Kun-yü ch'üan-t'u. 坤與全圖 (A Map of the Whole World)

 
Originally prepared by the Flemish scientist Ferdinand Verbiest who joined the Jesuit order in 1641.
This reprint published in Seoul is easily distinguished from 1674 by the addition of a new imprint in Chinese and by the fact that the text in the spandrels of the original is within differently-shaped frames.
There was a reprint in 1860 and this one of 1933. - All versions are extremely rare.
This item is printed from the Seoul, 1860 edition blocks, now residing in the Kyujanggak Collection, Library of Seoul National University. There are very few tangible differences between the two Seoul editions.

It consists of two hemispheres, reversing the conventional European positioning so that China and the Pacific are toward the center, with the prime meridian running through Beijing.

Ferdinand Verbiest traveled to Macao in 1659, where he studied Chinese and Confucian classics and took his final religious vows. He was a polymath best known for this Chinese world map, a revised Chinese calendar, and astronomical works in Chinese and Latin.
Notwithstanding his status as a foreigner he developed an unusually close relationship with the Kangxi emperor, who conferred mandarin rank on Verbiest and granted him an official funeral. For the emperor, cartography was a significant expression of his control over the regions under the imperial domain. Verbiest's world map drew from contemporary Dutch maps and Chinese sources, but it presented the world in a format appropriate to a Chinese audience.
Counter to Western mapmaking traditions that focused on Europe, the Kunyu quantu deferred to local conventions by placing China at the symbolic center, surrounded by countries that could be construed as tributary states" (Getty Museum online).

In 1647 Ferdinand Verbiest produced one of the largest double hemisphere maps of the world to date.
Descriptive cartouches explain geographic details and peculiarities of countries and oceans, as well as describing natural phenomena such as eclipses and earthquakes. Columbus' discovery of America is also discussed. The likely source for Verbiest's map was Joan Blaeu's monumental world map of 1648, Nova Totius Terrarum Orbis Tabula. Although the delineation of China differs, the maps are similar in size and a comparison and a concordance of geographical names shows clearly the relationship between the two maps. In total twenty-three different animals, believed to be unknown or little-known in China, decorate the margins.

The illustrations were derived from Konrad Gessner's Historia animalium (1551) and this part of the map became most influential - the illustrations and their descriptions were copied into the imperial encyclopedia T'u-shu chi-ch'eng of 1723 and the transliterated names included in Chinese and Manchu dictionaries.

The map represents the geographical and cartographical thoughts of Europeans that have influenced in China in the seventeenth century and is a good example of the cultural exchange between European and Chinese Cartography, by means of the activities of the Jesuits.

Literature: Exhib. Cat. Chinese and Japanese Maps (British Library, 1974) C11; Hartmut Walravens, “Father Verbiest’s Chinese World Map (1674),” Imago Mundi 43: 31-47.

Only available in Korea.