Taiwan Today

A golden-haired heroine of mixed-race parentage waits for her boyfriend to return from a seafaring journey in a 1951 song written by Chen Da-ru. "I've heard nothing from my dad for 20 years and I miss him, but I've nothing but the golden cross he left with my mom," the heroine laments. "I know from my mom that I'm an illegitimate child and the more I think about it, the greater my sorrow."

Like most of the songs he had written since the 1930s, during Japanese colonial rule, Chen wrote "Anping Reflections" in the Holo language, also known as Taiwanese. Subsequent lyrics make it clear the heroine is the product of a union from a much earlier colonial period. "I wonder if he's alive or dead," she sings. "He is a Dutch ship's doctor."

Anping was a port established by the Dutch in the early 17th century. "Anping Reflections" was set in the late 17th century, about two decades after the forces of Ming loyalist Jheng Cheng-gong (1624-1662), also known as Koxinga, replaced the Dutch as the dominant power in Taiwan in 1662. Despite its popularity among Taiwanese, the song was censored chiefly because it was written in Holo during a time when the government was promoting Mandarin as the one and only national language. At the same time, its wistful recollection of the Dutch period undermined the official portrayal of Koxinga as a Chinese hero who expelled a foreign force and established the first Han Chinese government in Taiwan.

Misconceptions

Robin Ruizendaal, Dutch artistic director of the Taiyuan Puppet Theater Company based in Taipei, points out that while Koxinga was indeed a brilliant military leader, both wise and capable, it is misguided to depict him as a national hero who emancipated Taiwan from foreign invaders. In fact, the Dutch obtained permission to establish an outpost in Taiwan from the Ming Dynasty that Koxinga and his descendents--the Ming Jheng administration--swore allegiance to. Kaim Ang, a research fellow at Academia Sinica's Institute of Taiwan History, says that the Ming Jheng administration's contributions to Taiwan have been exaggerated. "Many economic activities like development of salt pans and construction such as streets and houses in old Tainan, which were often said to have been built in the time of Ming Jheng rule, were actually constructed in the Dutch period," Ang says.

Much of Ruizendaal and Ang's understanding of those remote pages of Taiwan's history, including insight into Koxinga's personality, has been shaped by the painstaking historical research conducted by Chiang Shu-sheng, who lives in the Netherlands and came back to Taiwan in October last year to accept a Presidential Cultural Award for his first-hand study of original Dutch documents from the 17th century. His pioneering work has liberated Taiwanese historians from past reliance on English, German and Japanese materials for research into the Dutch period. "It's a major step toward a true Taiwanese perspective on Taiwan's history," Ang says.

Born in 1935 in Tainan County, Chiang majored in Taiwanese history at the Graduate Institute of History at Chinese Culture University (CCU, then named College of Chinese Culture) in the 1960s. Ang notes that Chiang's academic choice was an unusual one. Taiwan's history was a taboo subject in a pro-Chinese cultural environment, and even students and teachers with Taiwanese backgrounds were dismissive of the field as an outmoded discipline.

Chiang went on to teach history at CCU and traveled to Japan as part of an international exchange program in the 1970s. It was in Japan that he became familiar with the field of research into Taiwan's Dutch period--Japanese academics had begun pursuing studies into Taiwan-related fields during Japan's colonization of the island, from 1895 to 1945. Increasing curiosity took Chiang to the Netherlands where he could study original documents. Toward the end of the 1970s, he decided to move his family to the Dutch seat of government in The Hague.

The VOC Code

Chiang transcribed and decoded the brittle, sometimes barely recognizable handwritten documents archived by the Dutch East India Co. (Vereenigde Oostindische Compagnie, VOC). The VOC was granted a monopoly on Asian trade and colonial affairs by the Dutch government when it was established in 1602 as the first multinational corporation in the world. It located its Asian headquarters in Batavia (now Jakarta, Indonesia), and built Zeelandia Fort in Anping in the late 1620s and early 1630s.

From Zeelandia Fort, the Dutch administered Taiwan and also oversaw VOC trade in the South China Sea. Their official records, including daily registers and instructions dispatched by higher-ranking officials to lower ones as well as reports submitted to Batavia headquarters, are the only original source materials for the study of the period of Dutch settlement in Taiwan. Ang explains these documents contain myriad details of priceless value to historians. "One gets to know how many [water buffalo] bulls or houses there were at that time in the eastern region of Taitung, for example," he says, noting that according to previously accepted wisdom, beasts of burden would not have been used to till fields in Taitung in the 17th century and Dutch influence did not substantively extend beyond the island's western plains.

Chiang says this kind of systematic documentation was unprecedented in Taiwan's history. Because of it, the Dutch period marks the beginning of Taiwan's four centuries of recorded history. The Dutch colonization also initiated sweeping, large-scale changes in Taiwan. "From then on, Taiwan was transformed rapidly from a primitive tribal society, adopting a wide-ranging, multidimensional mode of modern management," Chiang says. "All this happened in the relatively short span of about 40 years, which might have taken as long as a century in other parts of the world."

Sea Change

During that time of rapid change, Chiang says Taiwan's indigenous people would have been forced to move to mountainous areas in confusion, fear or anger as Dutch colonists developed land on Taiwan's western plains, enforcing a rugged order on a previously savage land. Chinese immigrants from Fujian, across the Taiwan Strait, were recruited or made their own way to the undeveloped colony, introducing a variety of tools and techniques for local production. "Foreign influences overwhelmed the indigenous peoples, giving rise to an immigrant society in Taiwan," Chiang says. "This cast a decisive, lasting impact on Taiwan's subsequent development."

VOC files, including Taiwan-related documents, are stored at the National Archives of the Netherlands in The Hague. Chiang has helped edit and compile a major collection entitled The Daily Registers of the Zeelandia Fort, Taiwan 1629-1662 (De Dagregisters van het Kasteel Zeelandia) in a project sponsored by Leiden University in South Holland Province. Meanwhile, the Tainan City Government has published three volumes of Chiang's ongoing translation of the registers from 17th-century Dutch. As he continues to translate and annotate a fourth volume, Chiang is also compiling translations of letters and papers penned by VOC governors in Taiwan and sent to governors-general in Batavia. The first translated and annotated volume of this epistolary collection was published last year in Taipei.

To read and interpret these documents requires a lot more than just an adequate grasp of Dutch as it was spoken in the 17th century. Ang explains that Dutch, along with many other European languages, was standardized for the purposes of language education during the 18th and 19th centuries. Older, nonstandard texts often elude modern readers' comprehension despite the familiar combination of known words in them. "It's not a problem that one can solve by consulting dictionaries," says Ang, who learned to read 17th-century Dutch after he was already fluent in German. As an academic at Taiwan's most prestigious research institution, it is not easy to admit, but Ang says his comprehension can't match Chiang's. He ashamedly compares himself to a professional baseball player who is outplayed by an amateur.

A Wider View

Ruizendaal says that Chiang's philological work and historical study have helped develop more pluralistic views regarding Taiwan's Dutch period, which had previously been interpreted primarily from a Chinese nationalistic point of view. Ang says the 17th century is depicted as a time when seafaring Dutch, Spanish, Japanese and Chinese adventurers put Taiwan on the map, but little attention goes to what actually happened on the island. "For example, how was the big money that Taiwanese businesspeople earned exporting deer skins spent in Taiwan?" he asks. "It's an embarrassment that Taiwanese know only what went in and out of Taiwan but know nothing about what happened on their own land."

Ang says it is natural that foreign powers who have had an interest in Taiwan's history would write it from their own point of view. At the same time, Taiwanese must step back in order to gain a multidimensional perspective on their own history by examining source documents directly, with minimal intervention through translation or revision. "In this respect," he says, "Chiang's foundational work can't be overestimated."

Taiwan Review: How did you come to major in Taiwan's history and then its Dutch period?

Chiang Shu-sheng: After I graduated from the Department of History at Tunghai University, I taught history at Chiayi Girls' Senior High School and started planning my future academic career. For graduate school, I decided to major in the history of immigration among Taiwan's Han people; I didn't have the possibility of traveling abroad for study and this was a field that I could see and walk to on my own.

I began to study the Dutch period of Taiwan's history thanks to a teaching exchange program available through [Chinese] Culture University, where I was an associate professor, with Tenri University in Japan. I had the opportunity to study under Professor Nakamura Takashi, a distinguished scholar of Taiwan's history, for four years and then got a chance to extend my research in the Netherlands.

TR: How did you master the old Dutch language?

Chiang: When I arrived in the Netherlands, I planned to return to Taiwan immediately after collecting documents and being able to read them. I started by learning to read the Dutch writing on 17th-century documents from the Dutch East India Co. Some of these documents had been translated into English, so I tried to memorize the Dutch vocabulary through the English translation.

This is not a good way to learn, though. Although I memorized many words, I found I couldn't understand any other documents at the [National] Archives. After all, you can't understand the subtle rules of language use after memorizing the words in one or two old texts. It proved easier to learn modern Dutch and then go back to old Dutch texts with a foundation in modern Dutch.

TR: What are the most significant or interesting of your academic discoveries?

Chiang: After reading more documents and understanding their contents better, I have a clearer idea of the entire historical process. It's hard to articulate in just a few words the significance and flavor that often exist in a totality. Still, there are several simple, isolated points of discovery that are quite significant.

For example, Jheng Cheng-gong waged a nine-month battle with Dutch forces in Taiwan. In the past, they said the Dutch ended the war by submitting an 18-item "surrender treaty." In the documents I read, however, following those 18 items are another 16 that Jheng presented to the Dutch. Evidently, each party had offered terms to one another to end the war, so it was not a surrender treaty but a peace treaty. I wrote a book on this topic, The Last Battle and the Exchange of Treaties between Koxinga and the Dutch, published by Hansheng Publishing Co.

TR: What's your view on common misunderstandings or prejudices among Taiwanese regarding the Dutch and Spanish period?

Chiang: In the past, due to the lack of historical documents about Taiwan's Dutch and Spanish period and resultant poor knowledge of that period, misunderstandings were inevitable and certain perspectives also gave rise to corresponding prejudices. In recent years, more historical materials have been uncovered and translated and subsequent investigation and research from various angles by many experts have corrected or modified many of those misunderstandings and prejudices. I believe that continuous discovery of historical documents will gradually reduce both misunderstandings and prejudices.

For example, a Dutch group once visited Tainan and saw a picture portraying Taiwan's last Dutch governor surrendering to Jheng Cheng-gong on his knees. The Dutch group thought this was an impossible scene. Later, it was indeed proven to be a result of misunderstanding by Chinese who took their preconceptions for granted. Han people have also developed quite a few misunderstandings and prejudices about Taiwan's indigenous people. Perhaps, we also have unknowingly taken some prejudices for granted. History should be approached in a way that moves closer to the truth through continuous research and rewriting.

TR: What are your observations and expectations about current research into Taiwan's history? Is there room for improvement?

Chiang: Compared with about half a century ago when I began to study Taiwan's history, the research environment has improved a lot. For the past two decades, research by young talent in this field has taken a great leap forward. Increasing computerization and digitalization as well as the emergence of the Internet have also helped a lot with the promotion of Taiwan studies.

Given that Taiwan is not very big and it doesn't have a very long [recorded] history, it seems that we have a really big pool of young talent engaged in all possible areas of research. I believe Taiwanese historical research will develop from traditional historical study toward fruitful interdisciplinary research that covers a variety of fields and integrates the expertise of each field. Therefore, the supply and interpretation of historical materials will play an increasingly crucial role. It would be very beneficial to establish a specialized department responsible for guiding and assisting the supply and interpretation of historical materials.

--Translated by Pat Gao

Write to Pat Gao at pat@mail.gio.gov.tw