Question: How have maps been used to advance imperial claims? You may choose to focus on particular empires or parts of empires.
For the purposes of this essay, I will focus on the early modern empires of German Holy Rome, the Ottomans, and China (of the Ming and particularly Qing dynasties). This essay will argue that these empires used maps to construct imperial conquest goals for emic and etic viewers, and to assert spiritual, future, or present claims over territory.
Let us first examine China. In the Confucian model of imperialism (certainly not a “set-in-stone” concept as it is), all legitimate political authority stems from the emperor of China, known as the Son of Heaven. The Chinese name for China, 中国, literally means “Middle Kingdom” or “Middle Country”—as in, the territorial link between the celestial lands of heaven and the temporal lands of barbarism. In this model, the Chinese emperor has a duty (tianming, or the Mandate of Heaven) to guide his subjects to enlightenment and civilization—that is, to draw them into more heavenly territory (whether this territory is spiritual or physical). But tianming extends beyond the emperor’s direct geopolitical holdings. The mandate counts all human beings across earth as the emperor’s subjects, since he is the only rightful and legitimate link between earth and heaven. Out of this ideology was born the Confucian concentric circle (or square) mapping of spiritual-territorial division; the innermost square represents the emperor and his court itself as the most enlightened and civilized at all, followed by the next layer that represents his immediately political holdings. Each successive concentric square radiating outward represents a zone of humanity farther from the enlightenment of the emperor’s inner zone, until the final square of utter barbarism.
In practical terms, Chinese dynasties, militaries, and bureaucracies used the concentric-square mapping model to show that all the world—and its potential for enlightenment—orbited around China. This granted imperial agents an immutably legitimate claim to the entire world, ranging from the inner barbaric territories of tributary states like Dai Viet and Korea, outwards to lands with little formal connection to the Han Chinese center such as Tibet, Xinjiang, Burma, or Mongolia. These claims manifested in two different ways. The first was more tangible, in tributary states or conquered territories like the ones listed above; Chinese emperors legitimized their conquest and resource extraction from these regions by claiming to provide enlightenment and civilization in return. In some cases, this exchange could be consensual and mutually beneficial. For example, in Dai Viet and Korea, the blessing of the Confucian Ming and Qing emperors legitimized the right-to-rule of the regional dynasties or governing bodies. In other cases, as in Sichuan, Mongolia, and Xinjiang, Qing emperors used the claim of Heaven’s Mandate to justify rather more explicitly colonial expansion, in which Han or Manchu elites and settlers would be sent in to such frontier regions to suppress local governments and extract resources and manpower more directly. Even in these cases, however, some collaboration or mutual benefit sometimes existed.
The second manifestation of the claims of Heaven’s Mandate are more spiritual in character and to me, rather more interesting, if self-explanatory. The Mandate of Heaven may not have allowed the Chinese emperor to exert physical authority over the entire globe (if only for reasons of logistics), but it did allow him to exert moral authority and superiority over, and claim to, the whole world. This certainly had tangible effects; for example, when foreign delegations from Inner Asia or Europe arrived in the Qing Empire, the emperor could (and usually did) dismiss any inconvenient requests or demands, because these delegations represented kingdoms on the outer rings of the concentric squares world map implicitly subjected to his authority, and thus he could claim legitimately (at least to his Confucian subjects, if not the non-Confucian delegations) to be the ultimate arbiter. But philosophically, this mode of expressing authority is made more interesting by its unfamiliarity to the Westphalian national system. In the 21st century by international law, nations in principle can only claim legitimate authority over the lands, resources, and peoples within their borders. The Sinic world-mapping system of the patriarchal emperor granted a single individual unlimited claim to everything under heaven, which at least on paper could be used to arbitrarily and legitimately advance imperial claims with no outer bounds.
I would now like to briefly map (pardon the pun) the cartographic practices of the Ottomans and the Holy Roman Empire onto these Sinic forms of spiritual cartography. Ottoman cartographers like Piri Reis used maps not only to highlight the grandeur of the Ottoman Empire, but also to show how yet-unconquered lands (e.g., the Balkans, Vienna, and Rome) fit into the “potential energy” of imperial territorial designs. As one reading mentioned, the Ottoman Empire used maps to show what has been conquered and what could and/or will be conquered; that is, to construct the space of its imperial frontiers and beyond as already part of the empire de jure, if not de facto.
The Holy Roman Empire (or HRE), in a manner even more similar to Confucian China, also used cartography and ideology to claim de jure authority over the entire world. As Peter H. Wilson notes in Heart of Europe, while Holy Roman emperors in the medieval and early modern period largely understood that their political authority was geographically limited by logistics, they nevertheless mapped their spiritual legitimacy—as representatives of the kingdom of God on earth—to the entire world.[1] Although the Pope tended to refer to the HRE as merely the “temporal arm” of Christianity (where the Pope and Vatican were the spiritual arm), Holy Roman emperors often claimed to hold both titles in themselves. Like for the Ottomans and the Chinese empires, this mapping of Holy Roman authority onto the world created a diverse network of geopolitical relationships—ranging from somewhat more direct authority over the fragmented principalities of Germany proper; to a tenuous, violent, and extractive relationship with Italy; to a more diplomatic pseudo-tributary system with smaller states like Burgundy, the Low Countries, or Scandinavia. Maps commissioned by the HRE or of the Empire from the external world would often portray half of Europe as in some sense or another belonging to the Holy Roman Emperor—extending his claims of authority far beyond his actual territorial holdings or feudal sub-lordships in the region of Germany proper.
I conclude that empires used mapping and cartography, both spiritually and physically, not only to claim territory for future conquest, but also to assert current (albeit de jure) authority over lands and peoples far beyond their realms of de facto administration and control.
[1] Peter H. Wilson, “Heart of Europe: A History of the Holy Roman Empire” (Cambridge: HUP, 2016).
Aidan Lilienfeld; for “Maps, History and Power: The Spaces and Cultures of the Past” at the London School of Economics, November 2021
Haus Lilienfeld 