Attractive early twentieth century atlas showing the provinces of China. The index has some 10,000 entries. Both the maps and index are bi-lingual.

'Like the system of postal romanization that this map uses for transliteration of Chinese names, the work is both a product and a tool of Western commercial and political expansion into China. Around 1917 the editors compiled the map, probably with the assistance of unnamed Chinese collaborators, under the auspices of the Far Eastern Geographic Establishment, Shanghai. This institution, which operated from 1915 to 1929, was one of the many organisations run by foreign sojourners who flocked to Shanghai in search of profit and adventure after the First Opium War and the designation of the city as a treaty port in 1843. Dingle, who was an Englishman by birth and a journalist by profession, [used some of the same maps] in the New Atlas and Commercial Gazetteer of China. Although at least one reviewer criticized this volume for not including information on the physical geography of China, Dingle and Fruin's primary concerns were not those of academic cartographers but rather those of expatriate businessmen' (All Under Heaven).

Dingle was an interesting character who later emigrated to the United States using the Chinese name Ding Le Mei, and using his experiences in a Tibetan monastery, developed a form of Yoga called the Science of Mentalphysics and set up a teaching and retreat centre in Joshua Tree, California.



Folio (53 x 39.5 cm), iv, 42 pp., 24 coloured maps (10 double-page), publishers brown half morocco over printed boards, covers lightly stained, 7 maps with small loss to blank upper margin only, a very good copy.

All under Heaven 16.