Thursday, November 6, 2014

Early Chinese History Told Through Maps And Poetry

I am really enjoying Jerry Brotton's A History Of The World In 12 Maps. One richly rewarding chapter is on early Chinese map making traditions and inevitably you end up learning quite a bit of history as well.

The Song dynasty (907- 1276 AD) struggled with keeping the empire unified and intact and faced particularly strong challenges from the Jurchen Jin a confederacy of Tungusic tribes from northern Manchuria. In the middle of the 12th century the Song were forced to sign a peace treaty with the Jurchen Jin ceding to them nearly half their northern territory.

Subsequent imperial maps drawn up by the Song never showed this division. Rather, an idealized geography that the Song kept dreaming of based on earlier classical texts like Yu Gong, that of a unified empire to which foreign barbarian rulers paid tribute was portrayed. Using maps as a tool for political propaganda is an old trick! 

What maps did not depict though, poetic license did.

This beautiful passage from the book:

Poetry describing maps either side of the traumatic division of the Song also captures their power to first acknowledge, and then lament the loss of territory. Writing more than 100 years earlier, the ninth century Tang poet Cao Song describes 'Examining " The Map of Chinese and Non Chinese Territories"':

With a touch of the brush the earth can be shrunk;
Unrolling the map I encounter peace.

The Chinese occupy a prominent position;
Under what constellation do we find the border areas!

On this occasion the almost meditative act of unrolling the map and seeing a unified Chinese dynasty at its center evokes emotions of security and assurance. Later Southern Song poets used a similar conceit, but with very different emotions. Writing in the late twelfth century, the celebrated Lu You (1125-1210) lamented:

I have been around for seventy years, but my heart has 
remained as it was in the beginning, 
Unintentionally I spread the map, and tears come gushing forth.

The map is now an emotive sign of loss and grief, and perhaps a 'template for action', a call to unite what has been lost.

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