Jing cheng ge guo zan fen jie zhi quan tu
Foreign Embassies in Beijing in the 1900s |
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| Date: | 1900 |
| Author: | Unknown |
| Dwnld: | Full Size (11.04mb) |
| Source: | Library of Congress |
| Print Availability: | |
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| See our Prints Page for more details | |
This map isn't part of any series, but we have other maps of China that you might want to check out.
No clue. Can any Chinese speakers/readers help us out, here?
UPDATE: Many thanks to readers JG and Jeff Crosby for some terrific translation and contextualizing info, which you can find in the comment section. Great work, and much appreciated.
Cåsbr is partially right about the non-colored part of the map.
The horizontal square right beneath the Forbidden City is actually the Legation Quarter which the Boxers besieged. After the uprising this quarter becomes extra territorial, under the control of the international CD, with every country present having its own military troops for defence and walls around the etire aerea.
Jeff is right. This is a map of the entire cities of Beijing, at around 1900 after the Allied force from the west crushed the .
The colors represents the temporary Allied occupation quarters, much rather similar to the occupations of Berlin after WWII. In the center of the Inner City (the upper 2/3 of the map), the non-colored square is the Forbidden City (the Palace). Nobody turfed the Emperor of China yet.
http://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Beijing_1900.jpg
JG, you have the character order backwards. The name of the country comes first, followed by the color, so it goes 英界黄色 (British turf in yellow), etc.
This is a map of the whole imperial city, and as far as I know, the foreign powers never set up long-term legations. This might have been a turf map for the temporary control of the city after the “8 Nations Alliance” took the city to stop the Boxer Rebellion siege on foreign legations.
Thanks, Jeff, for clarification and context.
My Chinese sucks (not a native speaker) but I don’t see anything specific to diplomatic anything in the map itself other than the watercolor over it. Looks like a generic city map with streets/alleys (同) by name/number (一,二,三,四,五,六)) and business districts.
The color code seems to be (based on the text in the upper left corner) as follows – but note the colors have faded so what appears doesn’t seem to match the text:
My amateur transcription:
?界
米色日本 (beige color – Japan)
蛋青色 (egg blue color – Italy?)
藍色美界 (blue color – US sector)
綠色德界 (green color – Russian sector)
紅色各國 (red color – various countries)
(公)?暑英界 (orange? (? heat) color – British sector)
黃色法界 (yellow color – French sector)
about other diplomatic functions and locations. Partial and doesn’t make much sense but mentions “American Station” (美站), “British Station” (英站), “French Station” (法站), etc.)
先農檀系美站理潘院俄
俄英站( )?界景山(系)?法站
Many thanks, JG, for contextualizing info. Much appreciated.