Maps: Kangxi “Map of Taiwan” & Dutch Map of Spanish “California Shown as an Island”

Kangxi Map: Original image from the National Taiwan Museum & California Map: Original image from the Library of Congress, www.loc.gov/item/99443375/

Besides tools of navigation, maps also tell stories about the era of their creation. One of the National Taiwan Museum’s most prized objects is the “Antique Map of Taiwan during the Reign of the Kangxi Emperor.” It is the oldest Chinese map in existence that depicts the entire island of Taiwan, in color, on a single scroll. Painted with traditional brushwork techniques and turquoise pigments, it includes information on local topography, administrative centers, military bases, and roads, as well as depictions of urban and rural life. The Qing Empire annexed Taiwan in 1683—about 50 years after taking over continental China and deposing the Ming Dynasty—so the map records the island acquisition for its Manchu rulers. The “Kangxi Map” is believed to have been commissioned by a Qing emissary to Taiwan between 1699-1704.

Digital interactive Kangxi map - http://kangxitaiwanmap.ntm.gov.tw/index.html

Across the Pacific Ocean sits another distant “island” on an empire’s frontiers. The Spanish Empire sent expeditions along the coast of Alta California from the 1500s through 1600s, and later settled the colony in the 1700s by displacing indigenous peoples, or forcing them into servitude. The territory is featured in “Map of California Shown as an Island,” held by the U.S. Library of Congress in Washington, D.C. Created by the Dutch cartographer Joan Vinckeboons (also spelled Johannes Vingboons) using pen-and-ink and watercolor techniques, the map from 1650 shows California as a separate island detached from the continent. In reality, it is part of the continental land mass, but this common cartographic error was perpetuated by generations of mapmakers such as Vinckeboons, until 1747 when King Ferdinand VI of Spain issued a royal proclamation clarifying that California was not an island. Maps of Spain’s overseas territories were considered important state secrets, and it is thought cartographers in the Netherlands copied Spanish military maps captured on the high seas and brought back to Amsterdam.

Both these maps are records of “islands” at the edge of the known world for an imperial power—one Chinese, one European. They use ink and coloring techniques to show important cartographic and administrative details. Both were drafted in the 1600s, as a growing empire surveyed its new territories. Interestingly, the two European powers involved in the California map’s creation also established colonies in Taiwan—the Dutch from 1624-1662 and the Spanish 1626-1642—before the arrival of the Qing. Europeans called the island “Ilha Formosa,” meaning “beautiful island” in the Portuguese language.