Mongolian map-making as practice

Abstract

In the late eighteenth to early twentieth centuries Qing officials in China periodically instructed their Mongolian subordinates to make maps of the regions they governed. The Qing were aiming thereby to gain information about the Empire, but the Mongols had other concerns. This article focuses on Mongolian map-making practice and argues that it differed from that prevalent at the time in both China and Russia. Concerned less with conveying practical information than with locating the domain in a cosmological understanding of the world, the Mongol maps were holistic. They were also both 'participatory', involving several different actors in their compilation, and 'relational', concerned to demonstrate the stance of the map-making subject in relation to the map's receiver (the office of the Lifanyuan and ultimately, the Qing Emperor).

Anne-Sophie Pratte, Mapping the Steppe. The Politics of Cartography in Qing Mongolia, 1780-1911

“…Decades ago, Walter Heissig studied and published some of the maps now held at the Staatsbibliothek in Berlin and previously held at the University of Bonn (Heissig 1978; see also Haltod 1966). Recent studies in Europe have continued to examine the maps from this collection, focusing on different dimensions such as the representation of cairns (oboγa) (Charleux 2021) and cosmology (Humphrey 2021). Futaki and Kamimura have added new maps from archival institutions in Mongolia and introduced archival documentation providing additional context on mapmaking, while making some maps available via online platforms and published collections 3 .…”