Mr Selden's Map of China : The spice trade, a lost chart & the South China Sea

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Mr Selden's Map of China : The spice trade, a lost chart & the South China Sea

Regular price RM44.17 MYR
Unit price
per
ISBN: 9781781250396
Authors: Timothy Brook
Publisher: Profile Books
Date of Publication: 2015-02-05
Format: Paperback
Related Collections: Science, Biographies & Memoirs, History, Travel
Related Topics: Biography, Asia, History
Goodreads rating: 3.65
(rated by 206 readers)

Description

Mr Selden's Map of ChinaIn 1659, a vast and unusual map of China arrived in the Bodleian Library, Oxford. It was bequeathed by John Selden, a London business lawyer, political activist, former convict, MP and the city's first Orientalist scholar. Largely ignored, it remained in the bowels of the library, until called up by an inquisitive reader. When Timothy Brook saw it in 2009, he realized that the Selden Map was 'a puzzle that had to be solved': an exceptional artefact, so unsettlingly modern-looking it could almost be a forgery.But it was genuine, and what it has to tell us is astonishing. It shows China, not cut off from the world, but a participant in the embryonic networks of global trade that fueled the rise of Europe - and which now power China's ascent. And it raises as many question as it answers: how did John Selden acquire it? Where did it come from? Who re-imagined the world in this way? And most importantly - what can it tell us about the world at that time?
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