As you compare the two hemispheres, notice how much more detail the 1858 map gives about foreign nation-states as opposed to the 1800 one.

In Zhuang Tingfu’s map, only the coordinates of major cities within the greater Qing empire were listed in the preface and named within the map (Fig. 1). No non-Qing capitals or cities were listed or named. Toponyms of foreign places were written out over their general areas with no territorial borders indicated (Fig. 2). Zhuang Tingfu seemed chiefly interested in implementing a European geographic coordinate system and presentation style, using graticules to locate places in Qing China and situate its empire within a larger world order.

Conversely, the anonymous court mapmaker of the 1858 map indicated greater interest in the larger world, that beyond Qing China. Within the preface, only the coordinates of major cities in Saiwai 塞外 (beyond the Great Wall) and Xinjiang 新疆 (the “New Territories”) were listed, omitting all the Qing capital and provincial capital coordinates. Major cities and geographical landmarks around the world were named and marked. Political boundaries between nation-states and continents were drawn using dotted black lines and highlighted in red (Fig. 3). All provincial and country names including Qing China’s 中華囯國 (Fig. 4) were written in either red or black characters within the confines of their territorial borders.

What triggered the introduction of these additional place names between 1800 and 1858? What changed politically in Qing China? Was it the two mid-nineteenth century Opium Wars? The 1858 map was produced in the midst of the second opium war. Geopolitical considerations and Qing China’s relationship with other world powers were likely in the court mapmaker’s mind.
The worldview presented through the 1858 map brought its mapmaker into alignment with early Qing reformers like the scholar-official Wei Yuan 魏源 (1794-1857), who soon after the first opium war published his famed geographical atlas, the Haiguo tuzhi 海國圖志, in three editions between 1844-52. Published for widespread distribution, this book popularized the image of a world of distinct competing nations, with China being one of many. It was to be understood that each nation state had a unique evolution in its habits, societies, and technologies. Within such a world, nation states were expected to uphold the principle of Westphalian or national sovereignty, whereby each state holds exclusive sovereignty over its territory. The Haiguo tuzhi was the first indigenous Chinese work to assert that China had to participate in such a system.
This new worldview meant a conceptual shift away from the Sino-centric tribute system which had framed Ming and Qing China’s foreign relations. The so-called tribute system defined the official relations and affiliations between the Ming/Qing empire and non-Ming/Qing regions. The 1800 map uses the term “tribute bearing” in the title with examples provided in the first paragraph of the preface. (Fig. 5) The tribute system was a multi-lateral matrix that existed between the various state entities that was ultimately mutually beneficial. However, discourse around this system typically used a bias and vocabulary centered around the Ming/Qing state. Like Wei Yuan, our 1858 mapmaker was highly conscious of a shift to a worldview oriented around the balance of power between all states. The term “tribute-bearing” was dropped from the title and the introductory paragraph of the preface. In fact, the entire phrase “Great Qing and its Myriad Tributary States (大清統屬職工萬國)” that was in the title of the 1800 map was shortened to simply the term “Myriad States (萬國)” in the 1858 map, a term which had been introduced as early as the seventeenth century to mean simply “world.” (Fig. 6)
This implied that rather than regard the world map as a map of the Qing empire and its many tributary states, the 1858 mapmaker regarded it as a map of a world comprising a multitude of well-defined polities for whom the Qing was not the political or cultural center.