Timothy Jay Schwab who is The God Culture believes the Lequios Islands are the Island of Luzon and the surrounding northern Philippines including the Babuyanes and Batanes Islands. He says the Jesuits craftily altered maps to hide the fact by moving Lequios north until they became the Ryukyu Islands. This theory is based largely on Spanish Document 98 which says the Lequios Islands are to the east of China and are Ophir and Tarshish. Tim believes the Philippines is Ophir and Tarshish therefore the Lequios Islands must be the Philippines. All of that is unhistorical, conspiratorial conjecture. The real history of how the Lequios Islands became the Ryukyu Islands is not that complicated.
The Ryukyu Kingdom: Cornerstone of East Asia provides us with a coherent timeline of how Lequios became Ryukyu.
The first mention of these islands is in Chinese records as Liuqui and dates to 636 AD.
The first mention of the kingdom in written records appears in the “Account of the Liuqiu Kingdom” in the Book of Sui (Suí shū, 636 CE), published during the Tang dynasty. It records that in 607 CE, Emperor Yang of the Sui dynasty sent Zhū Kuān on an expedition to Ryukyu, and Zhū Kuān returned with captives in tow. The next year, Zhū Kuān was dispatched once again, but only to return the armor the Ryukyuans had worn.
The Ryukyu Kingdom: Cornerstone of East Asia, pg. 23
After the Liuqiu Islands joined the tributary system of China, the island known today as Okinanwa was marked “Greater Liuqiu” while Taiwan was labelled “Little Liuqiu" on maps.
After Ryukyu had joined the tributary system, it appears marked as “Greater Liuqiu” [大瑠球] on the Map of the Land of Liuqiu [琉球国図, Ch. Liúqiúguótú] in Liúqiú túshūo [琉球図説, J. Ryukyu zusetsu, Maps of Ryukyu, mid- sixteenth century] by a Ming-period geographer named Zhèng Rùocéng [1503–1570]. On the lower left of the map, the much larger Taiwan is labeled “Little Liuqiu” [小瑠球]. During and after the Tang dynasty, the name Liúqiú (sometimes written with other characters such as 琉求 and 瑠求) was often applied to a wide region that included the island of Taiwan. However, once the Chūzan king joined the Ming tribute system, it became the name of the kingdom based on the island of Okinawa. On maps, what is now the island of Okinawa was clearly labeled Liúqiú Guó [琉球国, J. Ryukyu koku, Land of Ryukyu].
The Ryukyu Kingdom: Cornerstone of East Asia, pg. 23
Note that "the name Liúqiú was often applied to a wide region that included the island of Taiwan." That does not include Luzon or any region of the Philippines.
Ryukyu is the Japanese form of Liuqiu.
Indeed, the name "Ryukyu" is simply the Japanese form of Liúqiú. Early modern Chinese sources also specifically called Okinawa (the largest of the Ryukyus) as "Greater Liuqiu" and Taiwan Island as the "Lesser Liuqiu".
Lequios is the European form of the Chinese Liuqiu. Portuguese explorers also called Ryukyuans Gores which is derived from Arabic.
The Kitab al-Fawa'id fi Usul 'Ilm al-Bahr wa 'l-Qawa'id (circa 1490) by the Arab navigator Ahmad ibn Mājid is the first known source outside the Sinosphere that mentions Ryūkyū. According to the Arabic book, Likīwū was a Jawi name for an island called al-Ghūr (الغور). Its association with iron, iron blades, and an antagonism toward China points to mainland Japan, rather than to Okinawa Island, however. In the Minhaj al-Fahir, Ibn Majid's student Sulayman al-Mahri made a similar reference to jazīrat Likyū (literally, Ryūkyū Island) as an alias of al-Ghūr. The Arabic term al-Ghūr appears to point to Chinese Luoji (落漈), an imaginary area in the sea east of China. The Chinese believed that sea water fell at Luoji and thereby that the sea level was kept constant despite the endless flow of river water into the sea. In Chinese narratives, Luoji was associated with Ryūkyū and the sea route to Okinawa Island.
Through contact with Muslim merchants, the Portuguese learned that people called Gores visited Southeast Asian ports for trade. The first known Western reference to Gores was from Malacca in 1510, a year before the conquest of the port city by Afonso de Albuquerque. The Portuguese demonym apparently derived from Arabic al-Ghūr. In few years, Gores came to be associated with another name, Lequios or Lequeos. The Commentarios do Grande Affonso d'Alboquerque (1557) used a rare derived form Lequea as the name of their country.
This usage is typified by Afonso de Alboquerque who also employs the term Lequea. Tomé Pires refered to the Island and the people as Lequios.
In Commentarios do grande Afonso Dalboquerque [1774 ed.], the Portuguese nobleman Afonso de Alboquerque described the Ryukyuans, whom he called Gores, who could be seen in contemporary Malacca:
The land of these Gores is called Lequea; the men are fair; their dress is like a cloak without a hood; they carry long swords after the fashion of Turkish cimetars, but somewhat more narrow; they carry also daggers of two palms’ length; they are daring men and feared in this land [of Malacca]. When they arrive at any port, they do not bring out their merchandize all at once, but little by little; they speak truthfully, and they will have the truth spoken to them. If any merchant in Malaca broke his word, they would immediately take him prisoner. They strive to dispatch their business and get away quickly. They have no settlement in the land, for they are not the men to like going away from their own land. They set out for Malaca in the month of January, and begin their return in August and September. The usual course of their navigation is to beat up the channel between the islands of Celate and the point of Singapura, on the side of the mainland.
In a letter to Afonso de Alboquerque, a Portuguese imprisoned at Malacca named Rui de Araújo noted the royal government’s trade monopoly when he wrote, “The Gores come every year in junks owned by their king, and the king allows no one but his own vassals to travel.” Tomé Pires, who worked at the Portuguese trading station in Malacca, wrote in his Suma Oriental [An Account of the East, from the Red Sea to China, 1512–1515] that the Ryukyuans were called the Lequios, as well as the following:
Just as we in our own kingdoms speak of Milan, so the Chinese and people of all the other lands speak of the Lequios. They are truthful men; they do not buy slaves; so they would not sell their own countrymen for anything in the world. They would rather die than do this. . . . The Lequios freely sell their goods for credit. If they find they have been cheated when the times come to collect payment, they will collect it sword in hand.
With these images of successful traders, heroic men of honor with no fear of traveling the distant seas, de Alboquerque, Rui de Araújo, and Tomé Pires have handed down to us a romantic picture of the Gores, the Lequios.
The Ryukyu Kingdom: Cornerstone of East Asia, pgs. 34-35
By the time of Tomé Pires the connection between Lequios, Liuqiu, and Ryukyu had been well established. This connection was further strengthened by maps and travel journals of the period. One of the most famous of those journals is Fernando Pinto's which placed the Lequios Islands at 29°.
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| https://babel.hathitrust.org/cgi/pt?id=uc1.a0005237771&seq=264&q1=lequia |
Esta ilha léquia jaz situada em vinte & nove graos
Other travelers such as Francis Gali also placed the Lequios Islands near Japan at 29°.
Being past the fair Islands, we held our course East and East and by South, for two hundred and forty miles, until we were past the length of the Islands Lequios, sailing about fifty miles from them, as the said Chinar told me, that those islands called Lequios are very many, and that they have many and very good Harbours, and that the people and inhabitants thereof have their faces and bodies painted like the Bysayas of the Islands of Luzon of Philippines, and are appareled like the Bysayas, and that there are also mines of gold; he said likewise that they did often come with small ships and barkes laden with Bucks and Harts hides; and with gold in grains of very small pieces, to trade with them on the coast of China, which be assured me to be most true, saying that he had been nine times in the small Island, bringing of the same wares with him to China; which I believe to be true, for that afterwards I inquired thereof at Macau, and upon the coast of China, and found that he said true. The furthest or uttermost of these Islands both Northward and Eastward lie under 29 degrees.
Being past these Islands, then you come to the Islands of Japon whereof the first lying West and South is the Island of Hirado, where the Portuguese use to trade. They [the Japanese islands] are in length altogether one hundred and thirty miles, and the furthest Eastward, lies under thirty-two degrees [latitude]. We ran still East, and East by North, until we were past the said one hundred and thirty miles.
There is no room for Jesuit cartographic deceit in locating the Lequios Islands north of the Philippines between Taiwan and Japan. It's simply a fact of history.
The Lequios Islands did not become Ryukyu until well into the 19th century. In 1859 they were referred to as Loo Choo by the Americans.
The latter vessel reached Shanghai on the 4th of May, when Commodore Perry transferred himself to the former, and prepared for his departure for Napha, the principal port of the great Loo Choo island, which was appointed as a general rendezvous for all the ships.
Japan Opened, pg. 63
So, how did Lequios, Liuqiu, officially become Ryukyu? It must be remembered that the Lequios Islands were vassals of both China and Japan until 1875.
The Ryukyu Domain (琉球藩, Ryūkyū han) was a short-lived domain of the Empire of Japan, lasting from 1872 to 1879, and simultaneously a tributary state of the Qing Empire, until 1875, before being fully incorporated into Japan as the current Okinawa Prefecture and other islands at the Pacific edge of the East China Sea.
In 1872 Japan renamed the Ryukyuan Kingdom as the Ryukyuan Han or feudal domain.
After the abolition of the feudal domains [han] and the establishment of the prefectures, Japan set aside for the time being the issue of Ryukyu and how it fit into Japan’s relations with China. When it signed the Sino-Japanese Friendship and Trade Treaty in 1871, the Japanese government made sure it included a provision to the effect that “territory owing allegiance to both signatories shall not be encroached upon by either, and its security must be preserved in perpetuity.” This clause left undefined the limits of the modern nation’s territorial jurisdiction. The border between Japan and China in the early modern period had not been a clearly drawn line, but a zone; and the kingdom, though for all intents and purposes under the rule of Japan, had long survived in that zone as a nation recognizing the jurisdiction of both China and Japan. However, as long as the kingdom was permitted to continue without a clarification of its ambiguous existence as vassal to two nations, it was inevitable that the Japanese government, with its objective of establishing a modern, sovereign state, would become involved in territorial disputes with China over the region. In a strategic move to resolve the matter of Ryukyu’s double allegiance, Japan renamed the Ryukyu Kingdom as the Ryukyu han, or the Ryukyu feudal domain; King Shō Tai was designated as han’ō, or king of the Ryukyu han, subordinate to the Meiji emperor.
The Ryukyu Kingdom: Cornerstone of East Asia, pgs. 143
In 1879 the Ryukyu Kingdom was fully abolished and annexed as Okinawa Prefecture.
In the spring of 1609, the Ryukyu kingdom 琉球王国 was defeated by an invasion by the Satsuma domain of Japan, ruled by the Shimazu 島津 family. King Shō Nei 尚寧 and major Ryukyuan officials were marched off to Satsuma as prisoners of war. In response to the daimyo’s report on the invasion, the Tokugawa bakufu recognized Satsuma’s control over Ryukyu. The Tokugawa authorities, thus, brought Ryukyu, a kingdom that had maintained tributary relations with Ming China since the latter half of the fourteenth century, within the political orbit of Tokugawa Japan. From then until 1879, when the Meiji government abolished the kingdom and annexed Ryukyu into Japan as Okinawa Prefecture, the Ryukyu kingdom accepted both Chinese and Japanese claims of suzerainty.
The Tokugawa World, pgs. 420
With the abolition of Chinese vassalage and complete dominion under the Japanese it would only be right for the Islands to be called Ryukyu instead of Liuqiu. As noted, that is the Japanese version of Liuqiu with the European version being Lequios. In 1879, Japan annexed the territory of Ryukyu and named it Okinawa Prefecture. Lequios has always been Ryukyu. Lequios/Liuqiu historically referred especially to "Greater Liuqiu." The more precise question would be, when did "Greater Liuqiu" became Okinawa on European maps?
It is not before the second half of the 19th century, and for common use only after the 1870s, that cartographers and travelers would start using the name Okinawa.
As can be seen, especially at that link which is titled Early European Cartography of the Liúqiú/Ryūkyū Islands by Patrick Beillevaire, there is no Jesuit conspiracy to move Lequios from the Philippines to the Ryukyu Islands. The accurate mapping of the Lequios Islands was a gradual development.
Because of their strategic value, the early observations collected by the Portuguese concerning China and its vicinity, the Liúqiú Islands in particular, were kept secret. That monopoly over geographical information lasted until 1580, when Portugal passed under the crown of Philip II of Spain. The charts, sketches or guidelines of the Portuguese were then rapidly made available to north European cartographers, to the Dutch in the first place.
Dutch, German, Italian or French cabinet cartographers tried to make the most of the sources they could have access to, often combining details to the detriment of exactitude. One must have in mind that cartography, especially in the case of Japan and Liúqiú, shows no steady linear improvement. It is not because a map was drawn and printed chronologically after another that it carries the newest and most accurate information, or that it was cleared of all anachronistic details.
According to Beillevaire, the Jesuit Antoine Gabuil's 1758 map which, significantly improved European cartography of the Lequios Islands, was based on a Chinese map.
The following two hundred years are marked by stagnation if not deterioration in the cartographic representation of the Liúqiú Islands (see, for example, Nicolas and Guillaume Samson’s map of 1669). Between the early 17th century (after the retreat of the British East India Company) and the late 18th, these islands remained at distance from the shipping lanes and received no Western visitors (or, to be more exact, none who was able to report on them).
Given this background, the contribution of the Jesuit Antoine Gaubil, who lived in Beijing from 1723 until his death in 1759, appears as a breakthrough in the European cartography of the Liúqiú Islands, as well as in the knowledge of the history and culture of kingdom that governed them. His work on the Liúqiú Islands, entitled “Mémoire sur les isles que les Chinois appellent isles de Lieou-kieou”, which was published in Paris in the 1758 issue of the Jesuit periodical Lettres édifiantes et curieuses, relies essentially on envoy Xú Băoguāng’s 1721 report.
Until then, the Europeans did not know any of the names of the Liúqiú islands. For the first time, the map supplementing the memoir made available to them the names of most of the inhabited islands, either in Chinese or in Ryūkyūan. The geographic coordinates at Shuri, the royal capital on Okinawa Island, given by Gaubil were also rather correct, considering the period. Moreover, for the first time also, the sub-archipelagos of Miyako and Yaeyama were clearly identified and relatively well located in respect with each other or with Okinawa Island, although the small islands comprising each sub-archipelago appeared lumped together and hence poorly individuated. Their shapes and distances remained arbitrary and totally unrealistic too.
pg. 4
Here is Gaubil's map:
This map is enough to destroy Tim's fake Jesuit conspiracy to alter maps. The Jesuits did not conspire to hide the true location of Lequios but were pioneers in mapping it accurately even using Chinese sources. All the information provided in detail by Beillevaire through many of the same maps Tim employs and many which he is unaware of including very important Chinese maps reveals how parviscient, selective, and agenda driven Tim's cartography skills really are.
The Lequios Islands have always been the Ryukyu islands. It's a matter of linguistics as well as geography. Some form of Lequios, Liuqiu, Loo Choo was used by European cartographers until the 1870's when the Japanese "abolished the kingdom and annexed Ryukyu into Japan as Okinawa Prefecture." The idea that the Lequios Islands have always been the Philippines and Jesuit cartographers conspired to hide that fact is a fantasy dreamed up by Timothy Jay Schwab who is The God Culture.
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