Huang Qianren, A rare and complete Map of the Great Qing’s Ten-Thousand year Unified (Realm of) All under Heaven, Qing dynasty, Daoguang period | 清道光 黃千人 《大清萬年一統地理全圖》木板套印 後裝裱為日本屏風

This magnificent and monumental map is a celebration of the vastness of the Qing empire (1644-1911) and a justification of the Manchu’s righteous rule over their ever-expanding territories. It is a revised and enlarged edition of a map created by the cartographer Huang Qianren (黄千人), presented to the Qianlong Emperor (r. 1736-95) in 1767, which illustrates the Qing realms at their greatest extent during his reign.

Displaying the grand nature of mountains and rivers, this map pays great attention to the diversity of the Qing lands. It identifies provinces, prefectures, districts, and other administrative divisions by enclosing their names in squares and other shapes whose meanings are interpreted in the introductory inscription. Proudly presenting the newly conquered frontier regions of Tibet and Mongolia, the map glorifies the expansion of the empire in its title wannian yitong (everlasting unification). The inscription ends with the phrase tianxia zhi guang keyi quan lan yan (天下之廣可以全覽焉, ‘the vastness of the world can be seen in full’), indicating the worldview of the Qing court at the peak of its rule. In her article Contending Cartographic Claims? The Qing Empire in Manchu, Chinese, and European Maps, historian Laura Hostetler suggests that with the impressive physical dimension of this map, it served an ‘imperial purpose – to awe those who viewed it with the grandeur of the Qing’.

To underline the proud achievement of the Qing dynasty, the Jiaqing (r. 1796-1820) and Daoguang (r. 1821-50) Emperors, successors of Qianlong, continued to update and reprint Huang Qianren’s map. Some extant copies were later mounted onto folding screens, such as a closely related one in the collection of the Yokohama City University Library and Information Center, Yokohoma, included in the recent exhibition Mapping the World: Perspectives from Asian Cartography, National Library, Singapore, 2021-2; and another eight-fold map screen, of more yellowish colouration, sold at Christie’s London, 12th December 2018, lot 191.