Selected Problems Concerning the “Zheng He Map”: Questions without Answers

Ptak,

doi:10.13173/jasiahist.53.2.0179

Cited by 5 publications

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“…Meanwhile, Ptak (2019) claimed that the map contained a guide the use of a compass and notches to mark the positions of stars. All these reflect how advanced China's voyages during the Ming Dynasty.…”

Section: Literature Reviewmentioning

confidence: 99%

Zheng He Hanghai Tu (Nautical Chart of Zheng He): A reappraisal

Dar

Seong

2021

GEOGRAFIA

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This article attempts to analysis the manuscript of Zheng He Hanghai Tu (Nautical Chart of Zheng He). The sailing chart, comprising a set of navigational notes written by Admiral Zheng He, was published in the military pamphlet of the Ming dynasty, Wubei Zhi. The study is divided into three parts. The first part examines the history of the development of Zheng He Hanghai Tu, the second part explores the essence of the contents of this work and the third part discusses its important role during the Ming dynasty, which attempted to understand the geography of the world. This study used qualitative methods and referred to the map related to East African locations, revealing that most of the entries in the country map and the old-generation population register have not been analysed. Using Zheng He Hanghai Tu, this article also divided the zones of the South China Sea archipelago into Shitang (Paracel Island), Wansheng Shitangyu (Macclesfield Bank) and Shixing Shitang (Spratly Islands) to explain that the Ming dynasty progressively understood the geography of Southeast Asia, Persia, Arab and Africa. This article reveals insights into how, through his long voyages, Zheng He gained a new understanding of these places in particular and of world geography in general.

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Section: Literature Reviewmentioning

confidence: 99%

Zheng He Hanghai Tu (Nautical Chart of Zheng He): A reappraisal

Dar

Seong

2021

GEOGRAFIA

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When was Melaka founded and was it known earlier by another name? Exploring the debate between Gabriel Ferrand and Gerret Pieter Rouffaer, 1918−21, and its long echo in historiography

Borschberg¹

2020

J. Southeast Asian stud.

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A century ago, research on the Malay world was experiencing major breakthroughs on several fronts, but the greatest achievement at the time was without doubt George Coedès’ ‘rediscovery’, based on Asian sources, of a forgotten kingdom named Srivijaya. His book, published in 1918, saw a wave of publications follow in its wake. Sources were trawled in the hope of finding answers to unresolved issues and unidentified place names. Attention invariably also fell on Melaka. In a long article published by the French academic and diplomat Gabriel Ferrand in the same year, the question of Melaka's founding date came under the spotlight. What do the different surviving sources tell us? What about Gaspar Correia's claim that Melaka was a thriving port city for centuries before the arrival of the Portuguese? Was the city — just as in the case of Temasek (Singapore) — known by a different name in earlier times? Ferrand's publication provoked a response from the Dutch academic Gerret Pieter Rouffaer, director of the KITLV. What he planned to be a 20-odd page response to Ferrand swelled into a multifaceted argument running into hundreds of pages. The debate between Ferrand and Rouffaer that touched on Melaka and Temasek-Singapura's early history probably eluded most of their academic contemporaries who were not proficient in both Dutch and French, especially in the English-speaking world. The present article reconstructs the main points of this debate together with their echo in historiography. It makes a contribution to the ongoing discourses, especially in Malaysia, concerning the founding date of Melaka.

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Shallow Water at China’s Coast: Depicting Dangers on Early Modern Chinese Maps

Papelitzky

2021

Isis

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To find their way around the ocean, early modern Chinese sailors mostly relied on written sources-rutters-instead of maps and charts. The extant maps that focus on coastal and oceanic space were compiled by interested scholars and people connected to the military who aimed to defend the coast. Nevertheless, these maps include information on shallow water in a variety of ways: little dots, brief annotations, and islands labeled as "sandy." By studying selected coastal maps from the sixteenth to the early eighteenth century, this essay gives an overview of the strategies for marking shallow water. It compares the depiction of shallow water along China's coast with that for coasts farther away, where sandbanks are mapped much less consistently. As these maps were never used by sailors, the essay also argues that knowledge traveled only unilaterally, from seafarer to mapmaker, and never in the other direction.S ailing in unknown territory is a dangerous matter. Knowing the depth of the water and identifying shallow regions in particular is essential for a safe passage. To make sailing safer, sailors all over the world created maps and rutters, sharing their experience and knowledge. Early modern Chinese seafarers are no exception, and we know of rutters from the Ming (1368-1644) and Qing periods that detail routes, the time needed to sail between places, the use of the compass, and, of course, the depth of water. One early seventeenth-century observer claimed that sailors had used these rutters "since olden times" but that they were "written in slang and not easy to analyze." 1 It is probably through these rutters, in addition to what was shared orally, that seafarers transmitted their knowledge. Unfortunately-as Joseph Needham noted fifty years ago-only a few such sources on navigation survive, mostly in manuscript form, despite the long-standing tradition of printing in China. Chinese literati cared little about these seafaring matters. 2 Maps and charts, on the other hand, seem never to have been important tools for Chinese sailors-or at least the maps that survive today were not. Only with "coastal views"-drawings

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Selected Problems Concerning the “Zheng He Map”: Questions without Answers

Cited by 5 publications

References 0 publications

Zheng He Hanghai Tu (Nautical Chart of Zheng He): A reappraisal

Zheng He Hanghai Tu (Nautical Chart of Zheng He): A reappraisal

When was Melaka founded and was it known earlier by another name? Exploring the debate between Gabriel Ferrand and Gerret Pieter Rouffaer, 1918−21, and its long echo in historiography

Shallow Water at China’s Coast: Depicting Dangers on Early Modern Chinese Maps

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