Wei Yuan's Illustrated Treatise on the Maritime Kingdoms

Wei Yuan compiled this geography in 50 chapters in 1844, then expanded it to 60 in 1847 and 100 in 1852. It draws on Western geographical works in Chinese translation, Chinese travel accounts and official records to describe the world beyond China, including Russia, Siberia, Central Asia and Europe, with maps. The copy is a Peking University Library print in 42 volumes, probably the 100 chapter edition of 1852. The atlas holds only a poor-quality machine reading (OCR) of this scan, and no passages were selected or read for this guide.

How they knew

Compiled from others

Who “Tartar” means here

Not recorded. The card says the work mapped Tartar regions using both Chinese and translated European sources, so it may echo European Tartary geography, but the actual wording is not recorded.

Why read it

It shows how a Chinese scholar of the 1840s combined Chinese and translated Western sources to picture Russia and Inner Asia.

Watch out

If the copy is the 1852 edition it postdates the 1850 limit of this guide by two years, though the Russia chapters draw on the earlier editions. The title page should be checked.