On Heroic Maps

The talk is the ending keynote of  “A Cultural History of Asian Art in the Long Nineteenth Century”

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On Heroic Maps: Imagining ‘China’ in Premodern Geo-bodies and Modern Historiography

Date: 24 June 2026 (Wednesday)
Time: 6pm-7:15pm
Venue: Room 4.36, 4/f, Run Run Shaw Tower, Centennial Campus, HKU

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On opposite sides of a twelfth-century stele appear two of the most famous maps in Chinese history, the Tracks of Yu 禹跡圖 and the Map of Chinese and Foreigners 華夷圖. The two have different origins and employ very different visual and technical vocabularies in depicting ‘China’. As such, their pairing by an unknown official in the early years of the Jin state (1115–1234), when the future of ‘China’ as both unified polity and coherent concept was much in doubt, has given the maps an almost heroic status in the historiography of Chinese cartography. Beginning with this famous stone, my talk explores the geographical imagination of ‘China’ in premodern maps and modern historiography, considering efforts in both Asia and Europe to define Chinese society and civilization through its technical accomplishments. In so doing, I reflect on the role of canons and icons in the construction of national histories and the potential of cultural history for articulating alternative narratives.

Speaker:

Stephen Whiteman 魏瑞明 is a historian whose research draws on art and architectural history, cultural geography, and technology studies to explore the visual and spatial cultures of early modern and modern China. Author of the award-winning Where Dragon Veins Meet: The Kangxi Emperor and His Estate at Rehe, his work has been supported by the British Academy, the Getty Foundation, the Center for Advanced Studies in the Visual Arts, and Dumbarton Oaks, amongst others. He is coeditor-in-chief of The Art Bulletin and a Trustee of the Association for Art History, and currently serves as Professor of the Art and Architecture of China at the Courtauld Institute of Art, University of London.