1899 · China and the East Indies

This map shows how China, the East Indies, and the surrounding maritime zones were represented within Western publishing and commercial geography at the end of the nineteenth century. Ports, sea routes, and regional names make visible the spaces where commercial and geopolitical interests of the period were concentrated.

The map does not fully describe China or the societies of the region through their own internal dynamics. It reflects, rather, an external world-trade and imperial perspective. In the OWS Atlas, the map therefore serves less to answer what the region “was” than to examine how global powers mapped it.