A Glimmer of Globalization

But we have got there, to the origin of the map—well, more or less. With an unsigned and undated document such as ours, this is not a bad showing,” Timothy Brook concludes with great understatement near the end of his intriguing new book, Mr. Selden’s Map of China: Decoding the Secrets of a Vanished Cartographer. Not a bad showing indeed, and a marvellously meandering and illuminating journey through the seemingly disparate worlds of 17th-century Europe and East Asia, through the politics, economics and history of these regions, the history of cartography, and the foundations of international law and the law of the sea, complete with a gallery of unusual characters. This is my favourite sort of book, one that begins with the specific and progresses to the general and universal, transcending merely technical information to become something that is greater than the sum of its parts.

We do eventually get to the promised solution of the cartographer’s likely...