History Book Talk - Connected Cartographies: World Geography and the Sino-Western Translation of Knowledge, 1580-1842, Cambridge University Press, 2025

Connected Cartographies: World Geography and the Sino-Western Translation of Knowledge, 1580–1842 reframes the history of early modern cartography by tracing a centuries-long cycle of mapmaking between Europe and China. It shows how European maps of China frequently relied on Chinese sources, while Chinese world maps incorporated European geographic models, producing a distinctive genre of cross-cultural maps. These hybrid works emerged from the collaborative labors of Chinese cartographers, Jesuit missionaries, Manchu translators, and other intermediaries, and they challenge models of knowledge-making that focus solely on the idea of "discovery." Spanning the sixteenth to nineteenth centuries, Connected Cartographies offers a new narrative of global science in which multilingual, culturally entangled maps stand as enduring artifacts of early modern globalization. The book also experiments with the integration of digital humanities in traditional scholarly projects by launching together with a companion website www.connectedcartographies.net. 

Florin-Stefan Morar is Assistant Professor of the History of Science at the National University of Singapore working on the global history of science, the history of international relations, and digital humanities.