Jansonius lezing

circling the square. The seventeenth-century encounter between East Asian and European maps.
Maps produced in the seventeenth century by European missionaries in China played an important role in the history of cartography. Jesuits are said to have unilaterally brought "scientific" cartography into Asia from Europe, as a result of which the question of whether or not European cartography had a major influence on East Asian maps. In this lecture, Mario Cams revolves the question: how did Chinese cartography enrich European maps?

Mario Cams Ph.D is the senior lecturer at the Chinese Studies department at KU Leuven. His research is at the intersection of the history of science, of cartography, and of the Ming and Qing periods in what we call China today (14th to 19th centuries).