Historische betrekkingen Nederland-Taiwan

Asian Studie

Het paviljoen van porselein : Nederlandse literaire chinoiserie en het westerse beeld van China (1250-2007)

The thesis analyses the development of Western images of China from the first Franciscan missions to the Mongol court (c. 1250) up to 2007 and against that background discusses the development of Dutch views on China expressed in literary works (prose, poetry and theatre) and their relationship with the history of Western-Chinese relations and the development of Western knowledge about China. From 17th century plays by Joost van den Vondel and J. Antonides van der Goes inspired on the fall of the Ming-dynasty (1644), Dutch literary chinoiserie took many different forms and produced a wide variety of distorted views on the Middle Kingdom and its people and culture, views that tell us more about Western concerns and perceptions than about China itself. Within Dutch chinoiserie the discovery of Chinese poetry through translations into French, German and English stands out as a major trend between the two World Wars, inspiring translations and adaptations by many Dutch and Flemish poets which show a growing interest in Chinese philosophy and experiments with poetical forms with expressionist and Imagist tendencies inspired by (translated) Chinese poetry.LEI Universiteit LeidenColonial and Global Histor

Dutch Drama and the Company's Orient

In the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries, three Dutch playwrights who are not known to have ventured beyond the precincts of Europe dramatized historical events which occurred in Asia. The episodes which became the plots for their plays were either contemporaneous or occurred very close to their own times. This study analyses these plays, namely Joost van den Vondel’s Zungchin (1667), Frans van Steenwyk’s Thamas Koelikan (1745) and Onno Zwier van Haren’s Agon (1769). It studies the information networks which made these literary endeavours possible and evaluates the role played by the Dutch East India Company (VOC) in transferring information about these historical events from Asia to the Dutch Republic. This study also appraises how Asia was represented in these plays and how these characterizations were influenced by its channels of information transfer. This study concludes that these plays revolved around the idea of transfer and the information that the playwrights used originated in the archives of the VOC. This information consequently featured in popular printed works in the Republic which provided the playwrights with the necessary fodder for their plays. This study argues that the striking feature of this transcontinental passage of information was the metamorphosis of Oriental imageryThe Netherlands Organization for Scientific Research (NWO) sponsored my PhD research. The Leids Universiteits Fonds sponsored my participation in the Conference on Dutch Literature, University of California, Berkeley, 15th to 17th September, 2011. The paper presented at the conference was published in "Shifting the Compass: Pluricontinental Connections in Dutch Colonial and Postcolonial Literature, Jeroen Dewulf, Olf Praamstra and Michiel van Kempen ed. (Newcastle upon Tyne: Cambridge Scholars Publishing, 2013), 91-111. A revised version of this article features as chapter two in this dissertation.Colonial and Global Histor

The colonial 'civilizing process' in Dutch Formosa 1624-1662

This is a study of the colonial ‘civilizing process’ in Dutch Formosa (Present-day Taiwan) between 1624 and 1662. Drawing inspiration from Norbert Elias, this study stresses on ‘the colonial “civilizing process” ’ which is applied to the inexorable process of retreat from the era of ‘Aboriginal Taiwan’ under different schemes of ‘civilization’ brought by Western and Occidental colonizers since Taiwan’s early modern history. Contrary to the Dutch East India Company’s intention of carrying out a ‘colonial mission’, local Formosan inhabitants underwent their first profound colonial ‘civilizing process’. According to this study, this process moved in accordance with Dutch understanding of civilization embedded in the grid of State, capitalism, and Christianity. The focus of this thesis is to look at the Formosan agency in perception, participation, and practice in the Dutch-Formosan colonial encounters within the context of Chinese encroachment. The thesis introduces the scope and scene, documents the Dutch island-wide expansion in Formosa, analyses the phases of political empowerment, economic exploitation, and Christian missionary in Dutch Formosa, and re-asserts the changing image of Dutch rule for the Formosans which was revealed in the nineteenth century.LEI Universiteit LeidenColonial and Global Histor

Het VOC-bedrijf op Ceylon : een voorname vestiging van de Oost-Indische Compagnie in de 18de eeuw

This dissertation deals with four aspects of the Dutch East India Company’s (VOC) presence at the settlement of Ceylon in the eighteenth century. The net-profit of the island for the parent company in The Netherlands, the system of bookkeeping and the resulting insights in the proceeds of the company at the settlement, the private bills of exchange sent from Colombo to The Netherlands and an analysis of the VOC-employees at the offices in Ceylon constitute the four areas of research. The study is predominantly based on quantitative sources to be found in the archives in The Hague and in Colombo. The detailed results about Ceylon – signifying about one eighth of the Asian branch of the Company – can be used for a better understanding of the history of the VOC at all her settlements from The Cape to Japan. An important general conclusion is the complementary character of the East India Company on the one hand and the private business activities of her servants or employees on the other hand.LEI Universiteit LeidenColonial and Global Histor

War, trade and piracy in the China Seas (1622-1683)

The objective of this research is to examine the rise and fall of a prominent 17th century Chinese maritime power: the Cheng lineage. It elucidates how, due to the consequences of specific historical circumstances at a crucial moment in time, the Ming imperial administration initially tolerated a group of Chinese smugglers as a nominal coastal defense detachment. With the help of the local gentry, a substantial number of these mercenaries gradually transformed into the backbone of the defense force of Fu-chien province and became the main protectors of Chinese commercial interests in the East and South China Seas. Wrestling with other maritime competitors, the Cheng clan and their followers were dragged into a whirlpool of power struggles with the Spanish, Portuguese, Dutch, and English in the China Sea region during the early stages of globalization. The fall of the Ming Empire allowed the Cheng lineage to create an independent, but short-lived seaborne regime in China’s southeastern coastal provinces.LEI Universiteit LeidenThe Taiwan Merit Scholarships (TMS-94-2A-040);‘Dissertation Fellowship for ROC Student Abroad’ (DF008-U-09)by the Chiang Ching-kuo Foundation for International Scholarly Exchange.‘Scholarship for Doctoral Candidates in the Humanities and Social Science’in Academia Sinica, Taiwan;The Su Tian-shui Postgraduate Scholarship for the Study of TainanColonial and Global Histor