What’s Wrong with this Map? - Map of China: Decoding the Secrets of a Vanished Cartographer - page 13

dained monarchs now decided that they were ruled by mere men. Where great
wealth once had consisted in owning vast tracts of land, now it involved owning
vast cargoes of ships. In tandem with these changes, unprecedented arrangements
for living in the world were rising at a breathtaking pace from the outdated medi-
eval foundations on which Europe had so long rested. An entirely new structure of
law was required to hold up the new order. Selden was the lawyer to do just that.
But John Selden did more than juggle laws and precedents. He was able to anti-
cipate the future because he quarried more thoroughly than any other legal scholar
of his era the records of the past - records that in his case ended up including a
Chinese map. What he derived from these records were not just precedents for the
law of the sea but the foundations of something far more revolutionary: the idea
that the purpose of law was to ensure not the power of the rulers but the liberty of
the people. His motto was peri pantos ten eleutherian : Above All, Liberty. It may
seem like a trite phrase - the posturing declaration of a vain young man - but in
Selden's case it was a vow to act against the tyrannies of the age, which he himself
would experience at first hand when he found himself imprisoned by two kings in
succession.Itwasavowthatledhimfirstintolaw,thenintopolitics,andfinallyin-
to the study of Asian languages, including Hebrew, so that he could decipher texts
that might enable him to reconstruct liberty as the fundamental human condition.
Selden did not write 'Above All, Liberty' on the map. I would have liked to see
the inscription there in his hand, but maps don't have covers and Selden was not
about to deface the original by scribbling on it. He left no comment on it, or about
it, other than drawing attention to it in his will. And yet, as we shall see, he is in-
timately part of its history.
____________________
Why should anyone, other than those captivated by the history of the seventeenth
century, find an old Chinese map in the Bodleian Library of any interest whatso-
ever? It will take the length of this topic to show exactly what we can learn from
this single document, and why it matters.
Let me start by asking you to stick a virtual pin in the exact centre of the Selden
map.Drawacircleinyourmindaroundthatpoint,givingthatcirclearadiusofone
inch. This circle, you will find, sits at the north end of the South China Sea. At the
top of the circle, the southern edge of China, is what looks like a long island with a
spine of mountains. Its location suggests that this should be Hainan Island, where
theAriesmadeitsemergencylanding.Butthelabelsayssomethingelse:Lianzhou.