Complete Geographical Map of the Everlasting Unified Qing Empire

This is an administrative map of the Qing empire with place names, or toponyms, shown embedded in shape symbols. The majority of the map consists of these encoded toponyms, which present the inner sphere of the 18 provinces that made up “China proper.” Meanwhile, the outer sphere of the map, made up of a surrounding ring of text blocks with no borders of any kind, indicates neighboring political entities that had official relations with the Qing empire, including Russia, India, Thailand, Vietnam, Japan, and Korea. The encoding and text blocks enable a visual snapshot of the entire administrative, communications, and taxation systems of the Qing empire, as well as its orientation towards other political powers in the region.

Several geophysical attributes help to orient the viewer. The two vivid white lines trace out the Yellow River (north) and the Yangzi River (south). Just north of the Yellow River is a stippled band of white dots that marks the Gobi and Taklamakan Deserts. Wave patterns indicate oceans, including the Atlantic (top left) and Pacific (occupying much of the second panel from right). There are two prominent human-made structures. The Great Wall, with its distinctive crenellated wall pattern, runs between the Yellow River and the Gobi Desert. The Willow Palisade, which emerges close to where the Great Wall meets the sea, is shown with cross-hatched lines.

Several Geophysical attributes can be easily distinguished in the overall visual presentation of this map of the Qing empire; such as the two vivid white lines of the Yellow River (north) and the Yangzi River (south) which divide the empire east and west. Just north of the Yellow River is the band of white “desert dots” of the Gobi and Taklamakan Deserts running from the third to the eighth panel. Surrounding much of the empire is the wave patterned oceans from the Atlantic (top left) to the Pacific (half of panel two on the right) and seas. There are two prominent man-made structures as well. The Great Wall, with its distinctive crenelated wall pattern, which runs between the Yellow River and the Gobi Desert. The other manmade structure shown is the lesser-known Willow Palisade (liutiaobian 柳條邊), which emerges close to where the Great Wall ends and enters the sea and is demarcated by cross-hatched lines. The Willow Palisade is the symbolic barrier protecting the Manchu homeland within which are located the Manchu imperial tombs, the “eastern capital” 東京 or “secondary capital,” Shengjing 盛京 (m. Mukden) and the Imperial hunting grounds.

The typology of this map is administrative using specifically the device of an encoded toponym first used in Luo Hongxian’s Guang yutu (see entry 5) for a type of map unique to East Asia. The majority of the eight sheets is taken up by displaying the administrative structure of the Qing empire into an inner and an outer sphere, although the exact boundaries between these two spheres are intentionally ambiguous.

The inner sphere is made up of the eighteen provinces of “China proper” and is populated with encoded toponyms (fig.) linking placenames to administrative unit types (prefectures, sub-prefectures, counties, and so forth) that are identified in the key found in the preface at the bottom right (fig.). The use of geometric shapes in association with toponyms and administration visually links places with the people of those places. By encoding administrative units with a geographic shape and thus visually prioritizing administration over territory, the people living in each administrative unit become important, as does the relation of each toponym with the surrounding ones in an administrative hierarchy of the entire empire. The administrative coding visually and easily enables a snapshot of the entire administrative, communications, and tax systems.

While the inner portion of the maps focuses on the administrative framework of the Qing empire by presenting encoded toponyms, the outer sphere is made up of a surrounding ring of text blocks (labeled fig.), with no borders of any kind, associated with states that have official relations, and geographic proximity, with the Qing empire and are described on the map as places that “bring tribute” (chaogong).¹ These include a range of non-Qing entities, including Russia, India, Thailand, Vietnam, Japan, and Korea, as visually unbounded spaces. These outer entities, as text blocks, also require administrative attention, albeit from separate governmental agencies. The outer sphere entities were generally governed by ranked local administrators in specific cities that reported to the Ministry of Rites and included Annam (today’s Vietnam), Burma (today’s Myanmar), the Ryukyu (Okinawa) Islands, and Siam (today’s Thailand). Russia (fig.), also presented as part of this outer sphere, was administered by the Board for Governing Outer Territories (ch. Lifanyuan 理藩院; manch. Tulergi golo be darasa jurgan). Only Joseon Korea (fig.) was given special privilege, communicating with no intermediary body but directly with the Ministry of Rites in Beijing.

The maps also present an ambiguous third sphere, between the inner and outer. This in-between sphere is made up of the regions conquered and integrated into the Qing empire in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries: Mongolia, Tibet, Xinjiang, and Taiwan. On the blue maps, these regions include both administrative units encoded by shape as well as short annotations similar to those for the non-Qing regions, taking on elements from both the inner and outer spheres.

Geographical and topographical elements like oceans, mountains and rivers are embedded throughout the entire map, linking the inner, outer, and in-between spheres in a grand vision of Qing space. Frontiers were not sites of separation but sites of relationality acting as bridges connecting people, things and ideas. By using toponyms that were encoded to reflect the humanity (administrative bodies) of all places in the empire operating within a Chinese familial framework, this type of map presents, visually, systems for maintaining all the empire’s relationships, internal and external or inner and outer. It can be understood to conceptually manifest an idealized and harmonious empire that emphasized an historically stable core of eighteen ethnically Han provinces surrounded by other related non-Han entities. The celestial blue maps will introduce another component of an intended larger cosmological order that ultimately unites heaven and earth.