2024/07/01 by Elke Papelitzky · 1 voice
Social Sciences · #Chinese history and philosophy #Global Maritime and Colonial Histories #Japanese History and Culture
paper · pdf · doi:10.1017/s0026749x23000306
openalex publication_date 2024/07/01 · openalex created_date 2025/10/10 · openalex updated_date 2026/07/30
Abstract The concept of tianxia (All-under-Heaven) has been described as a Chinese version of cosmopolitanism. However, tianxia is a hard-to-define term, with political, cultural, and geographic meanings. From the fifteenth century onwards, maps exist that claim to show tianxia , therefore allowing us to reconstruct how Chinese mapmakers understood tianxia ’s geographic extent. Other terms in the titles of maps that show space beyond the borders of the Ming and Qing states include huayi (civilized and barbarian/Chinese and non-Chinese), wanguo (10,000 countries), and sihai (four seas). This article examines the geographic extent of these terms and changes in their usage between the fifteenth and eighteenth centuries. It argues that Ming Chinese mapmakers and scholars presented tianxia as equivalent to the Ming empire and used terms such as huayi and wanguo to advertise the maps as showing regions far away, like western Asia and the Americas. Jesuits in China, on the other hand, applied a broader meaning of tianxia , equating it with the whole globe. During the Qing, the extent of tianxia expanded to represent a cosmopolitan empire connected to a range of surrounding states, embedded in a wider world.