In the Shadow of Cathay: A Survey of European Encounters in Discerning, Mapping, and Exploring Tibet during the Sixteenth and Seventeenth Centuries

Abstract

This article aims to review the European literature and other extant sources of information pertaining to Tibet in the early modern period. Tibet was not only somewhat unknown to Europeans, but it was also usually associated with Cathay, both believed to be home to Christian communities. This survey explores the process by which, for some Europeans in the late sixteenth and seventeenth centuries, Tibet gradually started to emerge as a distinct land, from their hazy geographical knowledge and cartographic representations of central Asia, and out of the shadow of Cathay.