Item #5886 Atlas postal de Chine. Postal Atlas of China. China Postal Album Showing the Postal Establishments and Postal Routes in Each Province. Charles JACOT-GUILLARMOD.
Atlas postal de Chine. Postal Atlas of China. China Postal Album Showing the Postal Establishments and Postal Routes in Each Province
Atlas postal de Chine. Postal Atlas of China. China Postal Album Showing the Postal Establishments and Postal Routes in Each Province
Atlas postal de Chine. Postal Atlas of China. China Postal Album Showing the Postal Establishments and Postal Routes in Each Province
Atlas postal de Chine. Postal Atlas of China. China Postal Album Showing the Postal Establishments and Postal Routes in Each Province
Deluxe Postal Atlas of China (1919)
With 47 Lithograph Maps
[China] / [Atlas].
Peking, Directorate General of Posts, 1919.

Atlas postal de Chine. Postal Atlas of China. China Postal Album Showing the Postal Establishments and Postal Routes in Each Province.

Elephant folio [61.7 x 38. 2 cm], (3) ff., (1) double-page lithograph index map and 46 lithograph province maps (36 of which are double page), 12 pp. index. Bound in original publisher’s buckram, title in French, Chinese and English embossed on upper cover. Minor rubbing and edge wear to spine and boards. Internally very well preserved, with colors still fresh and vibrant.

Rare 1919 (second) edition of the official Chinese Postal Atlas, an impressive volume considerably expanded from the 1908 edition to include 47 lithograph maps (37 of which are double page) covering all Chinese provinces in great detail. The publication of the album was closely related to the rise of ‘Postal Romanization,’ a system of transliterating Chinese place names developed by the Imperial Post Office of China in the early 1900s. Charles Jacot-Guillarmod (1868-1925), a Swiss topographical engineer, was tasked with compiling the maps from regional working maps provided to him.

The brief preface to the album – printed in Chinese, English, and French – explains the history of the atlas and its contemporary availability and thus is worth quoting in full: “The first Postal Working Map [a wall map], comprising the whole of China, and showing all postal establishments and lines, was issued in 1903 for the use of the Postal Service. In 1908, postal lines having reached such a state of development that it was no longer possible to include all in a Wall Map, a postal Atlas of 22 maps, each corresponding to a Province (Manchuria counting 3) and 1 index map, was issued for the use of the Postal Service. The postal atlas now issued [1919] is therefore the Second Edition. It is again primarily for the Postal Service but, since it contains information that may prove useful to the general public, a limited number in excess of Service requirements has been produced and will be on sale at the District Head Post Offices. The set of 47 maps – including the Index Map – was prepared for the Postal Administration by Monsieur Jacot Guillarmod, Ingénieur-Topographe, from data supplied to him, largely from the Postal District Working Maps. The lithographing and printing of the maps and the production of the Atlas are the work of the Government Bureau of Engraving and Printing, Peking. The Index of Places gives the approximate Latitude and Longitude of all Postal Establishments included in the Atlas.”

‘Postal Romanization’ was widely in use until the 1980s, when it was generally replaced by Hanyu Pinyin. During Postal Romanization traditional spellings were retained for major cities and other places that already had widely accepted European names. For other place names, spellings could reflect local pronunciation, Nanjing pronunciation, or Beijing pronunciation. Although pronunciation-based arguments were made for each option, using postal romanization to determine any form of Chinese pronunciation was limited by the fact that the system dropped all dashes, diacritics, and apostrophes, to facilitate telegraphic transmission.

Charles Jacot-Guillarmod worked for the Swiss Federal Topographical Bureau from 1890 to 1914 and contributed to the Topographical Atlas of Switzerland. He was especially known for high-altitude cartography, producing two topographical maps of the Himalayan mountains K2 and Kanchenjunga.

From 1916 to 1922 Jacot-Guillarmod taught geodesy and topography at the Chinese Army Survey School in Beijing. It was during this period that he was contracted to compile the 1919 China Postal Atlas. He later produced a topographic map of Mount Olympus and later a map of Mount Everest commissioned by the Royal Geographical Society, London.

There were four iterations of the China Postal Atlas: The 1908 (Shanghai, replacing the 1903 wall map and containing 21 maps plus index map), the present 1919 (Peking, 47 maps), the 1933 (Nanjing), and 1936 (Nanjing).

* M. Evard, “Charles Jacot-Guillarmod, cartographe (1868-1925),” Biographies neuchâteloises (2001), pp. 205-209; H.-U. Feldmann, “Der Topograph Charles Jacot-Guillarmod (1868-1925): einer der Pioniere der Schweizer Feldsdarstellung,” Cartographica Helvetica (2005), pp. 3-13; L. J. Harris, “A ‘Lasting Boon to All’: A Note on the Postal Romanization of Place Names, 1896–1949,” Twentieth-Century China, vol. 34, no. 1 (2009), pp. 96-109.

 

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