Download or read book Mr Selden s Map of China written by Timothy Brook and published by Bloomsbury Publishing USA. This book was released on 2013-11-12 with total page 241 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: From the author of the award-winning Vermeer's Hat, a historical detective story decoding a long-forgotten link between seventeenth century Europe and China. Timothy Brook's award-winning Vermeer's Hat unfolded the early history of globalization, using Vermeer's paintings to show how objects like beaver hats and porcelain bowls began to circulate around the world. Now he plumbs the mystery of a single artifact that offers new insights into global connections centuries old. In 2009, an extraordinary map of China was discovered in Oxford's Bodleian Library-where it had first been deposited 350 years before, then stowed and forgotten for nearly a century. Neither historians of China nor cartography experts had ever seen anything like it. It was so odd that experts would have declared it a fake-yet records confirmed it had been delivered to Oxford in 1659. The “Selden Map,” as it is known, was a puzzle that needing solving. Brook, a historian of China, set out to explore the riddle. His investigation will lead readers around this elegant, enigmatic work of art, and from the heart of China, via the Southern Ocean, to the court of King James II. In the story of Selden's map, he reveals for us the surprising links between an English scholar and merchants half a world away, and offers novel insights into the power and meaning that a single map can hold. Brook delivers the same anecdote-rich narrative, intriguing characters, and unexpected historical connections that made Vermeer's Hat an instant classic.
Download or read book The Selden Map of China written by Hongping Annie Nie and published by Bodleian Library. This book was released on 2019 with total page 0 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Dating from the seventeenth century at the height of the Ming Dynasty, the Selden Map of China reveals a country very different from popular conceptions of the time, looking not inward to the Asian landmass but outward to the sea. Discovered in the stacks of the Bodleian Library, this beautifully decorative map of China is in fact a seafaring chart showing Ming Dynasty trade routes. It is the earliest surviving example of Chinese merchant cartography and is evidence that Ming China was outward-looking, capitalistic and vibrant. Exploring the commercial aims of the Ming Dynasty, the port city of Quanzhou and its connections with the voyages of the early traveller Zheng He, this book describes the historical background of the era in which the map was used. It also includes an analysis of the skills and techniques involved in Chinese map-making and the significance of the compass bearings, scale and ratios found on the map, all of which combine to represent a breakthrough in cartographic techniques. The enthralling story revealed by this extraordinary artefact is central to an understanding of the long history of China's relationship with the sea and with the wider world.
Download or read book Mr Selden s Map of China written by Timothy Brook and published by . This book was released on 2013 with total page 0 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: In 2009, an extraordinary map of China was discovered in Oxford's Bodleian Library, where it had first been deposited 350 years before, then stowed and forgotten for nearly a century. The "Selden Map," as it is known, was a puzzle that needing solving. Brook, a historian of China, set out to explore the riddle. His investigation will lead readers around this elegant, enigmatic work of art, and from the heart of China, via the Southern Ocean, to the court of King James II. In the story of Selden's map, he reveals for us the surprising links between an English scholar and merchants half a world away, and offers novel insights into the power and meaning that a single map can hold
Download or read book London written by Robert K. Batchelor and published by University of Chicago Press. This book was released on 2014-01-06 with total page 341 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: A historian recounts the unlikely rise of a world capital, and how its understanding of Asia played a key role. If one had looked for a potential global city in Europe in the 1540s, the most likely candidate would have been Antwerp, which had emerged as the center of the German and Spanish silver exchange as well as the Portuguese spice and Spanish sugar trades. It almost certainly would not have been London, an unassuming hub of the wool and cloth trade with a population of around 75,000, still trying to recover from the onslaught of the Black Plague. But by 1700, London’s population had reached a staggering 575,000 and it had developed its first global corporations, as well as relationships with non-European societies outside the Mediterranean. What happened in the span of a century and half? And how exactly did London transform itself into a global city? London’s success, Robert K. Batchelor argues, lies not just with the well-documented rise of Atlantic settlements, markets, and economies. Using his discovery of a network of Chinese merchant shipping routes on John Selden’s map of China as his jumping-off point, Batchelor reveals how London also flourished because of its many encounters, engagements, and exchanges with East Asian trading cities. Translation plays a key role in Batchelor’s study—not just of books, manuscripts, and maps, but also of meaning and knowledge across cultures. He demonstrates how translation helped London understand and adapt to global economic conditions. Looking outward at London’s global negotiations, Batchelor traces the development of its knowledge networks back to a number of foreign sources, and credits particular interactions with England’s eventual political and economic autonomy from church and King. London offers a much-needed non-Eurocentric history of London, first by bringing to light and then by synthesizing the many external factors and pieces of evidence that contributed to its rise as a global city. It will appeal to students and scholars interested in the cultural politics of translation, the relationship between merchants and sovereigns, and the cultural and historical geography of Britain and Asia.
Download or read book Great State written by Timothy Brook and published by Profile Books. This book was released on 2019-09-19 with total page 594 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: China is one of the oldest states in the world. It achieved its approximate current borders with the Ascendancy of the Yuan dynasty in the 13th century, and despite the passing of one Imperial dynasty to the next, it has maintained them for the eight centuries since. Even the European colonial powers at the height of their power could not move past coastal enclaves. Thus, China remained China through the Ming, the Qing, the Republic, the Occupation, and Communism. But, despite the desires of some of the most powerful people in the Great State through the ages, China has never been alone in the world. It has had to contend with invaders from the steppe and the challenges posed by foreign traders and imperialists. Indeed, its rulers for the majority of the last eight centuries have not been Chinese. Timothy Brook examines China's relationship with the world from the Yuan through to the present by following the stories of ordinary and extraordinary people navigating the spaces where China met and meets the world. Bureaucrats, horse traders, spiritual leaders, explorers, pirates, emperors, invaders, migrant workers, traitors, and visionaries: this is a history of China as no one has told it before.
Download or read book Mr Selden s Map of China written by Timothy Brook and published by Profile Books. This book was released on 2013-09-12 with total page 211 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: In 1659, a vast and unusual map of China arrived in the Bodleian Library, Oxford. It was bequeathed by John Selden, a London business lawyer, political activist, former convict, MP and the city's first Orientalist scholar. Largely ignored, it remained in the bowels of the library, until called up by an inquisitive reader. When Timothy Brook saw it in 2009, he realised that the Selden Map was 'a puzzle that had to be solved': an exceptional artefact, so unsettlingly modern-looking it could almost be a forgery. But it was genuine, and what it has to tell us is astonishing. It shows China, not cut off from the world, but a participant in the embryonic networks of global trade that fuelled the rise of Europe - and which now power China's ascent. And it raises as many question as it answers: how did John Selden acquire it? Where did it come from? Who re-imagined the world in this way? And most importantly - what can it tell us about the world at that time? Brook, like a cartographic detective, has provided answers - including a surprising last-minute revelation of authorship. From the Gobi Desert to the Philippines, from Java to Tibet and into China itself, Brook uses the map (actually a schematic representation of China's relation to astrological heaven) to tease out the varied elements that defined this crucial period in China's history.
Download or read book Mapping the Chinese and Islamic Worlds written by Hyunhee Park and published by Cambridge University Press. This book was released on 2012-08-27 with total page 305 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This book documents the relationship and wisdom of Asian cartographers in the Islamic and Chinese worlds before the Europeans arrived.
Download or read book Mr Selden s Map of China written by Timothy Brook and published by . This book was released on 2015-02-05 with total page 256 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: In 1659, a vast and unusual map of China arrived in the Bodleian Library, Oxford. It was bequeathed by John Selden, a London business lawyer, political activist, former convict, MP and the city's first Orientalist scholar. Largely ignored, it remained in the bowels of the library, until called up by an inquisitive reader. When Timothy Brook saw it in 2009, he realised that the Selden Map was 'a puzzle that had to be solved': an exceptional artefact, so unsettlingly modern-looking it could almost be a forgery. But it was genuine, and what it has to tell us is astonishing. It shows China, not cut off from the world, but a participant in the embryonic networks of global trade that fuelled the rise of Europe - and which now power China's ascent. And it raises as many question as it answers: how did John Selden acquire it? Where did it come from? Who re-imagined the world in this way? And most importantly - what can it tell us about the world at that time?Brook, like a cartographic detective, has provided answers - including a surprising last-minute revelation of authorship. From the Gobi Desert to the Philippines, from Java to Tibet and into China itself, Brook uses the map (actually a schematic representation of China's relation to astrological heaven) to tease out the varied elements that defined this crucial period in China's history.
Download or read book Vermeer s Hat written by Timothy Brook and published by Bloomsbury Publishing USA. This book was released on 2010-08-01 with total page 289 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: In this critical darling Vermeer's captivating and enigmatic paintings become windows that reveal how daily life and thought-from Delft to Beijing--were transformed in the 17th century, when the world first became global. A Vermeer painting shows a military officer in a Dutch sitting room, talking to a laughing girl. In another canvas, fruit spills from a blue-and-white porcelain bowl. Familiar images that captivate us with their beauty--but as Timothy Brook shows us, these intimate pictures actually give us a remarkable view of an expanding world. The officer's dashing hat is made of beaver fur from North America, and it was beaver pelts from America that financed the voyages of explorers seeking routes to China-prized for the porcelains so often shown in Dutch paintings of this time, including Vermeer's. In this dazzling history, Timothy Brook uses Vermeer's works, and other contemporary images from Europe, Asia, and the Americas to trace the rapidly growing web of global trade, and the explosive, transforming, and sometimes destructive changes it wrought in the age when globalization really began.
Download or read book Treasures from the Map Room written by Debbie Hall and published by . This book was released on 2016 with total page 232 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This book explores the stories behind seventy-five extraordinary maps. It includes unique treasures such as the fourteenth-century Gough Map of Great Britain, exquisite portolan charts made in the fifteenth century, the Selden Map of China - the earliest example of Chinese merchant cartography - and an early world map from the medieval Islamic Book of Curiosities, together with more recent examples of fictional places drawn in the twentieth century, such as C.S. Lewis's own map of Narnia and J.R.R. Tolkien's map of Middle Earth.As well as the works of famous mapmakers Mercator, Ortelius, Blaeu, Saxton and Speed, the book also includes lesser known but historically significant works: early maps of the Moon, of the transit of Venus, hand-drawn estate plans and early European maps of the New World. There are also some surprising examples: escape maps printed on silk and carried by pilots in the Second World War in case of capture on enemy territory; the first geological survey of the British Isles showing what lies beneath our feet; a sixteenth-century woven tapestry map of Worcestershire; a map plotting outbreaks of cholera and a jigsaw map of India from the 1850s. Behind each of these lies a story, of intrepid surveyors, ambitious navigators, chance finds or military victories. Drawing on the unique collection in the Bodleian Library, these stunning maps range from single cities to the solar system, span the thirteenth to the twenty-first century and cover most of the world.
Download or read book The Asiatic Mode of Production in China written by Timothy Brook and published by Routledge. This book was released on 2020-10-12 with total page 216 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Brook (history, U. of Toronto) surveys the history of the concept of the AMP (a concept formulated by Karl Marx in the 1850s) in China in relation to debates elsewhere, and examines the particular issues raised in recent Chinese discussions. Annotation copyright Book News, Inc. Portland, Or.
Download or read book Civil Society in China written by Timothy Brook and published by Routledge. This book was released on 2015-03-04 with total page 257 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The concept of civil society was borrowed from 18th-century Europe to provide a framework for understanding the transition to post-authoritarian regimes in Latin America and post-communist regimes elsewhere. This book asks whether this concept is useful for analyzing China.
Download or read book The Chinese State in Ming Society written by Timothy Brook and published by Psychology Press. This book was released on 2005 with total page 270 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This unique collection of reworked and heavily illustrated essays, by one of the leading scholars of Chinese history, re-examines the relationship between the present day state and society in China.
Download or read book Talking Maps written by Jerry Brotton and published by Bodleian Library. This book was released on 2019 with total page 0 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Every map tells a story. Some provide a narrative for travellers, explorers and surveyors or offer a visual account of changes to people's lives, places and spaces, while others tell imaginary tales, transporting us to fictional worlds created by writers and artists. In turn, maps generate more stories, taking users on new journeys in search of knowledge and adventure.Drawing on the Bodleian Library's outstanding map collection and covering almost a thousand years, 'Talking Maps' takes a new approach to map-making by showing how maps and stories have always been intimately entwined. Including such rare treasures as a unique map of the Mediterranean from the eleventh-century Arabic 'Book of Curiosities', al-Sharīf al-Idrīsī's twelfth-century world map, C.S. Lewis's map of Narnia, J.R.R. Tolkien's cosmology of Middle-earth and Grayson Perry's twenty-first-century tapestry map, this fascinating book analyses maps as objects that enable us to cross sea and land; as windows into alternative and imaginary worlds; as guides to reaching the afterlife; as tools to manage cities, nations, even empires; as images of environmental change; and as digitized visions of the global future.By telling the stories behind the artefacts and those generated by them, 'Talking Maps' reveals how each map is not just a tool for navigation but also a worldly proposal that helps us to understand who we are by describing where we are.
Download or read book The Beauty of Geology Art of Geology Mapping in China Over a Century written by Chenyang Li and published by Springer. This book was released on 2019-02-25 with total page 119 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This open access book contains a collection of rare geologic maps and figures made by Chinese geologists in the last century. Preserved in National Geological Archives of China, these artworks demonstrate the development and innovation of geological mapping technology in China in the past 100 years. The collections are highly scientific and artistic, with most of the hand-drawn maps featured with traditional Chinese painting techniques, while the newer ones being more accurate and embedded with more scientific information with the aid of computer techniques.
Download or read book The Troubled Empire written by Timothy Brook and published by Harvard University Press. This book was released on 2013-03-11 with total page 337 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The Mongol takeover in the 1270s changed the course of Chinese history. The Confucian empireÑa millennium and a half in the makingÑwas suddenly thrust under foreign occupation. What China had been before its reunification as the Yuan dynasty in 1279 was no longer what it would be in the future. Four centuries later, another wave of steppe invaders would replace the Ming dynasty with yet another foreign occupation. The Troubled Empire explores what happened to China between these two dramatic invasions. If anything defined the complex dynamics of this period, it was changes in the weather. Asia, like Europe, experienced a Little Ice Age, and as temperatures fell in the thirteenth century, Kublai Khan moved south into China. His Yuan dynasty collapsed in less than a century, but Mongol values lived on in Ming institutions. A second blast of cold in the 1630s, combined with drought, was more than the dynasty could stand, and the Ming fell to Manchu invaders. Against this backgroundÑthe first coherent ecological history of China in this periodÑTimothy Brook explores the growth of autocracy, social complexity, and commercialization, paying special attention to ChinaÕs incorporation into the larger South China Sea economy. These changes not only shaped what China would become but contributed to the formation of the early modern world.
Download or read book The South China Sea written by Bill Hayton and published by Yale University Press. This book was released on 2014-10-28 with total page 317 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: China’s rise has upset the global balance of power, and the first place to feel the strain is Beijing’s back yard: the South China Sea. For decades tensions have smoldered in the region, but today the threat of a direct confrontation among superpowers grows ever more likely. This important book is the first to make clear sense of the South Sea disputes. Bill Hayton, a journalist with extensive experience in the region, examines the high stakes involved for rival nations that include Vietnam, India, Taiwan, the Philippines, and China, as well as the United States, Russia, and others. Hayton also lays out the daunting obstacles that stand in the way of peaceful resolution. Through lively stories of individuals who have shaped current conflicts—businessmen, scientists, shippers, archaeologists, soldiers, diplomats, and more—Hayton makes understandable the complex history and contemporary reality of the South China Sea. He underscores its crucial importance as the passageway for half the world’s merchant shipping and one-third of its oil and gas. Whoever controls these waters controls the access between Europe, the Middle East, South Asia, and the Pacific. The author critiques various claims and positions (that China has historic claim to the Sea, for example), overturns conventional wisdoms (such as America’s overblown fears of China’s nationalism and military resurgence), and outlines what the future may hold for this clamorous region of international rivalry.
