Transcultural Cartographies: The Japanese Buddhist World Map and the Birth of Asian Studies in Europe
Maps belong to the oldest forms of human communication and thus represent an important historical record of space. Yet, maps are much more than just a visual presentation of a territory during a certain period of time, they are a reflection of the historical, political, religious and cultural contexts in which they were compiled.
This series of lectures invites a fresh critical view on mapping; its role in the global circulation of knowledge; influence on state sovereignty and royal authority; colonialism, imperialism, and national identities throughout history.
Berlin is an apt place for this topic. It has historically been a meeting point of mapping practices from all over the world. The city played a key role in the genesis of the history of cartography as a distinct branch of the history of science. It hosts a huge variety of samples of the material culture of mapping across many institutions that illustrate how a map is strongly conditioned by the space and time in which it was created (historical context), by people who created it (mapmakers), and by the audience and purpose for which it was intended (users). Maps are, therefore, to be understood as complex social constructs representing the power of knowledge.
Germany is now a major repository of mapping efforts through history, making Berlin a perfect setting for this lecture series. The lecture series will be continued (Part II) from January 2025 onwards.
The lecture series is jointly organized by Berlin-Brandenburgische Akademie der Wissenschaften, Max-Planck-Institut für Wissenschaftsgeschichte, and Einstein Center Chronoi.
Registration is required, for more information click here For further information contact: Franziska Urban franziska.urban@bbaw.de
This talk examines the significance of Japanese Buddhist cartography for the origins of the academic study of Buddhism in Europe.
It traces the intellectual history and material aspects of cartographic representations of the Buddhist world, produced in eighteenth-century Japan by monastics, intellectuals and publishers, as well as the transmission, translation, and reproduction of these maps by the founding figures of the academic disciplines of Buddhist Studies and Sinology in nineteenth-century Europe: Heinrich Julius Klaproth (1783–1835), Jean-Pierre Abel-Rémusat (1788–1832), and Stanislas Julien (1799–1873). In doing so, it seeks to shed light on the unrecognized contributions of Japanese Buddhist cartography to the European understanding of the geography of Buddhism in China, Central Asia and India, and to the development of Buddhist Studies in the West.
This is the third in the Maps and Mapping lecture series organized by Dagmar Schäfer (BBAW, MPIWG) Vera Dorofeeva-Lichtmann (CNRS Paris; EC-Chronoi and MPIWG) and Ute Tintemann (BBAW), in cooperation with the Berlin-Brandenburg Academy of Sciences and Humanities and the Max Planck Institute for the History of Science.
The other dates are:
11 November 2024
Maps and Mapping in Global Cultural Perspectives: Temporality in Map History
05 December 2024
The event flyer is available for download below.