BOOK REVIEWS

Les Européens aux portes de la Chine, l’exemple de Formose au XIXème siècle (Europeans at the Gates of China: Formosa in the Nineteenth Century), by Chantal Zheng

Studies on the history of Taiwan, both from Taiwan and the United are on the increase. In the case of Taiwan, this corresponds to an extension of the existing field of knowledge to an area which has remained, until quite recently, taboo, and that has been repressed for all too obvious ideological and political reasons. That studies are also coming from the United States, however, shows the real interest that Americans are taking in Taiwan and Taiwan Studies. This seems to be due not only to the geopolitical motivations that one might suspect, but especially because the links in the scientific and academic activities between the two countries are well established. In turn, this has had a reciprocal influence in knowledge and research methods.

Chantal Zheng’s book on Formosa at the end of the Qing dynasty, an era of heightened European designs on the island and its resources, is the only recent historical work to appear in French. The writer overviews foreign sources, particularly travel literature and personal diaries, that she had the distinct advantage of being able to read directly in the original—and all the more easily now since the Taipei publishing company Nan Tian has undertaken the reediting of a number of such works—but which are here skillfully put into perspective within a global context. Chantal Zheng gives a particular point to this historical reconstruction by also making use of less common sources, such as reports and letters. These valuable documents have been brought together in the Centre des Archives d’Outre-Mer (Centre for Overseas Archives) in Aix-en-Provence, at the Archives des Missions Etrangères (Foreign Mission Archives) in Paris and in the collection of the firm Jardine & Matheson in Cambridge. It should be mentioned that Nan Tian has just published a Chinese translation of Chantal Zheng’s book and that one of her articles, on commercial firms in Taiwan, is included in the collective work Taiwan: Its Economy, Society and Culture (1). From the outset at least one thing is certain; that Taiwan was much more present in the writings of Europeans at the end of the last century than it is today. Yet, at the time, it was difficult to gain entry to the island and, once there, the place was considered dangerous. What then did foreigners go there for? Chantal Zheng points out in her introduction that, in the first instance, they had developed a desire for something new, for unexplored wild nature, in its pristine state, in contrast to the commotion of the construction sites of cities springing up on the mainland. The book’s content gives credence rather to the other idea suggested in the introduction, which is that these foreigners were lured by the exploitation of Taiwan’s economic potential and were interested in using it as a springboard for conquering the mainland, just across the way. How could it have been otherwise in the nineteenth century, an era of foreign incursion into China and the carving up of its coastal cities, of unjust treaties and above all of the Opium Wars?

The book contains four chapters: “The Island before 1850”, “Europeans at the Gates of China in the 19th Century”, “The Various European Visitors” and “Intercultural Relations”. A section with 51 tastefully selected or photographed illustrations follows the text. The Taiwanese publisher has even improved the quality of the reproductions and has enlarged them. But it is truly egrettable that no readable map of the island with an indication of the main place names referred to in the body of the text has been included.

One of the work’s chief qualities lies in the fact that Chantal Zheng manages the feat of plunging us, with great evocative power, and avoiding the pitfalls of exoticism, into the environment and atmosphere of the period. To do so is indeed difficult for any contemporary observer exposed to the intense urbanisation and industrialisation of the west coast, the birthplace of the colonisation of Taiwan, be the observer Chinese or European. Indeed, it is not easy to recreate the activity of the small ports and population centres, shaped by the technology, organisation and lifestyle of the period, just as it is virtually impossible to describe the lush vegetation that still covered great tracts of land, the enormous problems of transportation, and the importance of waterways in the daily routine and imaginative life of the people. Yet Chantal Zheng fully succeeds.

In her study, Zheng pays particular attention to conjuring up the mindset of the period, taking care to interrelate the various players comprising this human mosaic. She gives a few original anecdotes, which are presented without any indulgence, however. For example, it was generally believed that foreigners made their light-coloured and fragile pupils stronger with the aid of remedies made from the darker, more resistant pupils taken from Asians (p. 143), or again that foreigners were cannibals who ate their own children on picnics (p. 144). Beyond the environmental and cultural touches that Chantal Zheng is able to bring to this period portrait, she also shows how the interaction between Chinese and foreigners can give insight into phenomena that are the subject of wider debate in research on the history of Taiwan. The presentation thus clearly brings out yet again the fact that the Manchu state had considerable difficulty stamping its authority on the island and its people and that the bureaucratic machine had not yet managed to integrate all its territorial and social components. This was exacerbated by the fact that Austronesian societies continued to be organised according to their own customary or traditional power.

It is, however, to be regretted that the type of plan adopted in this work is one which sometimes suffers from the shortcomings of an inventory, given that the subject lends itself to a more transversal presentation of the data. This is particularly noticeable in the last two chapters and the final section of the second chapter, entitled “The Development of Formosan Cities”, focusing essentially on the western port cities. The order of presentation of such places is not justified and might seem to be subjective. Given the title of this section, it is surprising that the southern cities are pushed virtually into the background. In fact, a number of them were still playing a major role at that time, such as Tainan (Taiwan fu), the capital of Formosa until 1886; Anping, Taiwan’s leading port, which for a long time remained the sole legal port of entry to the island for migrants embarking at Quanzhou, itself open to trade with foreigners from 1858; and finally, Takao, almost as old as Anping. These places are dealt with succinctly or at any rate in much less detail than Tamsui, a northern port, and Manka, an old district of Taipei, about which the author seems to have a greater wealth of sources. The chapter on “Various European Visitors” begins with five sections, each of which is given over to a particular “socio-professional” category (missionaries, diplomats, scientists, merchants), and culminates in the two most interesting sections of the work, namely “Chinese Hostility and the Settling of Unrest”, “The Franco-Chinese War and the Blockade of Formosa”, these latter do not, however, come under the same thematic category as the preceding sections, and should in fact have been dealt with in a separate chapter, particularly with regard to the Franco-Chinese war the significant feature of which was that it took place on Formosa. The chapter on intercultural relations takes a look at everyone’s view of everyone else, somewhat in the manner of a catalogue: “The European View of the Chinese and Aborigines”, “The Chinese View of Europeans”, “The Chinese and Aborigines”, and finally the part which will certainly be of interest to Taiwanese readers, “Inter-European Relations”. The first chapter, which aims to give an overview of the situation of the island and its people before the arrival of foreigners, contains some erroneous information. For instance, there is no proof of Hakka communities settling in the South as long ago as 1000 (p. 14). The footnote reference to this assertion, which does not appear in the French edition but in the Chinese edition (George Carrington, Foreigners in Formosa, 1841-1874, Modern History thesis at the University of Oxford, 1973, p. 17), provides no further substantiation of this fact. Moreover, contrary to what the author claims, there were not four great Hakka waves of migration during the reigns of Kangxi (1662-1722), Qianlong (1736-1795) and Jiaqing (1796-1820) from the province of Canton to Taiwan (p. 15). Rather, it was over the course of these three reigns taken together that “Hakkalogy” considers the fourth wave of Hakka migration to have taken place, and which, moreover, was not concentrated solely on Taiwan, but also in Guangxi and Sichuan provinces. The undisputed reference in this area is Luo Xianglin, the father of Hakkalogy (2), and the source given by Chantal Zheng (3) does no more than refer to it.

Let us hope that this work will be followed by a long series of European publications on Taiwan, a treasure island of precious material capable of spurring contemporary debates in social sciences.

Translated from French original by Peter Brown