By Dirk van Delft
In September 1624, when Martinus Sonck landed on the island of
Formosa, he immediately set to work to build a fortification
built at Tayouan: later to become Fort Zeelandia. This marked the
beginning of the period of Dutch rule which lasted until 1662.
Formosa, present-day Taiwan, was an important junction in the
commercial network of the VOC. Sugar and silk from China were
brought there and paid for with Japanese silver. From China also
came the gold which was later exchanged for Indian textiles on
the Coromandel Coast of India. This way the breadbasket of the
Company, where the Christian mission also made remarkable
headway, evolved into one of its most prominent factories or
trading posts.
In China, Japan, and Taiwan itself interest in this snippet of
history has grown tremendously in recent years. Taiwan is eagerly
in search of its own identity, and the Dutch period, when the
steady stream of Chinese immigrants really got underway and the
aboriginal Austronesian inhabitants were driven into the
mountains, is seen to mark the beginning of an independent
existence, separate from China. This is why the episode is placed
in the light of the revolt of the Manchus against the Ming
regime, and of the change of dynasty which resulted from
this.
Until now, the historian from the Far East has had to fall back
on data from the VOC archives translated into Japanese or
English, which merely skim the surface. It is a much better idea
to take the complete Generale Missiven van Gouveneur-Generaal
en Raden aan Heren Zeventien der Verenigde Ooostindische
Compagnie (The General Missives from the Governor-General and
Council to the Directors of the Dutch East India Company), an
archive which covers a good kilometre in the General State
Archive in The Hague, as a point of departure, paying particular
attention to the passages relating to Formosa. The annual
Missives provide a detailed review, varying from ship movements
to punitive military expeditions against the aboriginal
population. Of course, to do this it is necessary to be able to
read and understand seventeenth century Dutch, a gift that is not
granted to everybody. Would it not be a wonderful idea if these
data were made available in a Chinese translation?
During the past five years this tedious task has been carried out
resolutely and with great dedication by the historian Cheng
Shaogang from the People's Republic of China. On Tuesday 12
December 1995, Cheng defended his thesis entitled De VOC en
Formosa 1624-1662: een vergeten geschiedenis (The VOC and
Formosa 1624-1662: a forgotten history) under the guidance of the
Leiden sinologist Prof. K.M. Schipper. This is a piece of work
of unusual length: volume 1 (671 pages) contains an extensive
introduction followed by an annotated Chinese translation of the
Formosa passages from the Generale Missiven, while volume
2 (519 pages) has the Dutch texts copied in the State Archive.
In his presentation Cheng has deviated as little as possible from
the original text, but in order to make it all more accessible
he has added punctuation marks, capital letters, and pagination,
as well as writing out the abbreviations in full.
An Unusual Path
Cheng's thesis came about in a most unusual way. He was born in
Northern China in Caopo, a town close to Manchuria. He began his
academic career in 1983 by studying German at the Institute for
Foreign Languages in Beijing, financed with money earned by his
brother. At Christmas 1985 Cheng was sent to the Netherlands by
the Chinese authorities to learn the language so that, on his
return to China, he could become an interpreter. Cheng remembers:
"I spent the first half year in Leiden learning Dutch in the
language laboratory and under the guidance of two private tutors.
I could speak German but my landlady warned me that, depending
on the company, I should be careful about using this."
In the academic year 1986-1987 Cheng -who now speaks immaculate
Dutch- began Dutch Studies, a new course tailored for foreigners.
Having completed the basic two-year programme, for his graduation
study he chose history, taking the VOC and the Far East as his
specialization. This choice was purely coincidental. Cheng
explains: "In 1988, when the royal visit to China by Queen
Beatrix and Prince Claus appeared on the horizon, I helped the
historian Dr L. Blussé of expansion history with the
translation of his book Tribuut aan China (Tribute to
China), written for the occasion, which reviews four centuries
of commercial relations between China and the Netherlands. The
visit was postponed in the wake of the student protests in
Tienamin Square, but the booklet was distributed in China. One
thing led to another and, under the guidance of Bluss‚, I began
the Formosa translation project."
Cheng did not qualify for a doctoral research grant. Eventually,
the Royal Dutch Academy of Sciences sprang to the rescue. Once
a Chinese co-supervisor had been found in the person of Prof.
Zheng Xuemeng from the University of Xiamen, Cheng was given four
years to translate and annotate the passages from the Generale
Missiven. At that point there was absolutely no question of
research for a doctorate - this is not the function of the
Academy. Cheng recalls: "Three days a week I travelled to the
State Archive in The Hague to copy texts. I maintained an iron
discipline. In the beginning I had an uphill battle with the
handwriting and with trying to understand the Missives was
troublesome. Sometimes it seemed as if punctuation marks and
capitals had been thrown in arbitrarily, formal phrases had been
borrowed from Latin and French, and the spelling was of a
phonetic nature. Tijdelijck, now 'temporary', then meant
'timely, in time', and Indianen (Indians) was used to
designate the inhabitants of the Indonesian Archipelago."
As the project progressed Cheng was able to step up his
production rate from 6 written A4s a day to between 20 and 30.
Everything was written by hand, a labtop was not part of his
equipment. In the evenings the zealous copyist wrote the Chinese
translation in the margins of his notes, after which he sat down
in front of the computer to enter up everything. In between his
activities he read general scientific literature about the Far
East, helped Blussé with looking after Chinese students,
and assisted in the compilation of a book in which the sources
for
Slauerhoff's book Chinese poëzie (Chinese Poetry) are described.
Cheng concedes: "I have to admit that the amount of work involved
was a bit of a blow, there was very little time for social
contacts. All the same the Missives made fascinating
reading. I was interested to read how the Ming loyalist and
general Zheng Chenggong, otherwise known as Coxinga, set about
building up his network. Utilizing his supremacy at sea he was
able to drive the Dutch out of Formosa in 1662."
When his Academy appointment drew to an end, Cheng and his
supervisors were able to arrange that the University of Leiden,
in the guise of the Centre for Non-Western Studies (CNWS),
provided him with a doctoral scholarship for one year so that he
could expand the annotated translation into an academic thesis.
Under the banner of scientific fraternization, Schipper,
Blussé, and the earlier-mentioned Zheng Xuemeng were
joined in the supervising by Prof. Cao Yonghe of the Academia
Sinica of Taiwan. Cheng says that: "Since Taiwan ended martial
law in 1987, relations with China have shown a great improvement.
Before then, on certain special days, they had a habit of
shooting at each other's territory. But actually paying a visit
to Taiwan is out of the question at the moment."
After a decade in the Netherlands Cheng hopes to have the chance
to develop himself further in Leiden academic circles. "I don't
have any great need to return. I would like to delve more deeply
into this subject, for instance as a post-doc. Of course, the
Netherlands is never one's own country but should I return, in
view of the spectacular changes which have taken place there, I
would also no longer be a real Chinese. Have I not performed
China a real service by my unlocking of an important source? I
am the first to complete such a large project since the Japanese
translated a selection of the journals (dagregisters) of
Batavia in the 1930s. This is indeed an achievement and I'm happy
that it has been accomplished."
Translated by Rosemary Robson-McKillop
(source: NRC Handelsblad, 7 December 1995)