History of Taiwan - George Mackay

 

                                                    The Ho-be Mackay Hospital in Tamsui

The Canadian missionary George Mackay (1844-1901) arrived in Taiwan in 1872. He was based in Tamsui (淡水)  which had been opened to Westerners by the Qing regime after the Treaty of Tientsin in 1862. Mackay soon rented a house which he began to use as a hospital - one of the first, if not the first, hospitals in Taiwan to practise Western medicine. It was named the Ho-be Mackay Hospital, Ho-be being the name for Tamsui in the Ketagalan indigenous language. Wounded soldiers were treated there in the Sino-French War of 1884. Mackay also founded the Oxford College, which was the first Western style university college in Taiwan and the forerunner of the Aletheia University, which still functions in Tamsui. There is a Presbyterian church in Tamsui which was founded by Mackay. He also founded other churches throughout Taiwan. He married a Taiwanese woman and they had several children. Mackay died in 1901 and was buried in Tamsui. There are several monuments to him and institutions such as hospitals named after him.

Contact between Dutch and Ainu in Tokugawa Japan

Dutch-Ainu-Japanese vocabulary

There is no evidence of the Dutch having contact with Ainu people during the Tokugawa period. The Dutch were mainly confined to Deshima, an island in the far west of the Japanese archipelago, while the Ainu lived in the north of Honshu and on Hokkaido (then called Ezo). Nevertheless, there is a  Dutch-Ainu-Japanese vocabulary consisting of 43 sheets in the Special Collections of Leiden University Library (Serrurier 95, Kerlen 1809). We do not know who compiled it or when, but there are a few clues. The introduction, written in Dutch, records that it was based on ‘an original publication by a Japanese’ (een Originele ‘uitgave’ van een Japander’). The copy in Leiden University Library has the ex libris ‘Uit de Verzam[eling] van Overmeer Fisscher’. This refers to Johannes van Overmeer Fisscher, who held various positions at Deshima. He left Japan in 1829, so this may give us a terminus ante quem for publication. 

As for the compiler, one possibility is that it was one of the Dutch interpreters sent to Ezo to make contact with Russian sailors, such as Baba Sajūrō (馬場佐十郎 (also Teiyū 貞由1787-1822)), but currently we can say nothing more concrete. For each word, from left to right, there is the Dutch term reading horizontally, then vertically the sound of the Ainu equivalent in Latin script (influenced by Dutch spelling) and katakana, followed by the Japanese equivalent in romaji and kanji. Some of the words, such as the numbers, are what one might expect to find in such a vocabulary. There is also trading terminology such as the unit of measure the gantang (Ganting in the vocabulary), but also Paap, a derogatory Dutch term for Catholics. In fact, there seems little logic to the order of the words which may be a function of the resources available. Nevertheless, it is an interesting and possibly unique example of contact between the Dutch and Ainu languages in Tokugawa Japan.

A sign of true friendship

As is well known, the Dutch (and other Europeans) went to Japan from the seventeenth century onwards for the purpose of trade. There was always at least one physician to take care of the Europeans at the Dutch trading post on Deshima and in some cases he was a German. Probably the most famous of these is Phillip Franz von Siebold. He established his own medical school near Nagasaki and made friends with many Japanese. Often, for fun, he would give them Dutch or Latin names. He gave one Japanese the Latin name Wilhelmus Botanicus reflecting his interest in plants. This was Katsuragawa Hoan (also Hoken). Several members of the Katsuragawa family associated with the Dutch and often signed themselves with a Dutch version of their name - Kaneel Rivier ('Cinnamon River'). The Europeans and Japanese often exchanged gifts. In 1827 Hoan gave Von Siebold a copy of Seikei Zusetsu 成形図説 (‘Illustrated Encyclopaedia of Agricultural Products’), first printed in 1804 and consisting of some 30 volumes. This included marvellous illustrations of indigenous Japanese plants accompanied by their names in Japanese, Latin and Dutch. This copy can be found in Leiden University Library. In the inside cover of volume 30, Hoan wrote a dedication in beautiful cursive Dutch ‘Aan de Heer Siebold geschenk van zijn vriend Kaneel Rivier Junior (i.e. Katsuragawa) W. Botanicus Den 5 Siguats 9 Jaar Bunzij (i.e. 1827) - to Mr. Siebold, a present from his friend Cinnamon River Junior. W. Botanicus. This provides a wonderful illustration of the friendships that evolved between the Japanese and Europeans in nineteenth-century Japan, as well as reminding us that many Japanese learnt Dutch in Tokugawa Japan.

Further reading: Chattterjee, Shantonu Abe, and Tinde van Andel (2019) ‘Lost Grains and Forgotten Vegetables from Japan: the Seikei Zusetsu Agricultural Catalog (1793–1804)’ Economic Botany, 73(3), pp. 375–389.

A recently-discovered translation from Dutch to Siraya

It's not often in one's career that one comes across a book or manuscript that has lain 'hidden' for several hundred years, but by chance this happened to me recently. In Amsterdam in 1661, the Dutch missionary Daniël Gravius published a volume comprising his translations of the Gospels of St. Matthew and St. John in the Formosan language, Siraya, a member of the broader Austronesian family of languages. Until recently, it was thought that only the translation of the Gospel of St. Matthew had survived. However, I recently identified a copy of the 1661 publication which contains both Gospel translations. The Gospel of St. John differs from that of St. Matthew in several respects and will therefore allow scholars in this field to increase their knowledge of this language, which became extinct in the nineteenth century. Hopefully, it will also add to our knowledge of the history of Austronesian or Formosan languages in Taiwan and Austronesian languages more generally.

The translation is based on the Dutch States Bible (Statenbijbel), first published in 1637. This includes several Latin and Greek words, which have been carried over into Siraya. Gravius's publication consists of 70 folios of Dutch and Siraya parallel texts. It is a good example of the Bible translations that Dutch missionaries made in the seventeenth century into languages in East Asia and also illustrates how they mastered new languages such as Siraya in order to translate the Bible and other Christian literature into these languages. It is also a good example of the role that serendipity plays in scholarship!

Dutch loanwords in Taiwanese Hokkien

The fort at Baimiwong, near Keelung, established by the Spanish and the Dutch on Taiwan

Some loanwords travel from one language to another and then to another and so on. As for Dutch loanwords, cookie is a good example. It started out as koekje, which was taken to the New World by the Dutch, jumped ship to American English as cookie and is now used in a host of other languages such as Korean. I have previously written in this blog about Dutch loanwords in Japanese. Estimates vary, but there are well over 150 such loanwords still in common use in Japanese. Japanese exported some of these loanwords to other languages during the expansion of the Japanese Empire in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. In 1895, in the wake of the Japanese victory over Qing China in the first Sino-Japanese War, Taiwan became a dependency of Japan and remained so until 1945. During this period, the dominant form of Chinese spoken in Taiwan was Taiwanese Hokkien. This variety evolved in southern China, in particular the province of Fujian. During the Qing period many people from this region migrated to Taiwan (Mandarin would only gradually become the dominant form of Chinese on Taiwan after the arrival of Chiang Kai-Shek and the Kuomintang regime in 1949-1950). As a result of contact between Japanese and Taiwanese Hokkien during the Japanese period. Hokkien adopted many Japanese loanwords. In 2011, the Taiwanese government made a list of 172 commonly-used Japanese words in Taiwanese Hokkien. Several of these are loanwords from Dutch. These include ‘beer’ (Modern Taiwanese Language (MLT) transcription bielux/bieluq) from the Dutch bier, ‘gas’ (gafsuq) (Dutch gas), ‘bag’ (khabarng) from the old Dutch word kabas, and ‘cup’ (khokpuq) (Dutch kop). The Dutch words had typically been modified to conform to Japanese pronunciation. Today in Taiwan it is typically the older generation which still speaks Hokkien (and some can still speak Japanese), but talking to younger people they are still familiar with these words, although they are usually unaware that they had made the journey across the world from Netherlands to East Asia.

Dutch graffiti in Taiwan

The Dutch East India Company had a trading post in southern Taiwan near modern-day Tainan from 1624 to 1662. They were eventually forced to leave the island after a siege by the Chinese warlord-cum-merchant Zheng Chenggong (國姓爺) (Koxinga) (1624-1662). However, a couple of years later, in 1664, they returned to the island, this time to Quelang (now Keelung City), in the north of Taiwan, where first the Spanish and then the Dutch had previously built fortifications. The Dutch had hoped to build a ‘New Taiwan Factory’ to resume their former trade. However, this proved difficult and so in 1668 the Dutch decided to abandon Taiwan for good. Nevertheless, they left their mark on the island in several ways. As I mentioned in a previous blog, one of these ways was in Taiwanese placenames. Another way was in Dutch graffiti. Some of the Dutch fortifications at Quelang were on the island now known as Heping Island (和平島 Hépíng Dǎo). Nineteenth-century visitors to Heping, such as the French-American diplomat Charles le Gendre, recorded the names of Dutchmen, possibly soldiers, that had been carved into the walls of a cave there. Two such names were Marcus Eeckman and Jacob Bosch. Were they bored soldiers using the cave as a place of resort? Currently, we do not know, but the possibility is there. The cave still exists, known locally as the ‘Dutch cave’. Sadly, the waves of the Pacific Ocean have now washed the names away. But for over two hundred years these graffiti were silent reminders of the Dutch presence on this beautiful tropical island.

The Dutch cave on Heping Island

Toponyms in Taiwan

In the early seventeenth century the Dutch East India Company was keen to establish a trading post in China. Together with the English it attempted to eject the Portuguese from Macau, but was defeated and withdrew to the Penghu islands near Taiwan. The Ming authorities did not allow the Dutch to remain there, but it was agreed that they could establish a base on Taiwan, which lay outside Ming jurisdiction. In 1624, the Dutch set up a trading post, initially called Fort Oranje, but later Fort Zeelandia in Southern Taiwan, close to modern-day Tainan. The Dutch presence in Taiwan caused another European power, the Spanish, some concerns. They had been established in the nearby Philippines since the previous century, and were concerned the Dutch might try to gain a foothold there. As a pre-emptive measure, the Spanish sent a fleet to northern Taiwan, where they established a colony in 1626. Both the Spanish and the Dutch combined trade with trying to convert local people to Christianity, Catholic in the case of the Spanish, Calvinist in that of the Dutch. Both European powers also took to naming local places in the European manner. The Spanish called one of the settlements in their territory Santiago - i.e. St. James. The Dutch ejected the Spanish from Taiwan in 1642. However, they kept the names of some of the Spanish settlements. Santiago, which is on the north-east coast of Taiwan, became simply St. Jago. The Dutch in turn were ejected by the Ming loyalist Zheng Chenggong or Koxinga in 1662. However, some of the European names survived, albeit in an altered form. Santiago or St. Jago is now Sāndiāojiǎo (三貂角). There is a lighthouse on a cliff at Sāndiāojiǎo, which was built by another colonial power in Taiwan, the Japanese. However, despite these various colonial powers occupying Taiwan, the name of St. James lives on there, in small part thanks to the Dutch.