Mr. Selden’s Map of China: Decoding the Secrets of a Vanished Cartographer by Timothy Brook

Reviewed by: Mr. Selden’s Map of China: Decoding the Secrets of a Vanished Cartographer by Timothy Brook Jun Fang (bio) Timothy Brook. Mr. Selden’s Map of China: Decoding the Secrets of a Vanished Cartographer. Toronto: House of Anansi Press, 2013. xxiv, 211 pp. Hardcover $29.95, isbn 978-177089-353-5. This captivating book is composed of eight chapters and an epilogue. Chapter 1, “What’s Wrong with This Map?” introduces the English legalist and Orientalist [End Page 291] John Selden (1584–1654) and a map of China and the South China Sea that he owned. Chapter 2, “Closing the Sea,” examines Selden’s theories of the high seas, which aver that in addition to land a state may also possess seas and oceans. Chapter 3, “Reading Chinese in Oxford,” discusses the study of the Selden map by Thomas Hyde (1636–1703), the keeper of the Bodleian Library at Oxford, and his Chinese guest Michael Shen (c. 1658–1691). The chapter further concerns Europe’s interest in Orientalism in the second half of the seventeenth century. Chapter 4, “John Saris and the China Captain,” looks at the trade competition in Asia between England and the Netherlands. The relevance of this chapter to the Selden map is established by the fact that John Saris (d. 1643), the chief English merchant in Japan, brought the Chinese map to London. Chapter 5, “The Compass Rose,” speculates that the cartographer of the Selden map possessed prior knowledge of the European navigation maps. Chapter 6, “Sailing from China,” examines the map in detail and identifies a number of placenames in the Selden map, and chapter 7, “Heaven Is Round, Earth Is Square,” assesses the strengths and shortcomings of various maps of China produced in Europe and Asia prior to the Selden map. The last chapter, “Secrets of the Selden Map,” is the essential part of the book. It reveals four “secrets” of the map based on the discussions in the preceding chapters: first, China occupies a prominent place in the map and is provided with more geographical details than any other region included in the map; second, the map is made with stunning accuracy and its scale mapping was equal to the best contemporary cartography; third, the route information on the Selden map has been coded to reflect the position of magnetic north at the time it was drawn; fourth, the map serves as a commercial navigation chart which was not drawn to demonstrate any claims of sovereignty over what lay out in the sea. The epilogue, “Resting Places,” concludes that during the first half of the seventeenth century the Selden map was the most accurate chart of the South China Sea in existence. There had never been a better map, and for another four decades there would not be another. Yet from the larger perspective of the history of cartography, the Selden map never had the chance to make a difference. Selden’s Map is a scholarly work of superb quality. Its logical structure is well reflected by the sequence of the chapters. Its profound analysis of the issues related to the Selden map is reinforced by the author’s formidable knowledge of the history and cartography in both China and Europe, and his impressive attention to minute details. Written by a renowned historian who also enjoys the reputation of a wordsmith, this book maintains Brook’s usual standard of elegant writing and lucid presentation. There is hardly anything in this book with which to disagree. I only want to raise a minor issue arising from the author’s discussion of Selden’s articulation of The Closed Sea and his map. It seems that Brook shares the misinterpretation of China’s official position on the South China Sea as in chapter 1 he mentions [End Page 292] numerous times that China claims most of the South China Sea. For example, on pages 3–4, he writes that “this large and relatively shallow body of water south of China is bounded on its other three sides by Vietnam, Malaysian Borneo, Brunei and the Philippines. China has declared ownership of the whole thing, minus the standard 12 nautical miles (13.8 miles or 22...

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