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Posted by: Cynthia Smith
The Geography and Map Division holds thousands of vintage and antique nautical charts. Among the most compelling navigational charts in our holdings are the traditional stick charts of the Marshall Islands. The first time that I saw them, displayed in shadow boxes, I thought they looked like striking works of modern art. My curiosity led …
Posted in: Asian History, Exploration, Oceania
Posted by: Mike Klein
A few years ago a colleague of mine in the map division wrote a blog about maps of North Korea’s enigmatic capital of Pyongang. One of the maps, published by the Japanese Tourist Bureau in the 1920s, extols the city, renamed by the Japanese as Heijo, as a model of modernization and economic prosperity. At …
Posted in: 20th century cartography, Asian History, Military History
![[The road, near Passanaur, Groussie, (i.e., Georgia), Russia, taken between ca. 1890 and ca. 1900]. Detroit Publishing Company Archives, Prints and Photographs Division](https://blogs.loc.gov/maps/files/2021/02/master-pnp-ppmsc-03800-03805u.jpg)
Posted by: Mike Klein
Few journeys offer the prospect of so pleasant a destination or more luxurious accommodations than the Stairway to Heaven. Those of us not lucky enough to secure a ticket on that ride will have to settle for more mundane adventures, perhaps something with less delicate transportation facilities and sparser lodgings. With meagre options at hand …
Posted in: Asian History, European History
Posted by: Mike Klein
By the 1890s the eyes of the western imperial powers were turning eastwards, especially towards Manchuria. Why had Manchuria become such a hot property? As any real estate agent will say, it’s “location, location, and location.” For Russia, its imperial gaze followed the ambitions of Tsar Nicholas II and Finance Minister Sergei Witte, who wanted …
Posted in: Asian History
Posted by: Mike Klein
(The title of this post is a satirical improvisation on a quote attributed to Horace Greeley, editor of the New York Tribune, when expressing his views towards the westward expansion of the United States.) Somewhere between China’s Heilongjiang Province (Manchuria) and the Russian Far East, nestled in a southern crook of Siberia’s Amur River, lies …
Posted in: Asian History
Posted by: Cynthia Smith
This post focuses on three decorative 19th century fans from the collections of the Geography and Map Division. The art of Asian fan making dates to ancient times. According to Gonglin Qian, author of Chinese Fans: Artistry and Aesthetics the earliest Chinese fan that has been found dates from 475 to 221 BC. It was …
Posted in: 19th century cartography, Asian History
Posted by: Cynthia Smith
The Greek explorer and historian Megasthenes wrote that Taprobana was divided by a river and abundant in pearls and gold. Taprobana was located somewhere in the Indian Ocean and usually shown on historical maps as a large island south of India. There have been many theories about the identity of the island. Some thought Taprobana …
Posted in: 16th century cartography, Asian History
Posted by: Ryan Moore
Over the years of this writer’s service at the Library of Congress, veterans and their families have sent me questions about maps that show the locations of U.S. forces in Thailand during the Vietnam War. Chief among the reasons that they have sought this information is because some American personnel were exposed to Agent Orange …
Posted in: Asian History, Military History
Posted by: Cynthia Smith
Letts’s bird’s eye view of the approaches to India by W.H. Payne was published in London during the early 1900s. Letts, Son & Co. sold stationary, maps and diaries, among them is this striking panoramic view that depicts Russian territory in the north marked with a red dotted line along the Amu Darya River. Mountain ranges, the …
Posted in: Asian History, Borders