Old maps, new maps

Taken from our blog on GIS and history. (but still authored by me)
This very beautiful map created by an Italian missionary priest and published in 1866 was digitized by the Australian National Library.
As it was indexed under key-words like Guangdong, Catholic Mission, etc. I had to have a look at it.
After that close look, I discovered that this four-years work which displays a luxury of details in the description of a missionary district just north of Hong Kong only shows four chapels. In other words, this was a masterpiece which was not dedicated to the celebration of the accomplishments of the mission. It is more like a precise and useful tool designed to help future missionary job.
An article by RCY Ng, published in 1969, assesses the value of the cartographic work of Fr. Volonteri.

Here is a link to a google map I created which shows among other things that every station or chapel created at the time are now within what we call the New Territories, a large chunk of lands added to the British colony of Hong Kong in 1898. In other words since my area of study is Guangdong, it is relevant for me to have a look at this map. But if it was not within nowadays Hong Kong boundaries, it would have been more difficult for me to find the things I found.

Of the four chapels that existed in 1866, two "survived" and are church-parishes of the diocese of Hong Kong.
I cannot find a contemporary trace of the other two.
One was located at Ting-kok, 汀角,
















The other one was called An-ui and located near Tai Po.

That particular chapel gave me an unusual amount of troubles since it took me a lot of help to figure out the place-name remotely close to the Cantonese transcription (An-ui) given by the missionary. Weiqing and Prof. An finally figured it out. It reads 碗陶，wantao.





The use of Googlemap in combination with older maps proves to be a very interesting exercise. Despite some limitations such as the impossibility to have url links in the general description of the map (though it is possible in content of each place marks), the tool is proving very easy to use. In fact the limitations come with the quality of the sources used here: the fact that there is a chapel I cannot precisely locate or name only signifies that I should look into archives to get the name right, if not the position.

I added Leipzig and Milan on the map because I think it is a case of circulation of techniques and know-how used to supply a western audience in need of precise maps of China not only for travel or missionary work but also for commerce or war. In 1866 the technology was not available in the region to publish such a map.

I welcome any criticism. You can use French or Chinese to do that.

Afficher District of San-on, 新安縣 1866 sur une carte plus grande