East Asian Cartographic Print Culture: The Late Ming Publishing Boom and its Trans-Regional Connections: 2 (Global Chinese Histories, 250-1650)

China has a long cartographic history. Korea and Japan learned mapmaking fairly early. The late Ming publishing boom--a vast phenomenon too little known in the west--led to the production of huge numbers of cheap, mass-produced maps, not terribly accurate but good enough to be useful. Dr. Akin has looked at practically every available map from the late Imperial period in China and contemporary maps from Korea and Japan. The section on Korea is particularly notable, since thorough histories of that nation are rare enough as it is, and histories of its mapmaking and geographic information gathering were almost nonexistent in English. Most of this book, however, concerns China, with a particularly outstanding section of the interface between western mapping--as brought by Matteo Ricci and other Jesuits--and Chinese mapping. The Chinese were not overwhelmed. Many (or most) did not believe Ricci's claims of vast continents and seas unknown to the older Chinese sages.This book is long and detailed, but eminently readable. Dr. Akin has a clear, incisive writing style that makes the most detailed accounts of obscure maps easy to follow and enjoyable to track. Overall, this is a major accomplishment and a huge contribution to East Asian studies.