[ISHMap-List] Sixth Imago Mundi Prize Awarded

[Tony Campbell]

Sixth/Imago Mundi/ Prize Awarded

The Directors of Imago Mundi Ltd are delighted to announce that the 
sixth /Imago Mundi/ Prize has been awarded to Robert Batchelor for ‘The 
Selden Map Rediscovered: A Chinese Map of the East Asian Shipping 
Routes, /c./1619’, which appeared in /Imago Mundi/ 65:1 (2013): 
37‒63.Robert Batchelor is an associate professor of history at Georgia 
Southern University.

This is the first scholarly article on what seems to be a unique type of 
map: a Chinese nautical chart with shipping routes, made for a private 
individual. The analysis of provenance, content, Chinese and Western 
sources, and background richly and amply demonstrates the importance of 
the map, especially as regards its depiction of ‘the economic dynamism 
of seventeenth-century East Asia’ and the cross-cultural exchanges with 
Europe. The possible connections of the map to the Chinese merchant Li 
Dan (suggested as the person for whom the map was made) and to the 
chartmaker Gabriel Tatton and the English ship /Elizabeth/are 
convincingly established, and the suggested link to contemporary 
theories of the ‘law of the sea’ (Hugo Grotius and John**Selden) is 
intriguing. Technical aspects, such as the construction**of the compass 
rose, scale-bar and route-line network,are well explained and the use of 
a wide range of sources, published and archival, including many in 
Chinese, are impressive.

The prize is offered every two years. This award covers volumes 65 
(2013) and 66 (2014). The winning article is the one judged ‘to have 
made the most significant contribution to the discipline’. Only 
full-length articles, which are automatically subjected to the 
(anonymous) external refereeing process before acceptance for 
publication, are eligible for the prize.

The prize is $1000.00 and qualifies the recipient for a J. B. Harley 
Travel Award to the biennial International Conference on the History of 
Cartography (Antwerp, 12‒17 July 2015).

The Imago Mundi Prize is generously sponsored by Kenneth Nebenzahl.

By courtesy of our publishers, Routledge Journals (Taylor & Francis), 
Robert Batchelor’s article is being made available free of charge at 
www.tandfonline.com/imagomundi (select ‘About this journal’, ‘Featured 
articles’).

Tony Campbell

Chairman, Imago Mundi Ltd

27 April 2015