Written after China's defeat in the First Opium War, it grew out of
四洲志, a survey of the world that
林则徐 had had translated from English. The first edition of 1843 had 50 scrolls and was enlarged to 100 by 1852, with maps and chapters on Western countries, ships and guns. Little heeded at home at first, it was reprinted in Japan in the 1850s and read by the reformers of the late Edo period.
