Sources of Western Knowledge about Miao Territory and Miao People:Focused on Early Jesuits'Maps
Previous academic opinion regarded that the western knowledge about Miao Territory and Miao People came from Jean-Baptiste Du Halde's Description de l'Empire de la Chine.But this article ar-gues that the early concept of Miao Territory appeared in Martino Martini's Novus Atlas Sinensis more than half a century ago based on the Jesuits'works,letters and maps.And Martino Martini's data sources was indirect knowledge from Chinese records.While most of the relevant contents in Jean-Baptiste Du Halde's works was direct knowledge which came from the observation and communication with the Miao People when Jesuits presided the survey and mapped the Huangyu Quanlan Tu(Overview Maps of Imperial Territories,《皇舆全览 图》)in Kangxi Regin.Including the article De La Nation Des Miao Sse written by Régis should be the earliest ethnography about the Miao people in the western society.As the Chinese Rites controversy led to the interruption of Sino-Western exchanges,the western mapping activities in the Southwest China and its cognition of the Miao People in the following two hundred years remained at the level of the Jesuits in the early Qing Dynasty.
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