In the 16th edition of the Cultural Affairs Bureau of the Macao S.A.R. Government Academic Research Grant Programme, amongst the applications received between 1 December, 2013 and 31 May, 2014, the evaluation panel has selected the project Between India and China: Ptolemy and The Making of an Asia World Region: A Modern Cosmology, by Australian scholar Geoffrey C Gunn, professor emeritus of International Relations at Nagasaki University, visiting professor at University of Macao, PhD candidates’ supervisor, and a specialist in the International Relations of East and Southeast Asia.
This research project belongs to the field of Metageography, a subdiscipline which is now treated with renewed interest, and seeks to discuss the disintegration of the Ptolemaic geographic model and the development of modern Cartography. Based on two concepts of that model, namely “India intra Gangem” and “India extra Gangem”, the first goal of the research is to highlight Ptolemaic Geography’s representations of Asia and its transmission and reception in the context of late Middle Ages’ European thought. As a second goal, the monograph will analyze how the Age of Maritime Discovery and its new understanding of the Asian region contributed to the slow dismemberment of the Ptolemaic model. Through selected case studies (India, Southeast Asia, China, Oceania), the third goal of this work involves describing the modifications and corrections introduced into Geography and Cartography by the Scientific Revolution. Hence, this project is particularly important for revealing how part of modern European Geography has been constructed, and also for pointing out reasons for the survival of such a new model, even after the age of decolonization, which means that it continues to determine geographic knowledge in the contemporary world.
The Cultural Affairs Bureau Academic Research Grants are aimed at supporting academic research projects in the field of Humanities that make a significant and original contribution to the understanding of Macao, or of Macao’s role in the cultural interchange between East and West.
For more information on the Cultural Affairs Bureau Academic Research Grants Programme, please visit the Cultural Affairs Bureau’s website: www.icm.gov.mo