As the effects of the Industrial Revolution made their way around the world, inevitable change followed. In Asia, the Qing Empire, reeling from the Opium and Arrow Wars and the Taiping Rebellion, found itself forced to open more and more treaty ports to survive. Japan, also forced to open treaty ports, responded with its Meiji Restoration (1868) and an eye for expansion. Thus Taiwan with four Qing treaty ports on its western shore and Japan to the north could not avoid the ensuing cauldron of trade, commerce and “progress.” Into this developing mix came Charles W. Le Gendre, a US Civil War General.
Unlike the fictitious “lost” Captain Nathan Algren, played by Tom Cruise in the film The Last Samurai, Le Gendre came to Asia with more definite career opportunities in mind. He began as American Consul in Amoy (Xiamen) from 1866 to 1872. Notes of Travel in Formosa, a massive, four volume opus containing 29 chapters and edited by Douglas L. Fix and John Shufelt, is about those years and provides a much needed insight into the author and the larger mosaic of Taiwan history being shaped at that period.
As Consul in Amoy, Taiwan fell under Le Gendre’s jurisdiction, and two pivotal shipwrecks, the American Rover (1867) and a Ryukyuan ship (the Peony Tribe/Mudan Incident, 1871), happened off the island during his watch. The massacre of the surviving crews of those wrecks called for a diplomatic but satisfactory resolution as well as the prevention of future killings. Le Gendre’s success in handling these two, particularly the latter, would lead to his next position, advisor to the Meiji government (1872 to 1875). There he would complete his Notes.
Le Gendre is a man whose wide, colorful and varied life calls for at least one good, comprehensive biography but that is not the task here. Fix and Shufelt have wisely chosen to focus their efforts to presenting his monumental work. To it they add comprehensive annotations and commentary of their own, including an examination of the work’s formative completion in Japan. Thus this work, previously only available in the US Library of Congress, is now available to a wider audience.
Between the years 1867 and 1872, Le Gendre as Consul, would make at least eight trips to Taiwan, far more than the obligatory once every three years visit by the Chinese Viceroy dwelling at Foochow (Fuzhou). His visits frequently included meetings with Tauketok, chief of the 18 tribes in the south where the shipwrecks took place and with whom he achieved a workable treaty. Notes, however, does not follow those eight trips in strict chronological order. Instead Le Gendre chooses to present a composite picture of the island as seen from north to south. In the Textual Introduction, Shufelt suggests that Le Gendre’s aim was to show his comprehensive knowledge of the island should an expansionist Japan choose to occupy it and seek an administrator. It would not happen at that time.
For this reason, eschewing the travelogue style popular at that time, Le Gendre presents his travels with a more “encyclopedic” format including his geological, indigenous languages and resource comments. Because of this, the average reader may find some sections less appealing; not all encyclopedic entries meet everyman’s tastes. Nonetheless, by including Le Gendre’s detailed descriptions, Fix and Shufelt make sure that we get a full picture of the man and all his insights and observations on Taiwan.
Notes further includes some 170 photographs, and a series of illustrative paintings by the Japanese artist, Kobayshi Eitaku (1843—1890) all commissioned and collected by Le Gendre, as well as maps that he composed. The maps would be extremely helpful in the upcoming Japanese Mudan punitive expedition (1874), which Le Gendre helped plan. Fix further adds an almost day-by-day itinerary of Le Gendre’s eight trips and Huang Chi-wei (黃智偉) provides a “placename” reference map.
In Notes we see a Le Gendre who is a capable and pragmatic player that lives and functions where the proverbial rubber meets the road. There is little “gushy” admiration of “5000 years” of Chinese culture that some travelogue writers might present. Instead Le Gendre includes realistic and sometimes harsh observations. Piracy is a constant threat to local trade. A sharp distinction is made between the Chinese portion of the island and the indigenous controlled territories that are “outside the jurisdiction of the Emperor.”
Warfare is a constant threat between the ethnic groups and in many areas weapons are carried wherever one goes. The rules and laws of the Qing government serve as a “pretext for exacting money from the people” with officials “purchasing” posts anywhere from “$50 to $200,000.” In turn they subsequently “extort” money from the subject people to reimburse themselves. The industrious Hakka live nearest to the indigenous tribes intermarrying and often serving as middlemen to the benefit of both but they also can be “cunning” and “perfidious.” The indigenous (generally described in a favorable manner) are not united and would have to be “subdued” or worse. Most telling of all is Chapter 24, titled Has Japan the Right to Assume Suzerainty over Aboriginal Formosa?
The National Museum of Taiwan History (Tainan), the editors, and all involved (reference the three page list of acknowledgments) have done yeoman service in “freeing” Notes from the US Library of Congress. And given the enormous effort put into this work, one hesitates to indicate omissions and suggestions, but a review is not complete without such.
These range from minutia such as Huang Chi-wei’s placename map omitting the frequently mentioned Taiwanfoo; Appendix One strangely lists a focus on 1850 to 1875 but includes people of a much earlier era yet omits the central Tauketok. An opportunity to visually contrast and reveal Le Gendre’s choice of a topical format is missed by not taking Fix’s painstaking chronology of the eight visits and separately tracing them place by place on Huang Chi-wei’s map. Similarly a simple chronological timeline of related pertinent developing realities could avoid the “isolationist tag” of most research and integrate it with Le Gendre’s intriguing future casting of his lot with Japan and Korea and the eventual 1895 acquisition of Taiwan by Japan. Such trivia aside, Notes of Travel in Formosa is an essential work for anyone interested in treaty port era Taiwan to read if not make part of one’s personal library.
Notes of Travel in Formosa
By Charles W. Le Gendre, Edited by
Douglas L. Fix and John Shufelt
475 pages
National Museum of Taiwan History
Hardback: Taiwan
A year before Britain handed Hong Kong to China, then-president Jiang Zemin (江澤民) hailed the “one country, two systems” plan for the city as a model for the country to one day unify with Taiwan. Taiwan would get “a high degree of autonomy” — the same pledge China used for Hong Kong — while keeping legislative and independent judicial power, and its own armed forces, according to Jiang’s speech, copies of which were distributed at Hong Kong’s handover center in 1997. For Taiwan though, the proposal has never been an option. Even the Chinese Nationalist Party (KMT) — a vestige of
To the consternation of its biological father — China — the young nation of Taiwan seems to prefer its step-dad, Japan. When the latter was forced out, a semi-modernized iteration of the former returned. And just as some people thrive as adults, despite an unstable childhood, Taiwan has become a democratic success. Unfortunately, the island’s biological father behaves like a parent who is no use, yet who continues to meddle. A combination of rose-tinted retrospection and growing mutual respect has given many Taiwanese a highly positive attitude toward Japan. Physical reminders of the 1895-1945 period of Japanese rule are treasured,
Women in Taiwan often say “my aunt is visiting” (大姨媽來了) or “my ‘that’ is here” (那個來) when their menstrual cycle arrives — but there are no euphemisms to describe it at the Red House Period Museum (小紅厝月經博物館), which opened on Thursday. “Due to a lack of understanding, fear of blood and various taboos, the period has historically and globally been something that cannot be discussed publicly,” a display on period stigma at the museum states. “Or, it is replaced by all sorts of indirection.” The museum estimates that there are more than 30 such terms in Taiwan to describe that
Last month China lashed out at Taiwanese agricultural exports again, banning grouper imports. This event marked the ignominious end of what was once the star agricultural product of the ill-starred Economic Cooperation Framework Agreement (ECFA). Local media quoted the Fisheries Agency as saying it was a turning point in Taiwan’s grouper history. Spurred by the signing of ECFA, by the spring of 2011 grouper had become the leading agricultural export, driving profits for middlemen and food price inflation. Grouper exports were among the few products whose market grew, enabling then-president Ma Ying-jeou (馬英九) of the Chinese Nationalist Party (KMT) to
RSS