Which 19th-century maps mention Tartary and what did they mean?
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Executive summary
Nineteenth‑century European and American maps continued to label large parts of northern and central Asia as “Tartary” or “Tartaria,” often stretching from the Caspian or Ural region across Siberia toward the Pacific; well‑known 19th‑century examples include John Thomson’s 1814 map and mid‑century “Independent Tartary” maps used in atlases [1] [2] [3]. The term functioned as a broad, often vague umbrella for lands inhabited by Turkic and Mongol peoples and for territories that European geographers still understood imperfectly; Library of Congress and cartographic dealers show that use persisted into the late 1800s even as new labels like “Siberia,” “Manchuria,” and “Central Asia” displaced it [4] [5] [3].
1. A lingering label on modernizing atlases
Mapmakers kept “Tartary” on maps well into the 19th century: engraved atlas plates such as Thomson’s 1814 “Tartary” portrayed a contiguous region reaching from the Caspian to the Pacific, and commercial atlas producers issued decorative “Independent Tartary” plates in the 1850s [1] [2] [6]. These 19th‑century products show that, for European map consumers, Tartary remained a usable shorthand even as cartography became more scientific [3] [1].
2. What mapmakers meant by “Tartary”
Cartographic sources tied Tartary to a vast swath of northern and central Asia — bounded in various treatments by the Caspian Sea and Urals on the west and the Pacific on the east — and frequently conflated different peoples and polities under the label [5] [7] [3]. Dealers and collectors describe the region on 19th‑century maps as “the land inhabited by Turkic and Mongol peoples” and as extending over Central Asia, Siberia, parts of China, and sometimes to Japan and Southeast Asia in older conceptions [3] [6] [8].
3. Continuity with earlier cartographic traditions
19th‑century Tartary maps descend from a long European mapping tradition: Ortelius, Mercator, Hondius and others already used Tartary from the 16th and 17th centuries to denote a huge “Tartar kingdom,” and 19th‑century engravers often reused or updated those templates rather than inventing new borders from scratch [9] [7] [10]. Institutional collections like the Library of Congress trace the toponym’s persistence from medieval and Ptolemaic sources to late‑modern atlases [4] [11].
4. A catchall born of ignorance and empire
Contemporary scholars and map dealers emphasize that “Tartary” was a Eurocentric catchall, applied where European knowledge was fragmentary; the term rarely reflected indigenous political reality and often masked the diversity of polities and peoples across Inner Asia [4] [5]. As explorers, Jesuit missionaries, and Russian expansionism produced better ethnographic and geographic data, labels such as Manchuria, Siberia, and “Central Asia” gradually replaced the old umbrella term [5].
5. How 19th‑century uses differed from older maps
While early modern maps sometimes placed fanciful features (straits to America, Korea as an island) within Tartary, 19th‑century cartography typically emphasized more detail and local accuracy; Thomson and other 19th‑century cartographers produced large, data‑rich plates that still used the old name but with finer topography and place‑names [9] [1] [6]. Dealers note that 19th‑century English cartography moved away from decorative map art toward accuracy while retaining regional labels familiar to readers [3] [2].
6. Examples you can consult and what they show
Key 19th‑century examples available in public and commercial archives include John Thomson’s 1814 map labeled “Tartary” that spans Central and East Asia [1] [12], mid‑century Tallis/Rapkin “Independent Tartary” plates [2], and commercial listings and images of large‑format Tartary maps that explicitly extend from the Caspian to Japan and the Pacific [3] [6]. Wikimedia and museum categories list numerous 19th‑century Tartary maps and group them with 18th‑century examples for comparison [13] [14].
7. Limitations and competing interpretations in the sources
Sources agree that Tartary was a broad, imprecise term, but differ in emphasis: institutional scholarship (Library of Congress) frames Tartary as an enigmatic toponym whose usage faded only in the late 19th century [4], while commercial map descriptions stress the continuity and geographic extent of particular 19th‑century plates [1] [3]. Available sources do not mention precise end‑dates when individual mapmakers stopped using the term or list every 19th‑century plate that bears it; for full cataloguing, consult the specific atlas holdings cited above [13] [14].
If you want, I can pull specific image links or transcribe the legends from the Thomson 1814 plate, the Tallis “Independent Tartary” sheet, or representative Ortelius and Hondius precursors cited here [1] [2] [9] [7].