Mapping the World (1981) by PAUL THEROUX

Mapping The World (1981) BY PAUL THEROUX It is not often that one happens capital of Shensi province. That stone craves silence and becomes xenophobic upon an article that engenders a feeling map is dated in the year called Fo u and inward-looking, demanding tribute of pride in ones chosen career. Su ch an C h a n g , 1 137, but the Chinese had been instead of initiating trade, it loses the will article, however, is the one that follows. making maps for centuries on wood, silk to communicate with the world and be W e have received permission from the and paper. The Chinese and the Romans gins to wither of its own egotism. The publishers to reprint. were making maps of their respective Chinese still continued to regard the J . J. H. Hunt known worlds at roughly the same time. world as flat and four-square (though In 128 B.C., Chang Ch'ien, China's first they believed the sky to be round). One From Sunrise With Seamonsters historic traveler, returned home after cannot attribute this to stubborn ignor by Paul Theroux, published by having covered the immense distance to ance; after all, it took Europe a thousand Houghton, Mifflin Company, Boston. the Oxus (we know it as the Amu Darya) years to accept the notion that the world Copyright © 1985 by the Cap Cod in Central Asia. Chang reported to the was round. Scrivener s Company. Reprinted by per Emperor W u on what he had seen, and Yet all of China' s naive geocentric- mission. the emperor named the mountains K'un- ity can be seen in the outrage of the lun, where the Yellow River rose. Imperial Court's scrutiny of a Jesuit map ARTOGRAPHY, THE most in which China was situated in the east aesthetically pleasing of the sci For the next thousand years, China ern corner. What was the Middle King ences, draws its power from was active — a nation of travelers, war C dom doing on the far right? Father Mat- the greatest of man's gifts - courage, the riors, conquerors, traders and, inevita teo Ricci cleverly redrew his map by spirit of inquiry, artistic skill, man's sense bly, map-makers. W h at was the point of spinning his globe, so to speak, and plac of order and design, his understanding conquering if the subject lands were not ing the Celestial empire smack in the of natural laws, and his capacity for sing then given a shape, and their rivers and middle, with Europe in the distant west. ular journeys to the most distant places. households described on maps? The That was in 1602. The Chinese accepted They are the brightest attributes and they Chinese word for map, t u, also means the priest's version of the world — it some have made maps one of the most lumin "plan", "chart" and "drawing". (Our own what resembled their own - but they ous of man's creations. word map has Latin cousins meaning rejected his spherical projection. "napkin" and "sheet".) Chinese cartog But map-making also requires the raphy could be ambitious. P e i Hsiu W h e n China lost interest in foreign ability to judge the truth of travelers' (224-271), sometimes called The Father countries her maps became inaccurate, tales. Although Marco Polo's T ravels al of Chinese Cartography, did a magnifi not to say bizarre. These maps showed lowed early European cartographers to cent map of China in eighteen panels European countries and the United give place-names and continental con ("The Map of the Territory of the Tri States and Africa as tiny islands and figurations to their maps, the book itself bute of Yu"), and codified map-making sandbars off the Middle Kingdom coast. contained only a tiny sketch map and in Six Principles. His First Principle, an Even in the mid-nineteenth century had many odd omissions (no Great W all, enormous contribution to the art, was Chinese maps depicted the natives of no mention of tea). Columbus had the fen lu , the grid system. these little islands as monstrous and one- Latin version of 1483 among his belong eyed, and some were shown with holes ings on his voyages westward — which P'ei's successor was Chia Tan, through their stomachs for their conve was why, in Cuba in 1493, he sent a whose masterpiece in 801 was "The Map nient carrying on poles. Around the turn party of men searching the Cuban hin of China and Barbarian Countries of the nineteenth century, the Chinese terland for the Great Khan, and on later Within the Seas." Chia was working in accepted that the world was round. It is voyages believed he was coasting past the T'ang Dynasty (618-907), one of the possible, 1 think, to read in this accep Indochina (it was Honduras) and about most renowned in Chinese history. It was tance of a new map a profound under three weeks aw ay from the Ganges. Col very much a map-making dynasty - it standing of their place in the world. umbus was not unique in his misap had imperial ambitions, pursuing a policy prehension: cartographic ignorance has of conquest in the west and south. Chia Cartography has always required been universal. There are the many was commissioned to make maps of the utter truthfulness - it is one of its most maps of the Abyssinian kingdom of Pre- conquered territories. Subsequent maps appealing features: crooked maps are ster John, and the maps which show of China for the following few hundred worse than useless, and nothing dates California to be an island (this belief per years were based on Chia's ninth century more quickly than the political map sisted throughout the seventeenth cen work. ("German East Africa", "French In tury). And it was only seventy or eighty dochina", "The Central African Empire", years ago that the Chinese were finally China also exemplifies the w ay car "Jonestown"). But until the recent past, satisfied that the world was round. tography can go into decline. As a nation maps have been more than scientific; "It would seem as though cartog raphy were an instinct implanted in PUT A SHINE ON YOUR SNOWSHOES every nation with any claim to civiliza tion," the geographer, Sir Alexander FOR ANNUAL MEETING '86 Hosie wrote. He had in mind a map of China, carved in stone, and discovered "THE GREAT SNOWSHOE RACE" in the Forest of Tablets at Hsian, the THE ONTARIO LAND SURVEYOR, WINTER 1986 17 they have depended on a high level of There were similar maps of and helping us anticipate the problems pictorial art — vivid imagery and lettering Panama, and of course Panama won of dislocation. Maps give the world — and a style of labeling and a concise out. But a modern map of Honduras coherence. It seems to me one of man's ness in description that is literary in the shows most of the cartographic detail in supreme achievements that he knew the best sense. this hundred-year-old map to be unful precise shape of every continent and filled promises. Anyone who looks at a practically every river-vein on earth long Blaeu is the Rembrandt of geog lot of maps becomes highly suspicious before he was able to gaze at them raphy. Most maps, even modern ones, of the designations “Proposed railway”, whole from the window of a rocketship. are beautiful — beautiful in colour and “Road under construction”, “Projected This sense of map-shapes is so contour, and often breathtaking in their highway” — with dotted lines; or that strong it amounts almost to iconography. completeness. They can tell us every other heart-sinker, “Site of proposed The cartographer gives features to sur thing, and the best ones, from the great Hydro-electric Dam”. These are not fea faces, and sometimes these features are periods of trade and exploration — our tures which are found only on maps of resonant. It is easy to see a dependency own is one such period — have always Third World Countries. “The M25 Ring in the way Sri Lanka seems to linger at attempted to do this. In 500 B.C. Anax Road” is shown on some maps of Outer the tip of India; Africa looks like one of imander s successor, Hecataeus, made a London, though the road has yet to be its own paleolithic skulls; and some coun disc-shaped map — it was a startling il finished. The most ominous line of a map tries are, visibly, appendages. W h o has lumination. But maps specialize in such is the one labelled “Disputed boundary”, looked upon Chile and not seen in it an surprises. and it makes one think that there are austere narrowness, or smiled at Dela perhaps fifty versions of the world map, ware, or wondered what Greenland is Consider the Ortelius map of China depending on your nationality. Israel has fo r? The shape of a country may condi of 1573 - “Regnum Chinae”. It is full of about four different shapes, and on tion our initial attitude towards it, though fictitious lakes, but it accurately places some modern Arab maps it does not exist I don't think any conclusion can be rivers, mountains and cities — enough to at all. guide any explorer or trader to his desti drawn from the fact that Great Britain nation. It also includes the westernmost The map of the London Under looks like a boy riding on a pig. And portion of America (“America Pars”) at ground is by almost any standard a work position matters, too.

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