus spurred on and personally supervised by an activist emperor. And third, it is a creative answer to the unique needs of Qing frontier management and imperial control, made possible by the integration, in mensurational and in representational terms, of European and East Asian cartographic practices' (Cams). Unfortunately, the atlas was locked away in the palace, and the advanced cartographic techniques used to produce such an atlas were therefore not made publicly known. Other copies of the 1717-1721 woodblock versions of the atlas can be found in the collection of the Palace Museum, Beijing and the First Historical Archives of China. Reading Imperial Cartography: Ming-Qing Historical Maps in the Library of Congress (2013), pp. 67-74; L