The Maps And Characters Of The Chorography In Qing Dynasty

Compared with the accurate degree of maps in modern times, most maps have no scientificity in the chorography. This only can be made up by characters to be more useful. Nevertheless, these maps have their own value and reason from the political point of view. Although until Qing dynasty which is such a special historical phase, western painting method was imported into China and influenced the map-making of China, having simplistic maps and particular characters is still the main feature of the chorography. The contents of maps are replaced by characters which became appendages to characters. In the society which characters occupying central status, such phenomenon is reasonable. This phenomenon looks unbelievable, but it lasts for so long. Why? How many factors caused the formation and persistence of this historical phenomenon? It has great significance to research into the maps and characters in the chorography of Qing dynasty.Being compiled by government, the chorography is required to meet the political need of governor, to show the volition of local governor. It serves for regnant class. Although influenced by western science, absorbed some advanced mapping technique, the status of character in the whole chorography has not been reduced and the statement of character to map has also not been weakened. To meet the political need, the map is not scientific and veracious. On the contrary, the character is chosed subtly by those who are the governors according to their own requirements. So, these characters, having chosen for two , meet their political need quite well. The map is not being scientific which makes it becomes more political. The arguing between map and character means the competition between politics and science. During this competition, the character keeps its Chinese tradition and national feature which composes the history different from western society.This thesis makes contrastive analysis on the maps and characters in the chorography of Qing dynasty, compares with the maps of modern times to discover the changes made by the compilers of the chorography. On the other hand, this thesis makes statistical analysis on compilers'identity and division of responsibility to discover the reason of such phenomenon in the chorography of Qing dynasty. The basic structure and main contents are: chapter one is the analysis of historical maps especially the maps of chorography. The reason and significance of this thesis will also be presented in this chapter. With the standard of the"three factors"of modern maps, Chapter two analyzes the differences between the maps and the characters while referring to the same geographical phenomenon in the chorography of Qing dynasty. Chapter three mainly analyzes the influences made by human factors to the contents and pictures of the chorography. Chapter four presents the main idea of the whole thesis. Chapter two and three are the main body of the thesis which analyze the various factors related to the protracting of the chorography. There are holistic statistic and case analysis, which deeply discover the reason for the existence of such phenomenon.