Mapping China and Managing the World: Culture, Cartography and Cosmology in Late Imperial Times by Richard J. Smith (review)

Abstract

RICHARD J. SMITH, Mapping China and Managing the World: Culture, Cartography and Cosmology in Late Imperial Times. Asia’s Transformations/ Critical Asian Scholarship. London and New York: Routledge, 2013. xvi, 270 pp. £29.99, US$53.95 (pb). ISBN 978-0-415-68510-8 Richard Smith’s new book is a collection of six essays, chosen, as the author suggests in his introduction, to represent major cornerstones of his past research. The essays, therefore, are not identical with his previous work, but rather updated or reexamined versions of previously published articles and book chapters. The book thus provides—to use a metaphor related to some of its themes—a set of coordinates that allows the reader to navigate through the author’s research interests and prolific publications. This ‘‘set of coordinates’’ is comprised of the Yijing 易經 (Classic of Changes), cartography, ritual, tradition/modernity, divination, and the Jesuits. Although the book purports to deal with ‘‘late imperial times’’ (‘‘from the twelfth to the twentieth centuries,’’ p. 48), it ventures well beyond the late imperial, both before and after the empire. Thus, after the general introduction to the book and its relation to Smith’s biography, the first chapter, ‘‘The Languages of the Yijing and the Presentation of Reality,’’ begins with an analysis of the origins of the Yijing during the Zhou 周 dynasty and ends with twentieth-century receptions of the text. This chapter serves as an excellent overview of the Yijing, giving examples of the text and its uses, and emphasizing its importance in China’s ancient history, culture, and philosophy, as well as in its more recent past. Smith highlights the Yijing’s role in creating ‘‘a comprehensive vision of reality,’’ as well as in providing ‘‘a working model of cosmic change’’ enabling its users to ‘‘fathom the cosmos’’ (p. 33). Chapter 1 can easily be used as a reading assignment for undergraduate introductory classes, and the included diagrams illustrate quite well Smith’s flowing discussion of the Yijing. The many comparisons with the Bible can perhaps assist also a Western undergraduate to relate better to the Yijing. Chapter 2, ‘‘Mapping China’s World,’’ concentrates on cartography, especially world maps in late imperial times. Smith suggests that world maps are a useful tool for understanding ‘‘Chinese conceptions of the world’’ (p. 48), both in the sense of how Chinese thought about others and the way they thought about themselves, within the larger context of the world. Smith presents the multifaceted and multilayered nature of Chinese world maps along with their cultural background and implications, emphasizing the limited influence of Jesuit cartography and the lasting significance of the ‘‘Sinocentric’’ (p. 69) tributary system. As Smith puts it, ‘‘[world maps] were designed primarily as visual statements about a great and glorious culture, a universal order focused squarely on the Chinese tributary system’’ (p. 65). Clearly, the maps that Smith examines are of great interest. It is, however, unfortunate that the quality of the figures is such that one can hardly see any details. The first two chapters, dealing with the Yijing and cartography, thus discuss ways of bringing order, or comprehending order, in chronological and geographical terms. The third chapter, ‘‘Ritual in Qing Culture,’’ complements the first two by addressing order systems in the society (broadly conceived), the state, and the cosmos. It was thus, as the author correctly argues and demonstrates, that ‘‘in Ming and Qing times ritual continued to be a matter of extraordinary importance’’ (p. 91). Smith surveys the ‘‘theory and practice’’ of ‘‘orthodox ritual’’ along with the various forms and levels of rituals during the 126 BOOK REVIEWS Qing. He focuses on ‘‘state sacrifices and domestic life-cycle ritual’’ (pp. 98–103), which he takes to ‘‘reflect two of the most powerful symbols or metaphors in Chinese sociopolitical vocabulary, the bureaucracy and the family’’ (p. 98). Smith ends the chapter with a short discussion of heterodox and heretic rituals and a more general analysis of the significance of ritual in Chinese society and culture, with an eye to its fate in the modern era. This fate is examined in the following chapter, ‘‘The Teachings of Ritual and the Rectification of Customs: Echos [sic] of Tradition in the Political...