Mapping from the Water: The Creation of the Selden Map

In 2008, an unusual four-centuries-old Chinese map of East Asia was discovered in the Bodleian Library in Oxford. Its geographical accuracy makes it unlike any Chinese map. This paper proposes that the accuracy derives from the process by which the map was drawn. Contrary to standard practice, in which water was imagined from land, this map imagines the land from water. It is able to do so not by conducting direct hydrographic survey, but from by transcribing routes recorded in navigation manuals of the Ming dynasty.