Secrets of the Selden Map - Map of China: Decoding the Secrets of a Vanished Cartographer - page 148

and lesser continents that are indeed 'so seated' that none can be isolated from any
other.
From this observation Selden proceeds to consider two arguments that could be
made to follow from it. The first is that 'Some take this as an Invitation of Nature
to the peopling of one soil from another.' This effectively restates the terra nullius
argument about a legal right to occupy foreign territory that is found to be vacant.
Thesecond,andmoreaggressive,corollaryisthat'OthersnoteitasifthePublique
Right of Mutual Commerce were designed by it.' Here we come face to face with
deGroot'snatural-lawviewthatcommercialexchangeisnaturalandthereforelaw-
ful, and that anyone who impedes that exchange may lawfully be challenged. We
know that Selden was sceptical of both claims. In his view, the rights to occupy
territory and to engage in commerce could be invoked only when other conditions
were met. One of those conditions was parity: one party could not impose terms of
trade or unequal contracts that overrode more fundamental rights.
Selden does not insert this observation into Titles of Honor in order to score
points against de Groot. In fact, he uses this image of the mobility of relations
among islands purely as a metaphor to make another point entirely, which is to re-
gret that the many fields of 'good arts and learning' have become severed from
eachother,whereas 'everyonehathsomuchrelation tosomeother,thatithathnot
only use often of the aid of what is next it, but, through that, also of what is out of
ken to it'. To phrase this in our way of speaking, all disciplines of knowledge draw
onandhaveabearingonallotherdisciplines,andshouldnotbeinsulatedonefrom
the other. It's all a metaphor, and yet as a reader of the map, I couldn't help but
be struck by the similarity between the image he chose and the map he probably
owned by then. It is hard to imagine Selden gazing at a map of Europe and coming
up with this way of capturing the necessity of interdisciplinary learning. It is very
easy, however, to imagine him doing just this with his map of East Asia.
Admittedly I speculate. I do so knowing that Selden could not have been indif-
ferent to a map that meant enough to him to need specifying in his will. What it
meant to him, alas, he never declared. That needn't consign us to silence, however.
If he won't reveal to us how he read the map, then we will go in search of it on our
own.
When I first encountered this map, it struck me as a puzzle, as it still does. The
more pieces I fit into place, the more puzzling it becomes. This has not dismayed
me. All maps are puzzles, coded according to the conventions of their time and the
whims of their creators. To read a historical map means having to learn its codes