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Displacing China: The Martini-Blaeu Novus Atlas Sinensis and the Late Renaissance Shift in Representations of East Asia

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  02 October 2020

Mario Cams
Mario Cams*
Affiliation:
University of Macau
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Abstract

In the mid-seventeenth century, as the first full atlas of East Asia became available on the European book market, a dramatic shift took place in textual and visual representations of the Far East. The atlas, titled “Novus Atlas Sinensis” (1655), was the product of a cooperation between Joan Blaeu, who headed one of Europe's foremost commercial publishing houses, and Martino Martini, a prominent Jesuit missionary to China. This study shows how the Martini-Blaeu atlas thoroughly challenged the worldview of late Renaissance audiences by tracing and reconstructing a series of displacements that facilitated its production process.

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Renaissance Quarterly , Volume 73 , Issue 3 , Fall 2020 , pp. 953 - 990
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Copyright
Copyright © The Author(s) 2020. Published by the Renaissance Society of America

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Footnotes

I would like to thank Nicolas Standaert, Fresco Sam-Sin, and Elke Papelitzky for reading and commenting on earlier versions of this text; Li Rui for choosing to write his master's thesis on the Chinese source materials of the Martini-Blaeu atlas; and John Cirilli for his assistance in improving language and style.

References

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