Selden Map Research Articles

The Ship is Laden with Rice and Salt: A Comparison of Two Sailing Models on an Early 17th Century Trade Route Between Java and Sumatra

Abstract Archaeological and historical sailing modeling has become an increasingly productive field of study in the twenty-first century. The research has largely concentrated on methodological development, yet comparisons between models have so far been lacking. In this paper we juxtapose two directed sailing models, Digital Navigator and qtVlm, on a route from East Java to South Sumatra. In the early seventeenth century, the former was a major producer and exporter of rice and salt, while especially Jambi, Indonesia, on the island of Sumatra, had become dependent on imports due to cash-cropping of black pepper. Our simulation results show the optimal sailing season on this route falls between May and September, and that La Niña events somewhat affect the length of this time window. During favorable winds both models produce quite similar routes. In adverse winds there is more variation between the models and the temporal frequency of wind data has more marked effects on routing. The models’ sailing durations match fairly well to the one measured from the Selden Map of China, but the simulated optimized routes tend to take more direct open sea routes than the coast-hugging route on the map. This implies that other factors such as ease of navigation played a more significant role in route selection than mere efficiency. Furthermore, a comparison to the production schedules of rice and salt in the Gresik region shows that products from the same summer’s harvests would have been available for export to Sumatra.

Making a Case for Trade: Shi Shipiao’s Map of the Eastern and Southern Oceans

Abstract In the early eighteenth century, the Kangxi emperor was presented with two maps in Chinese, one each from the officials Gioro Mamboo and Shi Shipiao. The maps showed southern China and Southeast Asia and were based on Dutch charts. The officials presented the maps at a time when the emperor had recently issued a law restricting Chinese trade in Southeast Asia. The map presented by Shi Shipiao adds information about sailing routes and export goods that were subject to the trade restrictions imposed by the emperor. This article argues that rather than being intended to provide a representation of seafaring knowledge, Shi aimed to use the map he presented to convince the emperor to lift the restrictions he had imposed on trade. This therefore provides an example of how maps could be used for political ends. In contrast to many other Chinese maps influenced by European sciences, these two maps show no Jesuit involvement but resemble the Selden Map as well as Japanese and Buginese charts, representing a maritime perspective in the history of knowledge exchange.

Chinese Collections Digitization Project, Digital Bodleian, project creator. Selden Map of China. MS.Selden supra 105. Other.

Chinese Collections Digitization Project, Digital Bodleian, project creator. Selden Map of China. MS.Selden supra 105. Other.

Correction to: Digital Navigator on the Seas of the Selden Map of China: Sequential Least-Cost Path Analysis Using Dynamic Wind Data

Correction to: Digital Navigator on the Seas of the Selden Map of China: Sequential Least-Cost Path Analysis Using Dynamic Wind Data

Digital Navigator on the Seas of the Selden Map of China: Sequential Least-Cost Path Analysis Using Dynamic Wind Data

During the age of sail-powered ships, the maritime trade networks of Southeast Asia were highly cyclical in nature due to the biannually switching wind directions of the East Asian Monsoon. The Selden Map of China provides us with a glimpse of these connections in the early seventeenth century, and it is drawn in a unique way that allows the sailing durations between ports to be measured. In this paper, a novel method of simulating directed sail-powered voyages is developed. The method utilizes ArcGIS Pro’s functionality through Python macros, and unlike the previous least-cost path (LCP) sailing models, it is based on sequential LCP analysis using dynamic real-time series wind data. The optimized routes and sailing durations generated by the macros are then compared against the Selden map. In general, the model performs reasonably well in favourable winds, but is unable to simulate tacking properly in adverse conditions. The results allow the visualization of wind patterns in terms of time spent at sea and demonstrate the inherent natural rhythm of maritime movement and trade in the South China Sea region. The macros are freely available and can be modified to simulate directed sailing in other time periods, localities, and environmental settings.

Review of The Selden Map of China: A New Understanding of the Ming Dynasty

Review of The Selden Map of China: A New Understanding of the Ming Dynasty

Edward Bernard’s Chinese map

ABSTRACT This article assembles scattered pieces of evidence to demonstrate that the famous Chinese “Selden map”, acquired by the Bodleian Library in 1659, was duplicated in the later seventeenth century by the Oxford mathematician and orientalist Edward Bernard (1673–91), as part of his abortive attempt to edit a definitive corpus of classical and post-classical mathematical texts. It was Bernard’s copy, and not the original Selden map, that was publicly exhibited in Oxford in the eighteenth century. Some discussion is also furnished of other Chinese maps received in contemporary Oxford comparable to the Selden map, notably what I name the “Brown/Styleman” map, presented to the Bodleian Library in 1698. These discussions will help us to rethink how contemporary European scholars might have approached oriental maps.

A hyperspectral imaging spectral unmixing and classification approach to pigment mapping in the Gough & Selden Maps

ABSTRACT In this research, a spectral unmixing and classification approach for hyperspectral imagery (HSI) of historical artifacts is introduced. The Gram Matrix and Max-D techniques have been used to estimate the within material diversity in an HSI and extract the spectra of the class exemplars, called endmembers. Due to the absence of ground truth, the exemplar spectra are assumed to represent pure materials in the scene or unique pigment mixtures. After extracting endmembers, the Nonnegative Linear Least Squares algorithm and the K-means algorithm are then used to classify the HSI based on the endmembers. We also proposed a “spectral angle spatial patterns” method to map the class membership and goodness across the map to identify per-class spatial patterns. This approach has been successfully utilized in two historical artifacts, the Gough Map of Britain (c.1400) and the Selden Map of China (c.1619). Both maps were imaged using a hyperspectral imaging system while in the collection at the Bodleian Library, Oxford University. It reveals at least six kinds of dominant water pigments used in each map along with their spatial distribution. This approach can be generalized to a novel pigment mapping tool for historical geographers to analyze the material diversity of historical artifacts.

Book Review: London: The Selden Map and the Making of a Global City, 1549-1689

Book Review: London: The Selden Map and the Making of a Global City, 1549-1689

Sea Rovers, Silver, and Samurai: Maritime East Asia in Global History, 1550–1700 eds. by Tonio Andrade and Xing Hang

Reviewed by: Sea Rovers, Silver, and Samurai: Maritime East Asia in Global History, 1550–1700 eds. by Tonio Andrade and Xing Hang Naoko Iioka Sea Rovers, Silver, and Samurai: Maritime East Asia in Global History, 1550–1700. Edited by Tonio Andrade and Xing Hang. University of Hawai'i Press, 2016. 396 pages. Hardcover $69.00. This collection of sixteen essays arranged roughly in chronological order originates from a 2011 conference organized by Tonio Andrade. He and coeditor Xing Hang bring together an impressive array of international scholars representing different generations, from pioneers who have been leading the field since the 1970s to emerging scholars. The aim of this book is to examine the history of the early modern East Asian maritime realm, not as another Mediterranean or as a mere extension to the Indian Ocean world, but in its own right. In doing so the authors hope to provide valuable data that adds to the ongoing discussion about the so-called Great Divergence between Western Europe and East Asia. The volume begins with an able introduction by the editors that sets the ensuing chapters against the broader historical context of the early modern East Asian maritime realm, which stretched from the Strait of Malacca to the Sea of Japan with [End Page 314] the South China Sea at its center. Considering maritime prohibition policies of China, Korea, and Japan as a manifestation of the state-to-sea relations unique to East Asia, Andrade and Hang divide the period covered by this volume into four distinctive phases: (1) the "wild and woolly" times between roughly 1523 and 1567 (p. 6), (2) a period of stability and flourishing trade from 1570 to the 1620s, (3) the Zheng regime from the mid-1630s to 1683, and (4) peace under the Qing from 1683 onward. The two chapters immediately following the introduction deal with a period during which central political authorities exerted little influence over the maritime realm. Michael Laver highlights the cosmopolitan and fluid nature of port cities like Hirado, where pirates, smugglers, and traders of different origins gathered and mingled beyond the purview of land-based political authorities. Peter Shapinsky looks at the intriguing dynamics between stereotypes and self-representations of "Japanese pirates." He argues that the Chinese and Korean officials who encountered and recorded the pirates constructed fearsome and ferocious images that were at the same time performed and exploited by the pirates themselves. The next two chapters cover the subsequent period of stability. Birgit Tremml- Werner sheds new light on the diplomatic discourse between Japan and the Spanish Philippines that briefly took place during the last decade of the sixteenth century. Through careful examination of diplomatic exchanges between Toyotomi Hideyoshi's Japan and Spanish authorities in Manila, she presents a revisionist view on diplomacy between different political cultures in the early modern period. The study emphasizes that both sides had a much better grasp of each other's different diplomatic styles than historians previously believed. The contribution by Robert Batchelor discusses shifting notions of time and space in early modern maritime East Asia, focusing on three seventeenth-century artifacts that he recently rediscovered in the Chinese collection at the Bodleian Library, including the Selden Map of China. The following chapters draw our attention to three generations of the Zheng family, Zheng Zhilong, Zheng Chenggong (aka Koxinga), and Zheng Jing. A biographical study by John E. Wills, Jr., constructs a narrative of Zheng Zhilong's early life from various Chinese, Japanese, and European sources. The essay demonstrates how less-appreciated materials, such as stories and seemingly unimportant anecdotal evidence, can provide clues to the past if they are adequately treated. Wills calls for further collaboration between scholars of different expertise to establish a more holistic understanding of the Zheng clan. Drawing upon hitherto underused Chinese materials, Cheng-heng Lu's pathbreaking chapter exposes the vicissitudes of complicated personal relationships among multiple maritime players. By elucidating the inner dynamics of the Ming military system, he brilliantly dissects the process through which Zheng Zhilong rose from his status as just one of many pirate leaders operating along the Fujian coast to become the head of a formidable maritime organization. The study suggests that...

The origins of the Selden map of China: scientific analysis of the painting materials and techniques using a holistic approach

Since the ‘rediscovery’ of the Selden map of China, an early seventeenth century map of Asia, in the Bodleian Library in Oxford, the importance of the map in our understanding of globalisation in the early seventeenth century has been recognised. One of the unresolved questions is the origin of the map. This paper addresses the question through material evidence provided by a holistic approach using a suite of complementary analytical techniques. The map was examined in situ and non-invasively by a remote spectral imaging instrument (PRISMS) modified for close range imaging, which was followed by a range of complementary techniques applied to a number of detached fragments, though most of the techniques are non-invasive and can be applied to the map directly in the future. The binding medium was found to be a gum, almost certainly gum Arabic, rather than the animal glue commonly used in Chinese paintings. Some of the pigments and their usage were found to be at odds with the common practice in paintings from China. The detection of gum Arabic, a binding medium used by the Europeans, South and West Asians and the use of a mixture of orpiment and indigo, commonly found in European, South and West Asian paintings gives further evidence on the unusual origins of this map. The likely detection of a basic copper chloride, such as atacamite, in the green areas suggests an influence from the South and West Asian rather than the European tradition. Detailed analysis of the various spectral bands of the spectral image cube along with visual inspection of the large scale colour image showed that the map was not fully planned at the beginning but rather painted in stages, at times by trial and error and that it was unfinished. A new hypothesis for the origin of the Selden map in Aceh Sumatra is proposed based on the new evidences.

Robert K. Batchelor. London: The Selden Map and the Making of a Global City, 1549–1689. Timothy Brook. Mr. Selden's Map of China: Decoding the Secrets of a Vanished Cartographer.

Robert K. Batchelor. London: The Selden Map and the Making of a Global City, 1549–1689. Timothy Brook. Mr. Selden's Map of China: Decoding the Secrets of a Vanished Cartographer.

London: The Selden Map and the Making of a Global City, 1549–1689, by Robert K. Batchelor

London: The Selden Map and Making of a Global City, 1549-1689, by Robert K. Batchelor. Chicago and London, University of Chicago Press, 2014. vi, 334 pp. $45.00 US (cloth). How did become a global city? Traditional answers to that question emphasize its physical growth during early period and its dominance of markets first within Britain, then Europe and finally Atlantic world. But for Robert K. Batchelor this is only a part of story, and in this book he sets out to that encounters and exchanges with trading cities of Indian Ocean and East Asia were also a crucial component in London's rise. Representative of these interactions is a seventeenth-century map of China and Chinese trade routes that was collected by scholar and antiquarian John Selden (1584-1654), which reveals, according to Batchelor, how knowledge of Asia and its markets was translated within London. The concept of translation--how meaning is carried across linguistic, cultural, economic, and political boundaries--is central to book and is used to make an argument not only for global character of but also for global processes behind origins of modernity. To demonstrate power of translation, narrative of book is structured around chapters on five traditional points in of London (p. 22). By time of conclusion, however, these are seemingly turning points in British history (p. 241, my emphasis); in spite of book's title, and its inhabitants disappear from it for long periods. The initial point is Edwardian Reformation, during which time London's first joint-stock company was founded, while second is late Elizabethan period, when London's growing global ambitions resulted in formation of East India Company. Chapter three focuses on investigations undertaken between 1620s and 1650s by figures such as Selden into contractual and legal agreements about trade that devolved authority from monarchy, while fourth chapter charts emergence of imperial monarchy and English absolutism between 1660s and 1680s. The Asian roots of events of 1687-89 that led to Glorious and Newtonian Revolutions and the birth of modern is subject of fifth and final chapter. Aside from an annoying number of typos and exceedingly small endnotes, University of Chicago Press deserve congratulations for book's production. Amidst ever-increasing cost of academic monograph, it is refreshing to see a book that is reasonably priced--the more so when it contains numerous illustrations (but why is there no list of these in book's front matter? …

From Quanzhou, China to Oxford, UK: An account of the Selden Map of China and its conservation

The rediscovery in 2008 of ‘The Selden Map of China’ at the Bodleian Library, University of Oxford, Oxford, UK, has greatly expanded knowledge of early seventeenth-century sea trade in East Asia [1...

The Construction of the Selden Map: Some Conjectures

In the abstract to the paper Timothy Brook gave at the colloquium on the Selden map that was held in Oxford in September 2011 one reads Not only does [the Selden map] radically re-represent China’s...

The Selden Map Rediscovered: A Chinese Map of East Asian Shipping Routes, c.1619

ABSTRACT The rediscovery of the Selden Map of China (MS Selden Supra 105) in the Bodleian Library in 2008 provides an opportunity to reassess the history of Chinese cartography and debates about maritime dimensions of the Ming Empire. The map depicts a network of Chinese shipping routes, reaching from Japan to Aceh, Sumatra, and suggests previously unknown map-making techniques. In this article I draw attention to the map's unique components, notably its portrayal of shipping routes and vegetation, consider its sources, and suggest a possible patron and location of composition.

Ceramic Age Seafaring and Interaction Potential in the Antilles: A Computer Simulation

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Ceramic Age Seafaring and Interaction Potential in the Antilles: A Computer Simulation

Ceramic Age Seafaring and Interaction Potential in the Antilles: A Computer Simulation