Fun with maps, again

Posted on 4/21/2005 by Curzon

Click here for the full-sized map.

Notice how the Manchu ethnic group is missing and how the Uyghurs and Kazakhs are just called “Turkic” peoples.

About Curzon

Lord George Nathaniel Curzon (1859 - 1925) entered the British House of Commons as a Conservative MP in 1886, where he served as undersecretary of India and Foreign Affairs. He was appointed Viceroy of India at the turn of the 20th century where he delineated the North West Frontier Province, ordered a military expedition to Tibet, and unsuccessfully tried to partition the province of Bengal during his six-year tenure. Curzon served as Leader of the House of Lords in Prime Minister Lloyd George's War Cabinet and became Foreign Secretary in January 1919, where his most famous act was the drawing of the Curzon Line between a new Polish state and Russia. His publications include Russia in Central Asia (1889) and Persia and the Persian Question (1892). In real life, "Curzon" is a US citizen from the East Coast who has been a financial analyst, freelance translator, and university professor; he is currently on assignment in Tokyo.
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17 Responses to Fun with maps, again

  1. Dan says:
    4/21/2005 at 1:25 pm

    Nice.

    Any such maps of Iran?

  2. Alexander Browne says:
    4/21/2005 at 2:08 pm

    “Tungusic” includes Manchu, as “Turkic” includes Uyghur and Kazakh.

  3. Dan says:
    4/21/2005 at 3:09 pm

    From the Travel China Guide

    Manchu has its own language and letters, which belong to the Manchu-Tungusic group of the Altaic language family. Manchu letters were created in the 16th century on the base of Mongolian letters. With more and more Manchus settling in the Central Plains since the Qing Dynasty, the economic and cultural exchange between Hans and Manchus became more and more frequent and the Manchus gradually adopted the Han language.

    Perhaps many Manchu are included in Han in this “ethnolinguistic” map.

  4. Alexander Browne says:
    4/21/2005 at 4:26 pm

    Perhaps many Manchu are included in Han in this “ethnolinguistic”Â? map.

    Yeah, I bet most are, and the few who still speak Manchu (about 60 according to Ethnologue, of an ethnic population of almost 2M) plus the Xibe fall under “Tungusic”.

  5. Nathan says:
    4/21/2005 at 4:56 pm

    Where’d you pick this up? I was all ready to be ticked off, but corners are often cut in these kinds of things, and I’m happy that Han at least doesn’t show up in East Turkestan.

  6. mark safranski says:
    4/22/2005 at 1:04 am

    Alex is correct. Tungusic covers the Manchus. The Tungusic dynasties include the *Sung* as well as the *Q’ing*.

    Great book for the enthnolinguistic history of the region – _Empire of the Steppes: A History of Central Asia_ by Grousset. A classic.

  7. Curzon says:
    4/22/2005 at 1:55 am

    But is Manchuria part of… Central Asia??

    Thanks to Alex for pointing out the Ethnologue reference. Good stuff to know, I’ve been educated.

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  9. Jing says:
    4/22/2005 at 4:33 am

    While the regions marked are technically accurate, it should be noted that in almost all areas where non-Chinese languages exist, they are the minority. The places where Korean is spoken is a good example of this. Although there are a number of state-created Korean autonomous regions in Jilin province, the qualifications for such a administrative designation are quite low. Even the most populous of them, Yanbian, is slightly less than 40% ethnic Korean with other prefectures falling bellow 20%. Xinjiang mayb be marked as purely turkic speaking, yet Uighur is no longer the dominant language or even ethnicity in the region. The demographics used to construct the map are maybe 50-100 years out of date. It is more accurately as an historical ethnolinguistic map.

  10. Mutantfrog says:
    4/22/2005 at 4:35 am

    Manchuria is not part of Central Asia, but it is part of what the history books term Inner Asia.
    And yes, Tungusic includes Manchu, which is itself basically a dead language. Korean is also often considered part of the Tungusic group, and sometimes Japanese as well.

  11. Curzon says:
    4/22/2005 at 4:42 am

    Thanks for that clarification of Han Chinese cultural imperialism, Jing. I did indeed hear from the horses’s mouth the bitterness some Uyghurs feel towards Han China during my visit to Xinjiang two years ago.

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  14. sun bin says:
    9/30/2005 at 7:04 pm

    manchu is not central asia, it is in northeast asia (north of korea). the areas shaded with tungustic are mainly other ethnic group such or Oroqen/orochon and Evenks (see wiki, http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_Chinese_ethnic_groups). lingusitically and perhaps genetically related to manchus, but they are hunters and normads. (that is why the language was preserved, while manchurian was not)

    the manchu people are scattered among hans in beijing and the area northeast of beijing. they could have indicates tiny dots, but it would be so tiny that they are invisible in the maps.

    as for han people in minority dominated areas, they mostly concentrate in urban areas (e.g. urumqi in xinjiang), so they shouldn’t affect the colors of the maps too much, i think.
    so in repsonse to Jing’s comment, it is true that his statistics are probably correct. but the map colors are not too outdated (it probably represents what it is some 20-50 years ago in terms of stats, most have changed in highly populated cities, but not too much has changed in the mountains/villages)

    i have been to some of these areas, include northwest, and northeast bordering korea. one of the reasons that many opted for minority status is because of tax benefits etc. so you can imagine a han dominated county declaring to be korean so that they have better tax benefits, and also a children of han and uighur cross-marriage declaring himself to be uighur.

    bearing these subtleties in mind, the map is still pretty illustrative.

  15. sun bin says:
    9/30/2005 at 7:07 pm

    …those little circles in mongolia and xinjiang are the urban han clusters i was referring to above

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  17. DarwinK says:
    11/2/2005 at 11:51 pm

    There seems to be a stunning constrast between Han Chinese “cultural imperialism” and English imperialism. The Manchus conquered China only to be overtaken by Han culture eventually as a result of assimilation. The European colonists conquered the Americas and the English/Spanish language prevailed by physically wiping out a large chunk of the native population.