Sven Hedin Maps Tibet
Overview
At the beginning of the nineteenth century approximately four-fifths of the land area in the world was still virtually unknown to the Western world. In particular, there was very little knowledge about central and eastern Asia. Between 1893-1933 Swedish geographer and explorer Sven Hedin (1865-1952) made four expeditions to central Asia to gather geographic and other scientific information. During the third expedition between 1906-08 Hedin explored and mapped large tracts of previously uncharted territory in central Asia and the Himalayas. He was able to trace the Indus, Brahmaputra, and Sutlej rivers to their source as well as discover and map the Kailas mountain range. This expedition made a significant contribution to our knowledge and the geography of Tibet and central Asia.
Background
In a previous expedition into Tibet, Hedin had disguised himself as a Mongol. Hiring a Tibetan monk as an interpreter, he had led a large and well-equipped caravan across Tibet, which in the nineteenth century was officially off limits to foreigners. Jesuit missionaries had visited Lhasa, the capital city, in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries, but otherwise almost no Westerners had traveled in Tibet. Nominally under Chinese rule, the Tibetans were very much in control of who came into this remote place.
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