In 1602, Matteo Ricci (利瑪竇), Jesuit cartographer to the court of the Wan Li (萬曆) Emperor, traced out a great map of the entire world (坤輿萬國全圖) on which he noted that the domain of the “Great Ming” stretched from “the 42nd parallel in the North to the 15th in the South” (自十五度至四十二度). Far south of the 15th latitude, Fr. Matteo’s map marked a seafaring region well-known to Arabs and Europeans, the “Sands 10,000 miles long” (萬里長沙). That very portion of the South China Sea has been known to modern seamen for over a hundred years as the “Dangerous Ground” wherein much of this essay is set.
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