Structures of the Earth: Metageographies of Early Medieval China

Abstract

Although the geographical knowledge of the second millennium of the empire is well studied, D. Jonathan Felt’s monograph marks, following the remarkable work of Jörg Hüsemann, the revival of studies on the history of early medieval geographical knowledge. As far as the formal aspects of the book are concerned, the quality of the editorial work done on the manuscript is laudable—I did not find any glaring mistakes or typos. Felt’s text is clear, informative, and without jargon, even if he sometimes tends to repeat sentences from one page to the next to emphasize certain points. The author must be commended for choosing to include short lines of translations of primary sources in the body of his demonstration instead of adding numerous independent translation blocks. The reader can thus clearly follow his reasoning, and the text gains in fluidity. The excellent schematic maps produced with GIS are particularly relevant and allow one to visualize Felt’s hypotheses or conclusions. The bibliography is thorough, and the index useful. The only problem concerns the notes, which are inexplicably placed at the end of the volume. This may have been an editorial decision not attributable to the author, but the otherwise pleasant and informative reading of the book suffers from such unnecessary hindrance. The book is organized around four thematic chapters, whose titles function through conceptual or spatial oppositions that Felt takes on in his analysis, often with great nuance. The main body of the text is flanked at one end by an introduction and an indispensable first chapter presenting the genres of geographical writing, and at the other end by a conclusion that takes up the themes addressed in the main chapters to assess their late medieval and post-medieval fortune. The four themes of the study touch on the notions of regionalism, borders, natural geography, and competing world orders. They also follow a relatively chronological order which culminates in the last two chapters, more specifically focused on Li Daoyuan’s 酈道元 (d. 527) Shuijing zhu 水經注. Felt’s objective is to present four ways of seeing the world. He does so according to historical or historiographical oppositions, which enrich his arguments. The introduction and the first chapter are particularly useful to gain an overview and a precise history of the evolution of ancient and especially medieval geographical knowledge. In line with the works of Andrew Chittick and Liu Weiyi 劉緯毅,