Mr Selden's Map of China

Timothy Brook, Mr Selden's map of China: the Spice Trade, a Lost Chart, and the South China Sea. London: Profile Books, 2015

Paperback, 211 pages, plates.

Fine condition.

'In the 1650s, a vast and unusual map of China was bequeathed to the Bodleian Library, Oxford by John Selden, a lawyer, political activist, jailed member of Parliament and the city's first Oriental scholar. When Timothy Brook came across it in 2009, he realised he had stumbled across an exceptional artefact, so unsettlingly modern-looking that it could almost be a forgery. But it was genuine, and what it has to tell us is remarkable. It shows China, not cut off from the world, but a participant in the embryonic networks of global trade that fuelled the rise of Europe - and which now powers China's ascent.'