Novus Atlas Sinensis 1655 Facsimile Edition

A Jesuit who had crossed China province by province, and a printing house at the height of its ambition: the Novus Atlas Sinensis, preserved at the Herzog August Bibliothek in Wolfenbüttel, was published by Joan Blaeu in Amsterdam in 1655 from surveys gathered by Martino Martini. It was the first atlas devoted to China ever produced in Europe.

Jesuit Fieldwork and the Amsterdam Press

Martini had reached Macau in 1642 and spent a decade in the Chinese interior as the Ming dynasty collapsed around him. Returning to Europe as procurator of the China mission, he carried his geographical materials to Amsterdam, where Blaeu set aside other parts of the Theatrum Orbis Terrarum to bring the China volume out first. The maps rest on Chinese cartography, above all the tradition of Zhu Siben and Luo Hongxian’s Guangyu tu, rather than on European conjecture.

Seventeen Engraved Maps and a Painted Title Page

Seventeen double-page engraved maps carry the work: a general map of the empire, one for each of the fifteen Ming provinces, and one of Japan with Korea. In the Wolfenbüttel copy the sheets are colored by hand and the engraved title page heightened in gold, the finish reserved for presentation copies of Blaeu’s folios. The Latin text runs province by province, pairing each map with an account of terrain, cities, products, and customs.

A Reference Work and an Argument

The atlas served merchants, diplomats, and scholars who had no other systematic description of China, and it served the mission by presenting a civilization worth engaging on its own terms. For a century it remained the standard European account, and the shape of China on later maps was substantially Martini’s.