For nearly half a century, a priceless collection of historical materials on Taiwan during the Ching dynasty (1644-1911) has lain tucked away in the National Palace Museum in Taipei. Although researchers can apply for access to these materials, they are permitted to borrow and photocopy no more than twenty items a day from a collection of more than 380,000 documents, official reports, and historical writings.
Today, access to these materials is restricted mainly because of their historical value, and because many are old and frail. But at one time, they were also considered politically sensitive. The government feared that any focus on the study of Taiwan history might lead to support for Taiwan independence. One historian, who had spent a year photocopying materials from the collection for his Ph.D. dissertation, was asked to submit his research topic for approval by museum officials. "This was around 1984, before martial law was lifted," the researcher says.
The political climate has changed, and Taiwan studies are no longer taboo. Although the public is still allowed only limited access to the Palace Museum files, soon they will be able to peruse much of their contents in an 18,000-page, forty-volume publication. In charge of this massive project is the Center for Chinese Studies Materials of the United Daily News Cultural Foundation, which is sifting through the Manchu court documents under a special arrangement with the Palace Museum. The volumes will be published this fall by the Linking Publishing Company, owned by the United Daily News Group, and will sell for about NT$30,000 (US$1, 100) a set.
"We realize that there is a need for this," says Chen Chieh-hsien (陳捷先), director of the center. "That's why we initiated this project." The publication will include thousands of reports on Taiwan affairs submitted by Ching dynasty officials to the imperial court—reports that could prove vital for research on Taiwan history. They promise to throw light on the Manchu court's views and policies on Taiwan, and even how at one time American merchants proposed that the United States buy the island.
The documents are mostly reports on local developments sent to the emperor, but they also include maps. Shown here is the Taipei area, a section from a large map of the island drawn during the late Ching dynasty.
The materials at the Palace Museum represent the largest collection of historical data on Taiwan between 1644 and 1911. They are from the files of the Manchu imperial archives and include Grand Council (軍機處) dispatches, some of which were top secret. The imperial archives consist mostly of reports on local developments in Taiwan that were sent directly to the emperor by high-ranking local officials, including the governor general of the Fukien and Chekiang region, the governor of Fukien province, military officials, and the imperial censors in Taiwan, who were responsible for overseeing the conduct of government officials. In the Taiwan collection, there are approximately 160,000 of these reports, although in total there are 900,000 such files. The rest are at the National Palace Museum in Peking.
The materials from the Grand Council are among the most valuable in the Manchu files. But many of these reports are written in quick brushstrokes and are highly illegible, in sharp contrast to the neat and orderly manuscripts of the imperial court files. The Grand Council was the most powerful central agency of the Ching government. When it was fully established in the 1730s by Emperor Yungcheng, it divested the cabinet of many powers. By the time Emperor Chienlung ascended the throne in 1736, secret reports, especially those concerning military decisions, were discussed with Grand Councilors (averaging about seven), and only routine documents that could be made public were handed over to the cabinet.
Among the many discoveries in the imperial archive files is the designation of the name Chiayi (嘉義) to a central Taiwan county then known as Chulo. According to history books, Emperor Chienlung renamed the county Chiayi (meaning "commendation for justice" in Chinese) in praise of General Tsai Ta-chi's (柴大紀) successful defense against a famous uprising led by Lin Shuang-wen (林爽文) in 1786. But this account has been overturned by the discovery of a Grand Council report to Emperor Chienlung, in which the councilor submitted four names—Chiachung, Huaiyi, Chinghai, and Anshun—for the emperor to choose from. Chiayi was simply chosen as a combination of the first character of the first name and the second character of the second name in the list.
An important part of the materials are biographical files, such as these on Chang Chih-tung (張之洞, 1837-1909), a member of the powerful Grand Council.
The imperial archive materials are mostly reports on conditions among the populace, natural disasters, and secret alliances and uprisings against the Manchu court. "The files include not only reports to the throne, but also statements by the accused under examination," says Chen Chieh-hsien. "For example, they contain seventy-three records of statements by those charged in the Lin Shuang-wen uprising. General Tsai Ta-chi, who was formerly believed to have performed outstandingly well in defending the government, even confessed to 'selfish ambitions, which resulted in relaxed military discipline and rebel uprisings. '"
Some of the reports by local Manchu officials were written in Manchurian and have not yet been translated. One of these documents, a report by Governor-General Chueh-lo Man-pao (覺羅滿保) of the Fukien and Chekiang region, records that an uprising led by Chu Yi-kuei (朱一貫) began on April 20, 1721. This contradicts an entry in other Ching records that shows the date for the uprising as May 6. It turns out that Chueh-lo Man-pao only received news of the uprising on May 6, although it had started earlier. This discovery is another example of how these documents can help fine-tune historical analysis of the period.
Another discovery is an 1854 proposition to the U.S government by American merchants and missionaries to buy Taiwan and make it a base for missionary work and trade with China. But the United States was in the midst of the Civil War at the time and never looked into the recommendation.
The Ching historical files are stored at the National Palace Museum in Taipei. The Center for Chinese Studies Materials, part of the United Daily News Group, is publishing them under a special arrangement with the museum.
These are but a few of the interesting bits and pieces that researchers have found in analyzing the Manchu files. The publication of these findings is actually part of a larger trend in which the field of Taiwan studies is gradually emerging as a more important area of research. Earlier this year, Academia Sinica, Taiwan's most prestigious research institution, established an Institute of Taiwan History, although some critics have called the move a political gesture rather than a decision based on sincere academic interest. Whatever the motive behind it, the new institute represents a beginning; there is now a place to store important data on Taiwan history and to nourish research talent in this area.
Academia Sinica has made other efforts in the past to contribute to Taiwan studies. In 1986, the Taiwan History Field Research Office, the precursor to the Institute of Taiwan History, began advertising for private contracts and land deeds dating back to the Ching dynasty. More than five thousand documents were collected. Those that were found, however, were not stored as originals but only photographed or photocopied, since the institute is a center of research rather than a museum.
The Department of History at National Taiwan University has also been active the past few years in promoting the study of Taiwan history. The department received funds from the Chiang Ching-kuo Foundation for International Scholarly Exchange to collect copies of historical documents concerning Taiwan from other countries, including the Netherlands, Japan, and the United States. The imperial court files in the National Palace Museum have been incorporated into this project.
Mainland China is another valuable source of historical data on Taiwan under Ching rule. But researchers who have traveled across the Taiwan Straits are not optimistic about academic exchanges between Taiwan and the mainland. One local scholar says that preparations to publish a Chinese version of Koxinga's family tree from the original Manchurian have come up against a brick wall. The mainland, he says, has demanded that researchers pay for every document used and that the title of the Republic of China not appear in the publication. No agreement has yet been reached on the project.
The files are no longer considered politically sensitive, as they were a decade ago. But they are still guarded in the museum's storeroom, since many items are old and frail.
Even searching through documents stored in mainland China can be difficult. The remaining four-fifths of the Manchu court files at the National Palace Museum in Peking are stored in bundles, whereas the files at Taipei's museum are sorted and listed in a card catalogue to help researchers locate specific data.
The publication of the Palace Museum files will itself have important academic value. For example, the documents from local Taiwan officials to the Manchu emperors provide insight into how these officials ruled Taiwan and how they pacified Taiwan insurgents. The documents also help clarify the links between Taiwan and Chinese history and culture. These archival materials should therefore prove a significant resource for better understanding the history of Taiwan over the past three hundred years.
(This article is an abridged version of "The Year the Manchurian Court Almost Sold Taiwan to the United States," which appeared in The Journalist (Taipei: June 13, 1993).)