1796 Carey and Tanner Map of China

This is a c. 1796 map of China from Carey's General Atlas, the first atlas published in the new American Republic. It depicts 'China proper,' roughly the territory covered by the Ming Dynasty, which had been conquered by the Manchu Qing Dynasty in 1644.

China - More or Less

Although this map dates to c. 1796, it presents China at an earlier date, either in the late Ming or the early Qing , before the dissolution of Huguang and Jiangnan Provinces (here Huquang and Kyangnan). This is because Carey, via Guthrie, was working from one of a small number of reliable maps of China available in 18th century Europe, most likely Jean-Baptiste Bourguignon d'Anville's c. 1730 map considered the 'gold standard' into the 19th century. As a result, the map does not include territorial additions that the Qing made, nearly doubling the size of the Ming domain by controlling (loosely) peoples and lands in Mongolia, Tibet, and Central Asia.

The map contains several errors typical of 18th and early 19th century Western maps of China. For instance, Sifan (西番), towards left-center, was not a province or domain but a vague and inconsistently used term for people and lands to the west of the Han heartland. Translated literally, it means something close to 'Western barbarians,' or in this context, 'land of the Western barbarians.'

The Ryukyu Islands (here 'Lekeyo') and surrounding islands are far too large, reflecting their outsize importance as middlemen in trade between Japan and China, both of which had restrictive trade policies. Taiwan itself is a bit too large, most likely as Europeans were more familiar with it, with the Dutch and the Spanish having established coastal colonies there in the 17th century.

The 'China Trade' in the Early Republic

The southern coast of China and particularly the Pearl River Delta near Canton (Guangzhou) would have been of particular interest to Carey's audience, which was published just as Americans were becoming more involved in the trading system at Canton. This was the only way for Western traders to access the Chinese market, albeit only through designated Chinese traders called hongs (行), later merged into a monopoly called the cohong (公行), who were overseen by Qing officials.

For a time, this system worked well, as China received what it needed from the outside world, namely silver to satisfy its growing and increasingly commercialized domestic economy, and foreign traders received Chinese goods (tea, silk, porcelain, lacquerware, etc.) that they could sell or exchange back in their home countries, or sometimes in India and Africa, at a considerable profit. But the insatiable demand for Chinese goods in the West without a similar demand in China for Western goods caused countries to run a large trade deficit with China, and the requirement of paying in silver was impacting the money supply of Britain and other countries.

Already by the time of this map's publication, British traders were illegally importing opium to China to offset this trade imbalance. American traders followed suit, importing opium from the Ottoman Empire, where they had a monopoly from 1805. Traders from New England were especially engaged in the 'China trade' and it supplied the fortunes of many 'Boston brahmin' families, including the Delano, whose patriarch Warren Delano Jr. (grandfather of Franklin Delano Roosevelt) was the leading partner of Russell and Co., the largest American importer of opium to China.

Publication History and Census

This map is likely from an early edition of Carey's General Atlas (sometimes subtitled American Edition of Guthrie's Geography improved), multiple editions of which were printed between 1795 and 1818. This is likely an early edition as later editions included colored ink to show borders between countries or to shade entire countries to more easily distinguish them. It appears to be identical to the edition included in the David Rumsey Map Collection, which is dated to 1796. The prevalence of the map is difficult to determine since the map is not always cataloged with the year recorded, but aside from the edition in the Rumsey Collection, it is cataloged by the Newberry Library, and the 1796 edition of the entire atlas is held by a handful of universities and research institutions in the United States.