Tainan City-based National Museum of Taiwan History launched Nov. 14 three new translations of books written by foreigners about Taiwan in the 18th and 19th centuries, offering a historical insight into Taiwan’s society, the ROC Ministry of Culture said.
According to the museum, Taiwan has come into contact with American, Dutch, Japanese and Spanish culture over the past few centuries, producing textual material in a variety of languages. However, much of this material is held in collections overseas, so the museum has been collecting and cataloguing these sources with a view to publication.
“The three published books are precious historical resources, available in Chinese for the first time,” NMTH director Lu Li-cheng said. “Publication of these new translations is a product of more than a decade’s efforts to collate Taiwan historical material held overseas. This is a long-term and ongoing undertaking.”
“This material is especially valuable in that it shows an unknown Taiwan as seen through Western eyes,” said Huang Fu-san, adjunct research fellow of the Institute of Taiwan History at Taipei City-based Academia Sinica.
The three books are “Notes of Travel in Formosa” by American Charles W. Le Gendre; “Anthonius Hambroek, of de Belegering van Formoza, Treurspel” by Dutchman Johannes Nomsz; and “Souvenirs du Tonkin, La Guerre Franco-Chinoise et Formose, 1884-1885” by Frenchman Rene Coppin, NMTH said.
“Notes of Travel in Formosa,” published in 1875, was written while Le Gendre served as U.S. consul in Amoy, present-day Xiamen, mainland China. The original in the U.S. Library of Congress was used by the NMTH, Douglas L. Fix of Reed College, Oregon and professor John Shufelt of the Department of Foreign Languages and Literature at Taichung City-based Tunghai University to make a new transcription for the 2012 English-language republication before translating the book into Chinese.
“Anthonius Hambroek, of de Belegering van Formoza, Treurspel,” published in Dutch in 1795 in the Netherlands, recounts the story of a Dutch missionary during the war between his country and Chinese forces led by general Zheng Cheng-gong, aka Koxinga.
“Souvenirs du Tonkin, La Guerre Franco-Chinoise et Formose, 1884-1885,” is the wartime diary of doctor Rene Coppin. (SDH)
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