Mapping the Ming World: Globalizing a Seventeenth-Century Vision of China

In Mapping the Ming World Mario Cams explores how seventeenth-century China reimagined its place amid a rapidly changing landscape of global connections. At the heart of this study is a remarkable map printed in 1644, just after the fall of Beijing and the suicide of the last Ming emperor. This visually striking artifact places a diagram of the Chinese state at its center, surrounded by elements of Renaissance-style world maps-an imaginative fusion that reshaped spatial thinking across East Asia and informed European audiences about the region for generations.

Through a rich analysis on the cognitive, social, and material levels, this book reveals how Chinese scholars and printers responded to an influx of foreign knowledge, crafting a new spatial imaginary that was both globally informed and locally grounded. It traces the map's origins to the vibrant print culture of the late Ming period, the collaborative networks of Chinese and European actors, and a long-standing tradition of visualizing empire on large-format maps carved in stone, painted on silk, or printed on paper.

Mapping the Ming World offers a fresh lens on the global history of cartography, showing how a single map can help unlock a deeper understanding of how identity, empire, and world order were negotiated. It will appeal to historians, scholars of East Asia, cartography enthusiasts, and general readers interested in how visual language shaped, was shaped by, and continues to shape global encounters past and present.