Mapping and Transmission of Geographical Knowledge between the Qing Western Territories and Eurasia

This project expands the primary-source base for the study of Qing maps of the Western Regions, focusing on rare manuscript maps that have not yet received sufficient scholarly attention, and combines sources in Chinese, Manchu, Mongolian, Tibetan, and Turkic languages in an integrated study that gives equal weight to textual and visual materials. From the perspective of world history, it re-examines the multicultural background of Qing cartography and geographical knowledge—especially the influence of diverse Eurasian knowledge traditions, including Manchu, Mongolian, Tibetan, Turkic, Russian, and Islamic ones—in order to bridge the research paradigms of Chinese, Inner Asian, and Eurasian history. Combining qualitative and quantitative methods from comparative philology and the digital humanities, the project builds on close study of the maps and their multilingual contexts to identify historical place names and transport routes, and uses digital technologies such as Geographic Information Systems (GIS) to produce multi-layered overlay maps that trace changes in historical geography, achieving genuine interdisciplinary integration.