1811 Russell Map of China

John Russell's scarce map of China, produced for the atlas to the 1811 edition of William Guthrie's A System of Modern Geography. Russell highlights the provinces of 'China proper', or roughly the territory of the Ming Dynasty, conquered by the Qing in the mid-17th century.

A Closer Look

Aside from the outlining of provinces, towns and cities, rivers, lakes, mountains, and islands are depicted in detail. The Grand Canal runs through Shandong (Shan-tung) and Kiang-nan (Jiangnan) provinces, towards its terminus at Hangzhou (Hang-tcheoo-fou) and the Yangtze River. Similarly, the Great Wall of China appears to the north and west of Beijing (Pekin).

As with most European maps of China from this era, Russell draws heavily on Jean-Baptiste Bourguignon d'Anville's map of China, first published about eighty years prior. Anville's cartography is derived from French Jesuits stationed at the Qing Court. Some of these Jesuits had helped conduct a comprehensive land survey for the Chinese emperors in the early 18th century, leading to their maps being much more accurate than earlier European maps of China. However, the drawback of relying on information from a century earlier was the inclusion of anachronisms, such as Huguang (Hou-quang) and Jiangnan (Kiang-nan) provinces, which had been split up by the Qing long before. Anville also focused on 'China Proper,' the territory of the pre 1644 Ming Dynasty, to the exclusion of the equally large but unsurveyed lands in Tibet, Central Asia, Mongolia, and Manchuria that the Qing controlled, conquered, or established suzerainty over.

Russell or his colorist has included Joseon Korea and the Ryukyu Islands as part of the Qing, a common feature of d'Anville inspired maps of China. Although Joseon and the Ryukyus were 'tributaries' of the Qing, they were not under its direct administration as was the case with Chinese provinces. Curiously, Russell has removed d'Anville's note above the Yaeyama Islands about their being under the rule of the Ryukyu Kings (evident here - eastasiasoutheastasia-anville-1752).

At the time this map was made, European interaction with China had diminished from the days when the Jesuits aided in the Qing land survey. Although European traders were active at Canton (Guangzhou), the Rites Controversy and the effective outlawing of Christian missions in China, the Suppression of the Jesuits in Europe, the French Revolution, and the Napoleonic Wars, had cut off the flow of information about China from the Jesuits at the Qing Court. Although the Chinese emperors allowed the Jesuits to remain in Beijing to provide some select services, such as astronomical observations, their numbers diminished, and the last Jesuits at the Qing Court died around the time this map was published. A series of rebellions and domestic challenges at the turn of the 19th century made the Qing even more wary of foreign influence, and information about the Chinese interior was scarce until the 1839 First Opium War.

Publication History and Census

This map was drawn and engraved by John Russell for the atlas to the 1811 edition of William Guthrie's A System of Modern Geography published by Wilkie and Robinson and J. Mawman. It is independently cataloged among the holdings of the British Library and the National Library of Scotland, while Russell's entire atlas is cataloged among the holdings of six institutions worldwide.