The Chinese have one of the world’s longest histories of mapmaking – more than 2000 years. An adequate account of this history, however, has yet to be written. For some time spans, the first to the tenth centuries, for example, losses from warfare and neglect have probably been great. Almost no examples of maps remain, so that one must make inferences on the basis of textual sources and other evidence. For other periods, especially from about the seventeenth century onward, so many maps, as well as supplementary textual sources, survive that no one has adequately surveyed them.
Despite these difficulties, it is still possible to make some broad generalizations. Before the twentieth century, mapmaking in China was an activity of the educated elite, those who formed the pool from which posts in the government bureaucracy were filled. In the course of their duties, these scholar-officials developed mathematical techniques and instruments needed to produce measured maps of high accuracy....
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Yee, C.D.K. (2016). Maps and Mapmaking in China. In: Selin, H. (eds) Encyclopaedia of the History of Science, Technology, and Medicine in Non-Western Cultures. Springer, Dordrecht. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-94-007-3934-5_8721-4
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