Thu, Jul 24, 2025 page11

• Book review: Languages of conversion

  Christopher Joby’s fascinating new work zooms in on the seventeenth century occupation of Taiwan by the Spanish and Dutch East India Company

  • By Steven Crook / Contributing Reporter
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  In a recent non-fiction book review for this newspaper, I declared at the outset that the subject was one which has failed to engross me, despite frequent contact over the past three decades. It was only fair, I thought, to warn readers that my verdict might thus be tainted.

  In the case of Christopher Joby’s recently published work, I need to confess the opposite. I’ll never grow bored with the ground it covers. Joby, a research associate at SOAS University of London’s Center of Taiwan Studies, has zoomed in on a period in Taiwan’s history that most people here knows the outlines of: The occupation from 1624 to 1662 of the southwest by the Dutch East India Company (VOC) and of part of the north by the Spanish between 1626 and 1642.

  In that era, Taiwan entered the Western consciousness — and the West crashed into the world of indigenous Taiwanese. Local resources such as deerskins became traded commodities. Both the Dutch and the Spanish tried to convert the island’s indigenous inhabitants to Christianity, and it’s these missions that are the focus of Joby’s book.

  

  Christian Mission in Seventeenth-Century Taiwan: A Reception History of Texts, Beliefs and Practices, by Christopher Joby

  The author begins by reviewing how Europe’s religious landscape changed in the century before the first missionaries arrived in Taiwan. He goes on to explain how the different approaches taken by the Dutch and the Spanish reflected the Protestant-Catholic schism.

  Both realized that, if they were to make any headway, they’d have to learn the local languages. In Taiwan as in other mission fields, however, Catholic priests wouldn’t translate the Bible into local languages, because the Vatican had decreed that only the Latin Vulgate was authoritative. By contrast, before the VOC was expelled, the churchmen it employed had published bilingual (Dutch-Siraya) versions of the Gospel of St Matthew and the Gospel of St John, together accounting for 49 of the 260 chapters in the New Testament.

  Attaining proficiency in a language very different to the one they’d grown up with, and for which there were no learning materials, would have taken time and effort — and Joby rightfully emphasizes that the texts the missionaries went on to produce couldn’t have been written without the cooperation of indigenous informants. But it seems the clergymen themselves didn’t acknowledge any such assistance.

  This reviewer can’t help but wonder how well the 29 Dutch ministers who served in 17th-century Taiwan spoke Siraya or Favorlang. Few of them stayed the 10 or 12 years that George Candidius, the first Dutch missionary on the island, thought should be the minimum commitment, so they could master an indigenous language. What’s more, Joby tells us, the Europeans “relied heavily on Chinese interpreters to communicate with the Siraya, using Portuguese as an intermediate language.” That probably worked well enough when bartering for deerskins, but may not have been a good way to convey the Bible’s more subtle messages.

  Nevertheless, Candidius and those who followed him had some success, perhaps because they weren’t above frightening potential converts. Analyzing a bilingual formulary devised by Robert Junius, who served for 14 years until late 1643, Joby notes: “Once again fear of divine retribution was used as a tool of mission.”

  In the years that followed his departure from Taiwan, Junius’ approach came in for criticism. Some expressed doubt as to his language skills — “a view with which modern linguists, who have studied Junius’ Siraya texts, concur,” writes Joby — and his catechisms were replaced by other texts.

  Joby writes that around 10,000 indigenous Taiwanese were baptised by the Dutch, “although the extent to which they had been adequately prepared for baptism varied.”

  At the same time, the ministers and catechists propagated what Europeans of that era regarded as “marks of civilization,” such as marrying according to European customs and burying the dead, rather than binding and drying corpses. Another such mark was literacy. Neither the Siraya nor any other Austronesian population group in Taiwan developed a written language; this is why the Bible fragments, Christian formularies and word lists which survive from the VOC era (along with the later Sinckan Manuscripts) have been essential to the ongoing effort by descendants of the Siraya people to revive their ancestral tongue.

  Joby himself has made a valuable contribution to that project by identifying a translation into Siraya of the Gospel of St John. Scholars had long known that, in 1661, Dutch missionary Daniel Gravius published his translations of the Gospels of St Matthew and St John, but until recently it seemed only the former had survived. This being the 21st century, rather than stumble across the text in a dusty library, Joby located an intact volume containing both by using Internet search engines.

  Throughout history, proselytizing Christians have adapted their message to the local cultural context. In some cases, this is done in the hope it’ll better resonate with the target population. In others, it’s necessary because a literal translation would baffle the audience.

  Joby explains that the Favorlang version of the tenth commandment uses “hare” instead of “ass,” as the indigenous Taiwanese had neither asses, donkeys nor horses. He goes on to note that the accompanying Dutch text retains “ass,” perhaps because the author “did not want his fellow Dutchmen to see how he had accommodated the biblical text” to Favorlang culture.

  In the final chapter of his book, Joby looks at the long-term impact of the Dutch and Spanish missions to Taiwan. Taiwan history enthusiasts will have heard of the Sinckan Manuscripts, and wondered why Westerners arriving after the 1858 Treaty of Tientsin apparently failed to locate underground congregations akin to Japan’s Hidden Christians. (On the latter question, Joby doesn’t have much to add.)

  Readers might be astonished to learn of the considerable interest in Taiwan displayed by Europe’s literati during the two centuries in which there was virtually no contact between these two parts of the world. Decades after the expulsion of the Dutch, Junius’ Siraya-language Lord’s Prayer appeared in anthologies. Artists celebrated the exploits of missionaries such as Anthonius Hambroek (executed by Koxinga in 1661). The Siraya practice of mandatory abortion intrigued thinkers, among them Thomas Malthus. But this reviewer isn’t surprised by their curiosity: Who needs China, the Blues, or the Greens to find Taiwan fascinating?

  For your information

  Publication Notes

  Christian Mission in Seventeenth-Century Taiwan: A Reception History of Texts, Beliefs and Practices By Christopher Joby 465 pages Brill Paperback: UK
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