标题: Angela Merkel's Historical China Map Flap [打印本页] 作者: choi 时间: 4-1-2014 19:29 标题: Angela Merkel's Historical China Map Flap Rachel Lu, Angela Merkel's Historical China Map Flap. South China Morning Post, Apr 2, 2014 (available now) www.smh.com.au/world/angela-merk ... 20140402-zqpje.html
(two versions of Merkel's gift map to president Xi)
Quote:
"Last week German Chancellor Angela Merkel hosted visiting Chinese President Xi Jinping at a dinner where they exchanged gifts. Merkel presented to Xi a 1735 map of China made by prolific French cartographer Jean-Baptiste Bourguignon d'Anville and printed by a German publishing house. * * * The map showed, according to its original Latin caption, the so-called 'China Proper' -- that is, the Chinese heartland mostly populated by ethnic Han people, without Tibet, Xinjiang, Mongolia, or Manchuria. The islands of Taiwan and Hainan -- the latter clearly part of modern China, the former very much disputed -- are shown with a different colour border.
"More curiously, when news of the map's presentation reached the Chinese heartland, it had somehow morphed into a completely different one. A map published in many Chinese-language media reports about Merkel's gift-giving shows the Chinese empire at its territorial zenith, including Tibet, Xinjiang, Mongolia and large swaths of Siberia. This larger map was the handiwork of British mapmaker John Dower, published in 1844 by Henry Teesdale & Co in London, and was certainly not the gift from Merkel to Xi. But this mistake was not noted or explained in Chinese reports.
Note:
(a)
(i) Jean-Baptiste Bourguignon d'Anville
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jean_Baptiste_Bourguignon_d'Anville
(1697-1782; a 1734 map)
(ii) Try as I may, I can not find in the Web d'Anville's 1735 map of China. However, the same writer around the same time (Honk kong time is ahead of that in US) published online a similar article which is a portion of d'Anville map that contains Taiwan and Hainan.
(b) File:China and Japan, John Nicaragua Dower (1844).jpg
commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:China_and_Japan,_John_Nicaragua_Dower_(1844).jpg
("Published in 1844 World Atlas by Henry Teesdale and Co, London")