Chinese Historical Atlas - Complete Eight Volumes (Hardcover Edition)

Author: Tan Qixiang
Publisher:
Publishing Date: 2002-01-01
Features: The Historical Atlas of China (hereinafter referred to as The Atlas) is divided into 8 volumes according to historical periods:
Volume 1: Primitive Society, Xia, Shang, Western Zhou, Spring and Autumn, Warring States Periods;
Volume 2: Qin, Western Han, Eastern Han Periods;
Volume 3: Three Kingdoms, Western Jin Periods;
Volume 4: Eastern Jin and Sixteen Kingdoms, Northern and Southern Dynasties Periods;
Volume 5: Sui, Tang, Five Dynasties and Ten Kingdoms Periods;
Volume 6: Song, Liao, Jin Periods;
Volume 7: Yuan, Ming Periods;
Volume 8: Qing Period.
It is divided into 20 map groups by chronological order, with a total of 304 maps (excluding illustrations that do not occupy separate pages) and 549 pages. The content of the maps includes:
the distribution of known primitive society sites and important sites of other periods, the territorial boundaries, administrative divisions, or activity ranges of the governments established by various ethnic groups in Chinese history, ethnic distribution, all verifiable place names recorded before the Qin Dynasty, all county-level and above place names starting from the Qin Dynasty, boundaries of first and second-level administrative divisions, verifiable Great Wall sections, passes, fortresses, passes, valleys, tombs, and encampments, major rivers, lakes, mountains, coastlines, and islands, with a total of over 70,000 place names collected. Each volume includes a bilingual (Chinese and English) preface and a place name index.
After its publication, the book received attention and praise both domestically and internationally. Its theoretical innovations are primarily reflected in the following aspects:
1. China has been a multi-ethnic country since ancient times, with vast unified governments emerging over two thousand years ago. However, due to the influence of feudal orthodox concepts and ethnic superiority, as well as insufficient records and research on the history of minority ethnic groups, previous historical atlases only depicted the Central Plains dynasties or Han Chinese governments, obscuring the historical status and role of minority ethnic groups. The Atlas aims to fully reflect the historical facts that dozens of ethnic groups jointly established the great motherland, and it adopts the Qing Dynasty's territory before the 1840s of imperialist invasion as the basic scope of historical China. All governments established by ethnic groups within this scope during various historical periods, whether Han Chinese or other ethnic groups, are displayed. Some frontier minority governments, such as those of the Turks and Tibetans, are also selected based on their peak territorial extents. The Atlas opposes the fallacy of recognizing only Han Chinese governments or Central Plains dynasties, while also rejecting the incorrect view of treating minority governments and frontier regional governments as mere appendages of the Central Plains dynasties. This promotes a correct understanding of history and strengthens the values of patriotism, ethnic equality, and unity.
2. Most previous historical atlases relied on literary records as the basis for plotting points on maps. However, historical records are vast, and with limited compiler resources, errors and omissions were inevitable. When the literary records themselves were inaccurate, differences on maps became even harder to avoid. The Atlas incorporates research findings from archaeology, geography, and related disciplines up to the mid-1980s to verify and correct literary records. The compilation of frontier maps also incorporates minority ethnic literary records and references foreign research, making the content more precise and complete. For points and lines determined primarily by literary records, careful research was conducted to correct previous errors as much as possible.
3. Historically, Chinese maps generally depicted one dynasty per full map, with very limited content and inaccurate place name locations. It was only in Yang Shoujing's Maps of Past Dynasties that the method of dividing the country into dozens of maps was adopted. However, since all map sheets used the same scale, and due to...[more content]