Check out the Formosa site: http://academic.reed.edu/formosa/
I. New introduction:
This spring, as students and staff were nearly finished with a year-long project to revise my digital library of primary materials concerning 19th-century Taiwan, I composed a new electronic introduction, which I reproduce here. This brief text describes the components of the digital library that my assistants and I have attempted to redesign, extend and supplement during the 2002-2003 academic year, with the generous support of a Murdock Grant.
"This digital library, "Formosa: 19th Century Images," gathers together a large body of primarily European and American images of the island of Taiwan -- called "Formosa" by foreign visitors in the 19th Century -- and its various peoples. These textual representations, prints, maps, and linguistic data were originally published in European and North American books and journals during the 19th Century, but are not easily accessible to those interested in the history of Taiwan today.
Users are encouraged to examine the engravings, woodcuts, etchings and sketches of landscapes, people, architecture, boats and implements by selecting increasing magnifications of those Images included in the library. Portfolios showcase the imaginaries of six major image makers, while the five categories of prints give access to the entire corpus of visual representations.
Full texts of travelogues, reports, ethnographies and general surveys can be accessed from the Texts component of the library or selectively analyzed with the Search engine. Biographies of several foreign visitors are linked to author names in bibliographic entries on the Texts' index page. Summaries of French- and German-language texts and an extensive bibliography of additional publications are included in the same listing.
Geographers will find the island-wide and locality Maps useful for exploring topographical, ethnological, geological or geographical questions. For assistance locating obscure place names (in Chinese, Japanese, or European languages), the user is directed to the detailed Place-name maps or the Island maps on the Maps component of the library.
The Timeline database enables users to chart an explorer's itinerary, to pinpoint foreign access to specific Formosan communities, or to compare historical events occurring in the same place or year. Explorer route maps, found in the Maps component, supplement the timeline database.
A small sampling of primary Linguistic Data on the various aboriginal languages, collected by 19th-century explorers, may interest the student of Austronesian languages. The specialist may wish to download the more detailed Formosan aborigine languages database, built from similar 19th-century vocabulary lists.
We encourage users to help us improve this digital library by providing us with Feedback.
II. Site improvements, or "What's new?"
For the individual user who browsed the pilot version of our website in the fall of 1999, there should be no question about what's new in the digital library. The number of searchable electronic texts has been doubled with the addition of many important British and American travelogues; and they were doubled yet again when we added Tina Schneider's detailed English summaries of German-language texts concerning Formosa. The architecture of the Maps component was rearranged to accommodate completely new scans of island-wide maps of Taiwan, detailed grids of an 1899 Japanese placename map, and the many site-specific maps we have included in our "locality maps" section. Prints collected from the Illustrated London News and other publications since 1999 have probably tripled the amount of 19th-century visual images available in the library; they all come in thumbnails as well as in three larger magnifications that permit much closer examination and study. The site's Timeline is now a database of information on itineraries, explorer activities, and visitor networks. As we add each new text to the library, we update the Timeline database to enable users to "read across" the travelogues and exploration reports in order to see the intersections that might otherwise be invisible. Sammie's biographies and Arini's explorer-specific maps are both new additions to the library. They extend our understanding of the foreigners who visited Taiwan in the 19th Century, and they carefully plot the routes these visitors traveled. Finally, in a few weeks we will link Hannah's Formosan database to the Linguistic Data component of the site, and let users download her compilation of lexical entries that was derived from more than twenty primary sources. In short, we have doubled both the size and the complexity of the Formosa images digital library and will continue to do so as funding and time permits.
III. "How can I use this digital library to full advantage?"
Did foreign travelers ever visit the eastern coast of Taiwan in the 19th Century? Which products were exported from Formosa in the 1880s? Did John Thomson, the famous British photographer, take any photos of Taiwanese aborigines? How do you count to ten in all of the southern Formosan Austronesian dialects? Where exactly are Balangan, Pohson, and Pilam, the villages that George Taylor visited in the late 1880s? Who served as cultural and linguistic mediators for these North American and European explorers? Were all aborigine houses build of bamboo and thatch?
These and many other questions can be answered using this library of digital "images" concerning Taiwan, Taiwanese, and Taiwan-related phenomena. The travelogues of exciting young visitors to Taiwan, such as Paul Ibis, Robert Swinhoe or George Taylor, are in themselves very interesting reading. However, even the knowledgeable reader may be puzzled by the names of places and tribes they claim to have visited, measured or sketched. Some visitors provided their own route maps (e.g., M. Beazeley), and a look at those materials included in the library's Maps may solve the geographical puzzle quickly. If not, turn to the Timeline function and submit a query of "place" (or "people" or "event") to see if one or more explorers pin-pointed or described a place or people in terms that would facilitate a better understanding. Our explorer-specific maps supplement both of these references; in fact, we used the Timeline and Maps to research and draw this additional cartographic reference tools. Finally, users who know Chinese and/or Japanese can find equivalents in those languages of romanized names by carefully examining the Placename Map and comparing it with other maps in the library.
Having collected maps of Taiwan for nearly twenty years now, I'm especially excited by the 19th-century maps included in the digital library. Some plot the (estimated) distribution of coal and other natural resources in the northern reaches of the island. Missionary stations established by George Mackay, the Canadian Presbyterian, and his Protestant and Catholic colleagues in the south, are featured in other maps of Taiwan. The captains of surveying expeditions frequently left a record of water depths in the seas surrounding major Formosan ports. "Cross sections" of coastline near those trade centers comprise another genre that graces many a map or book illustration, and we have included several cross sections with our Locality Maps. A dangerous port entrance (for example, the entry into Takao in the south) or intelligence needs prior to foreign occupation (e.g., the French in 1884) stimulated the production of detailed port facilities maps. Geological mappings, such as those of George Kleinwächter in the 1880s, represent yet another attempt to understand, and perhaps exploit the island's resources. This brief survey of cartographic content might suggest the many kinds of research questions one could bring to our collection of Formosa maps.
Since the spring of 1998, when Adrian Rattner first began to help me collect visual images of Taiwan, I have examined hundreds of photographs, woodcuts, engravings and other types of prints in order to produce the Images component of our website. Since photographs were not readily mass-reproduced until late in the 19th Century, they are excluded as an image medium from this digital library. However, even the casual user will discover that several prints in our archives were made from original photographs taken by John Thomson, St. John Edwards or other less well-known photographers. How did these image makers present Taiwan and it's people? What factors helped determine their (disparate?) aesthetics and perspectives? Often a comparison of illustrations from (different) explorers' publications will enable a user to answer this type of question. Perhaps you will first open John Thomson's portfolio of images and compare his subjects and his manner of capturing "Formosan characteristics" with those of his counterparts. Browsing a single category (e.g., Landscapes) will broader one's range of comparisons, while searching the print archives with the website's Search function will permit you to collect images of the same place or the same people. We have provided captions with each of the images to enable the user to contextualize any print within the specific publication -- date, publisher, or readership may help you understand the image better. When authors sketched or photographed the subject(s) of the print themselves, their travelogue or travel report will extend your knowledge of the representation process. A word of caution, though: Engravers and print artisans who never visited the island sometimes satisfy their own imaginations in the print production process. Often those additions are easy to discern, provided one looks carefully.
Our archives of texts opens up vistas that are very difficult to summarize in just a few words. The ethnographies written by Ibis, Warburg and other foreigners are an amazing resource for the student of 19th-century anthropology, and they provide a basis upon which to reassess both late imperial Chinese records and Japanese colonial ethnography after 1895. The natural histories of Collingwood or Steere will excite users hoping to extend their knowledge of Taiwan's environmental history; bird watchers must explore Swinhoe's voluminous writings on Formosan fauna -- we've linked our library to Philip Hall's wonderful collection of Swinhoe's writings and illustrations. Textual landscapes, social formations and transformations, cross-cultural exchanges and mediation, diplomatic negotiation, and many more subjects are addressed in the library of Texts we have provided for users of our website. Searching for specific information is facilitated by the site's search function. On-line research will be extended by searching the Timeline, too. For example, making a people search with "Le Gendre" (or some other visitor's name) provides a quick itinerary of his visits, as well as information on his accomplishments, assistants, and major activities. You might search his (or another author's) biography -- they are linked to author names in the Texts index -- for information on his background, training, and affiliations. Finally, searching the entire library may point you to the illustrations, maps, or linguistic data that supplemented Le Gendre's (or another visitor's) original publications. Read and studied together, these disparate resources will enliven and enrich your understanding of the textual images produced by a diplomat (and amateur historian, ethnographer, geologist, explorer, etc.) such as Charles Le Gendre.
Conclusion:
We believe our "Formosa: 19th Century Images" digital library provides a wealth of information on European and North American visitors to the Taiwan and their particular representations of the island's people, flora and fauna, and a range of related phenomena. Educators and individual users of the library are encouraged to send us their comments so that we can continue to provide reference tools that will enhance the capabilities of this website. We are also very interested in the ways in which educators are using the library to train their students or to stimulate a critical understanding of 19th-century Formosa and the foreigners who traveled there in the 19th Century. Please send us your feedback.