The Collecting and Study of Pre-Modern East Asian Maps in Europe and the United States

Abstract

After fifty years, we are revisiting R.A. Skelton’s 1966 study of the collecting of early maps in Europe and the United States for the celebration of the Nineteenth Nebenzahl lecture series at the Newberry Library, Chicago. In that study, Skelton discussed who collected maps, where some of those maps have been and where they are today, what it meant to assemble map collections, and how we understood and studied maps and mapping fifty years ago. Skelton, however, examined primarily the collecting of European and American mapping during the eighteenth to twentieth centuries. This study will address one neglected area of collecting and studying, that of the maps of East Asia, i.e. those of China, Korea and Japan in Europe and the United States exclusively, with the understanding that the majority of extant maps of East Asia are currently housed in respective national, provincial, municipal and university libraries and museums in East Asia. And only pre-modern East Asian maps, those produced in East Asia for an East Asian audience prior to 1900 are discussed, as that generally represents the historical moment when transitions from imperial and royal rule to modern nation-state governance occurred in East Asia.