Antique Taiwan Map

Is there a map store in Taipei? I’m looking for an antique map of Taiwan.

A search of ‘antique map’ turned upthis relevant thread -- hope this helps!

Antique maps of Taiwan frequently show up on Ebay. One famous map recently displayed at the historical museum in Taipei was just sold on Ebay for several thousands of dollars, but there are more affordable ones, too.

Regards,
Marc

I saw a replica at the NPM gift shop.

Nantian 南天 bookstore on Wenzhou St (south end, a search should pull up the exact address) has prints of some old maps.

Taiouan Bookstore, Lane 76, No. 6, Xinsheng South Rd. (across from National Taiwan University)

http://www.taiouan.com.tw/catalog/index.php?cPath=46_43

I have this impression that I once wrote a long post about how and why the European cartographers used to draw Taiwan as 3 separate islands, but I can’t seem to find that one…

Anyway… got a few old maps I like to share and have idea where to put them. So I’m reviving this old thread.

India Orientalis Insularumque Adiacienti um Typus by Abraham Ortelius, 1590

Imperii Sinarum Nova Descriptio by Jan Van Loon, published in Amsterdam, 1658

職方大一統總圖. I can’t find any reference to this map, except for a Ming dynasty official map book called 皇明職方地圖. It might be a remake of that map, of unknown date.

Fujian area

If the later two maps are indeed authentic and made at least in Early Qing dynasty (hence dropping the 皇明 part from 皇明職方地圖), then it’s interesting to note that on the mainland map, there’s a island labelled as “雞籠 澹水 (Ke-lang and Tām-tsuí)” while on the Fujian area map, the same island is labelled as "雞浪 湛水 (Ke-lōng and Tām-tsuí). I marked the spellings in Taigi, and the two versions are nearly identical, but the Chinese part is very different, and it signifies two things.

  1. These are phonetic translations, and recent phonetic translations around the time of the making of that map. It’s part of the season why the same location gets different transliteration in the same set of maps.

  2. The names were transliterated using Holo or an Sinitic language similar to Holo. 澹 and 湛 sounds different in Mandarin, 澹 is Dan and 湛 is Zhan.

  3. Ke-lang and Tām-tsuí isn’t a place where Han Chinese lived, or visited. Local inhabitants also did not used Chinese characters. The transliteration of Ryukyu in historical documents were also erratic at first, some used 流求 some used other forms. When merchants began frequent bi-lateral visits, and the kingdom of Ryukyu adopted Hanji, the transliteration was set to 琉球 and it was stuck.

The fact these two maps from the set had different transliterations for two of the most frequently mentioned locations in Taiwan, shows how little Han Chinese knew about Taiwan.

The maps also drew 彭湖 (Penghu) and 北港 (Beigang) as one island. Don’t know the deal with that, but the name Beigang in Taiwan also changed several locations through out Chinese colonization. It is highly unlikely that Beigang in the map refers to present day Beigang, as they would have not been to present day Beigang.

The map also listed another place called 小琉球 (Ryukyu minor). It almost seems like those European maps that divided Taiwan up into 3 separate islands.