3. Juan Cobo’s Map of the Pacific World (1593)

Abstract

Juan Cobo (1546/47–1592) was a Dominican priest who devoted most of his efforts in the Philippines to proselytizing the resident Chinese population of Manila and its environs. This map of the Pacific world from China to Mexico appears in a translation of an influential piece of Counter- Reformation apologetics that Cobo prepared with the help, most likely, of unnamed Chinese collaborators, and that he had published in Manila in 1593 for the benefit of Chinese prospects for Christian conversion. It is the first European-style map created for a Chinese reader. Timothy Brook provides an English translation of the map’s Chinese inscriptions, while Ricardo Padrón analyzes the map’s rhetorical position.