1921 Map of Canton (Guangzhou), China

A scarce c. 1921 city map or plan of Guangzhou (Canton), China. The city's history was tumultuous at this time, undergoing a seemingly endless string of revolutions, attempted revolutions, and battles between rival political factions and warlords.

A Closer Look

Coverage includes the entirety of the contemporary developed portion of Guangzhou, now the core of a much larger urban area, along the banks of the Pearl River. Districts of the city are noted in red text, including the Old City (老, that is, the historic walled city), New City (新城), Xiguanwai (西關外), Dongguanwai (東關外), and Henan (河南, 'South of the River'). Streets and alleyways are labeled throughout, along with schools, government offices, temples, hospitals, railways, fortifications, ferry routes, and more. Shaded a lighter color towards bottom-left is the island of Shamian, historic home of foreign 'factories' (trading warehouses), and at this point composed of foreign 'concessions' (the French, American, and British consulates are labeled). A previous owner has added pencil annotations noting the location of several additional sites.

War and Revolution

Guangzhou played a central role in Chinese politics in the Republican period (1912 - 1949). The city was a stronghold of Sun Yat-sen (1866 -1925) and his nationalist movement, which was channeled through the Kuomintang (KMT, also spelled Guomindang) or Nationalist Party. It also became a base for China's nascent Communist Party, which was aligned with the KMT in a struggle of national unification in the mid-1920s. For much of the early Republican period, when this map was made, the city saw continuous upheaval, including attempted revolutions and fighting between contending political factions and warlords. For example, between 1918 and 1923, Sun Yat-sen, who led a rival national government opposed to the Beiyang Government in Beijing, was expelled and forced to flee the city, then restored, and then expelled again, before gaining power for a third and final time in 1923.

Publication History and Census

This map was produced and published by unknown creators, most likely in the early 1920s. There are two catalog listings of maps with this title in the OCLC, one held by the National Taiwan University and dated between 1917 and 1922, and one held by the National Library of China in Beijing, dated 1945. The present map is almost certainly the former, given the presence of the foreign concessions on Shamian (which were dissolved by 1945) and other features (for example, the No. 1 Middle School 廣州第一中學 near top-left only used this name between 1912 and 1935). Aside from the example held by National Taiwan University, we are unaware of any other examples of this map in institutional collections.