Historical Atlas of China (1982)

Historical Atlas of China

The Historical Atlas of China, printed in 1996
Country	China
Language	Chinese
Genre	Atlas, History
Publisher	China Cartographic Publishing House
Publication date	1982–88
Media type	Print

The Historical Atlas of China (traditional Chinese: 中國歷史地圖集; simplified Chinese: 中国历史地图集; pinyin: Zhōngguó lìshǐ dìtú jí) is an 8-volume work published in Beijing between 1982 and 1988, edited by Tan Qixiang. It contains 304 maps and 70,000 placenames in total. The Concise Historical Atlas of China (Chinese: 简明中国歷史地图集; pinyin: Jiǎnmíng Zhōngguó lìshǐ dìtú jí) was published in 1991.

The atlas consists of 8 volumes:

On each map, ancient places and water features are shown in black and blue respectively, superimposed on modern features, borders and claims, shown in brown. All country-wide maps, from Paleolithic onward, include an inset showing the Nine-Dash Line in the South China Sea. Placenames are given in simplified characters, though an edition of the atlas published in Hong Kong uses traditional characters.

The Atlas is considered the most authoritative compendium of ancient placenames and administrative boundaries, and a tremendous improvement on its predecessor, the Yangtu (1906–1911). However, more controversial has been Tan's historical conception:

When the Qing dynasty had succeeded in unifying the country by the 1750s [...] the historical development of several millennia towards establishing China's territorial extent had been completed. All those nationalities which have lived within that territory are historically Chinese nationalities, and all the political entities established by these nationalities are historical parts of China.

This vision has been criticized as anachronistically projecting 20th-century minority policy and border claims into the distant past, resulting in a distorted view of the history of peripheral areas, portraying their incorporation into China as an inevitable organic process, rather than the result of conquest. Similarly, early states are often given overly precise and extensive outer borders, often based on contentious claims. In his afterword to volume 8, written in 1987, Tan regretted expanding the borders of Chinese empires to encompass jimi and tusi regimes.