THE FIRST PORTUGUESE MAPS OF CHINA IN FRANCISCO RODRIGUES’ BOOK AND ATLAS C.1512佛朗西斯 ‧ 羅德里傑斯的《書》和《地圖集》C .1512：葡萄牙最早的中國地圖
The article reassesses the role of the earliest Portuguese representations of China produced in the early sixteenth century, focusing on the manuscript known as Francisco Rodrigues’s *Book and Atlas* (c. 1512). Based on the codicological analysis of the set, the comparative examination of the intern...
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| Published in: | Review of Culture |
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| Format: | Articles |
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Instituto Cultural de Macau
2013
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| Online Access: | https://www.icm.gov.mo/rc/viewer/pdfViewerParts/40041/2892 |
| Summary: | The article reassesses the role of the earliest Portuguese representations of China produced in the early sixteenth century, focusing on the manuscript known as Francisco Rodrigues’s *Book and Atlas* (c. 1512). Based on the codicological analysis of the set, the comparative examination of the internal elements of the codex (including the coexistence, in the same volume, of a copy of Tomé Pires’s *Suma Oriental*) and the cartographic comparison among maps, sketches, and legends, the author contests historiographical interpretations that attribute to the atlas an immediate function of geopolitical updating and direct support to the centralized cartographic policy of King D. Manuel, according to a supposed logic of “revision and sending” in a later period.
The main conclusions argue that the *Book and Atlas* should be understood less as a normative instrument of “state cartography” and more as a composite of navigational and observational materials compiled at different times and under different conditions. It is argued that the 69 panoramas of the Lesser Sunda Islands archipelago (Alor to Java), possibly derived from earlier notebooks from the post-1512 return, were not consistently integrated into the corresponding charts, nor do they appear to have influenced subsequent Portuguese cartography of Southeast Asia and the routes to the South China Sea. Thus, the article repositions Rodrigues’s work as evidence of the pragmatic process of maritime knowledge production, dependent on local mediations and limitations of integration among drawing, text, and cartography. |
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| ISSN: | 1682-1106 |