| Upon the conclusion of the Qing Dynasty in 1912, the areas formerly under their control experienced an era of uncertainty regarding their political future. Although early Western historians of China have mistakenly held the Qing Empire to be synonymous with China, more recent work in the field of Chinese history suggests important distinctions between the two. Thus, the notion of how Qing territories came to be conceptualized as part of an emerging Chinese nation is worth further examination. In the maps and other data compiled by European explorers in the region during this time, it is possible to glimpse the uncertainty of the trajectory of the former Qing regions. From the viewpoint of cartography, we can see evidence of the variety of voices that eventually would come to shape the nation that emerged. Europeans, of course, were simply one of many forces that shaped China as a nation, but they uniquely represent how Chinese nationalism functioned in a global nationalist context. Much of the question surrounding nationality in China revolved around concepts of ethnicity and the potential success of a multiethnic state drawn from Qing era precedents. The struggle and diversity of input present in these maps serves to remind us that China as we know it was forged in a dynamic process, and the geographically and ethnically complex nation that emerged was always far from guaranteed, the ripples of which can still be felt in China today. |
