{
  "author": "ChronologiaOS editorial guides",
  "date": "2026-10-09",
  "department": "Maps & Geography",
  "department_id": "MAPS",
  "epistemic_label": "Source guide",
  "epistemic_status": "SOURCE_GUIDE",
  "period": "1603\u20131739 CE",
  "place": "Northern and Central Asia on European maps",
  "public_sources": [
    {
      "publisher": "Library of Congress",
      "title": "Tartariae sive Magni Chami Regni typus",
      "type": "Library map record",
      "url": "https://www.loc.gov/item/83690086/"
    },
    {
      "publisher": "Library of Congress",
      "title": "Carte de Tartarie",
      "type": "Library map record",
      "url": "https://www.loc.gov/item/99446168/"
    },
    {
      "publisher": "Library of Congress",
      "title": "Carte generale d'Empire de Russie et de Tartarie grande et petite en Europe et Asie",
      "type": "Library map record",
      "url": "https://www.loc.gov/item/2018694015/"
    }
  ],
  "publication_state": "PUBLIC",
  "read_time": "3 min read",
  "sections": [
    {
      "body": "The Library of Congress catalogues a 1603 edition of Ortelius's map Tartariae sive Magni Chami Regni typus, covering northern Asia. The research record transcribes the label Tartaria as a geographic term and notes that catalogue metadata establishes the map's identity and terminology, not political semantics.",
      "heading": "Start with Ortelius",
      "source": 0
    },
    {
      "body": "Guillaume de L'Isle's Carte de Tartarie of 1706, also in the Library of Congress, repeats the label across Siberia and northern Asia. The record marks the map-level meaning and boundaries as still to be analyzed against contemporary geographic writing.",
      "heading": "A century later",
      "source": 1
    },
    {
      "body": "A 1739 general map of the Russian Empire and of Great and Lesser Tartary in Europe and Asia separates the two terms in its very title. The record reads this as evidence about historical cartographic terminology, not by itself evidence of a state structure.",
      "heading": "Empire and region in one title",
      "source": 2
    },
    {
      "body": "Label presence alone is not evidence of centralized sovereignty, the record says. What other sources, administrative, diplomatic, or travel accounts, would you need before reading a regional name as a political claim?",
      "heading": "A question to carry forward"
    }
  ],
  "short_title": "Does a name on a map prove a state?",
  "slug": "tartary-on-the-map-what-a-label-can-and-cannot-tell-you",
  "summary": "Three maps in the Library of Congress carry the label Tartary across northern Asia. Learn how a research record transcribes a map label without turning it into evidence of a political empire.",
  "tags": [
    "Tartary",
    "Historical maps",
    "Ortelius",
    "Cartography",
    "Library of Congress"
  ],
  "title": "Tartary on the map: what a label can and cannot tell you."
}