Finely colored example of Jean Baptiste Bourguignon D'Anville's map of the former Chinese province of Peking, which includes the modern-day cities of Beijing and Tianjin, and the province of Hebei. Importantly, it is the first accurate map of the region.

The present map was issued as part of D'Anville's Nouvel Atlas De La Chine, published in The Hague in 1737. This important work comprised 42 new maps of Chinese provinces based on the groundbreaking survey of China conducted by French Jesuits from 1708 to 1716, done by the order of the Kangxi Emperor. In many cases, these maps were the first truly modern, or accurate, general maps of the provinces of China.

The present map has the distinction of being the first map to accurately depict the region surrounding Beijing. Beijing, which had been the sole capital of China since the rise of the Qing Dynasty in 1644, is labeled by its archaic European name, 'Peking' and is located in the upper portion of the map. The Great Wall of China is shown to wend its way to the north, marking the boundary between the 'civilized' part of the empire and Mongolia and Manchuria.

D'Anville first issued this map to accompany Pere J.B. Du Halde's highly influential Description Geographique, Historique, Chronologique, Et Physique De L'Empire De La Chine (Paris, 1735). The map is prominently adorned with an elaborate chinoiserie cartouche featuring dragons and peacock feathers.

Jean Baptiste Bourguignon D'Anville (1697-1782) was the French royal cartographer who famously acquired the largest private map collection of his era, which formed the basis of the Bibliothèque nationale's cartography holdings. He employed his close collections to the Society of Jesus to gain early access to manuscript copies of the Kangxi-Jesuit surveys, which formed the basis of his maps of China.