MAP
Hydrographic Map
D2014_000001
The Selden Map of China
c.1650
This early seventeenth-century map of East Asia formerly owned by the legal scholar and maritime theorist John Selden, came to the Bodleian Library in 1659 from the executors of his estate. This is the earliest Chinese map not only to show shipping routes, but also to depict China as part of a greater East and Southeast Asia, and not the centre of the known world. Dating from the late Ming period, it shows China, Korea, Japan, the Philippines, Indonesia, Southeast Asia and part of India. The map shows shipping routes with compass bearings from the port of Quanzhou across the entire region. One of the busiest points on the Selden map is the Singapore Strait, at the south end of the Malay Peninsula. This was the location of the state of Johor. Routes from Johor go in every direction. One route passes through the Singapore Strait and heads north-west up to Malacca Strait to the port of Malacca, then continues on up to Aceh at the north end of Sumatra.
20140000116 - 0001
MS.Selden Supra 105 (Map of China)
Credit Line : The Bodleian Libraries, University of Oxford
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