Illustrated Treatise on the Maritime Kingdoms
Title page written using seal script
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| Author | Wei Yuan and others |
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| Original title | 海國圖志 Hǎiguó Túzhì |
| Country | China |
| Published | 1843 |
The Illustrated Treatise on the Maritime Kingdoms, or Haiguo Tuzhi, is a 19th-century Chinese gazetteer compiled by scholar-official Wei Yuan and others, based on initial research carried out by Special Imperial Commissioner Lin Zexu. The Treatise is regarded as the first significant Chinese work on the West and one of China's initial responses to the Anglo-Chinese First Opium War (1839–1842). Eventually stretching to one hundred juan, or scrolls, the treatise contains numerous maps and much geographical detail covering both the western and eastern hemispheres. Wei's book also garnered significant interest in Japan and helped mould the country's foreign policy with respect to the West.
During his term in Canton (now Guangzhou) as Special Imperial Commissioner, Lin Zexu observed the might of British naval power and the inadequacies of the Chinese coastal defence system at first hand. Along with other intellectuals of the time, Lin's objective was "to determine the source and nature of Western power in Asia and to discover Western objectives in East Asia." The commissioner hired four Chinese translators who had been trained by missionaries to assist with the task of obtaining and translating appropriate western texts. One of them, Liang Jinde (梁進得), an assistant to missionary Elijah Coleman Bridgman, provided copies of The Chinese Repository and other works. Lin also purchased a copy of the 1834 Encyclopedia of Geography by Hugh Murray from the American Board of Commissioners for Foreign Missions, which Liang translated to become the draft for Lin's own Geography of the Four Continents (四洲志). However, before the book could be published, the First Opium War broke out in 1839 and the project was shelved. When the war ended in 1842, Lin's exile to the remote northwestern city of Yili meant that he passed his draft manuscript to Wei Yuan with a request that he complete it. Lin's contributions to the treatise proved so important that Karl Gützlaff mistakenly attributed the work to him in his September 1847 review for the Chinese Repository.
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