By Eveline Frech-Nije
In breach with the existing Chinese Maritime prohibitions of the Ming Dynasty, private
Chinese traders and fishermen from nearby Fujian province (commonly called `pirates' in
the Dutch sources) had a long history of secretly visiting these villages and engaging in
trade with the local population. Unfortunately Chinese sources on pre-Ch'ing Taiwan are
very sparse indeed.
The manners and customs of Taiwan's aboriginal tribal communities and their particular
position wedged in between the Dutch colonial administration and the Chinese settlers
have been occasionally referred to or described in detail by all ranks of VOC employees.
Data concerning these indigenous people can be found scattered over many different
letters and papers sent from Taiwan to Batavia, in the diaries of both Batavia Castle and
Zeelandia Castle, as well as in the remaining archives of the Protestant mission on
Formosa. The island colony was one of the rare examples where Dutch clergymen were
active in converting the local population to the Christian religion and actually lived in
their midst.
The Shun-Ye Foundation of Taiwan aims to preserve, promote and propagate the local
cultures of Taiwan's aboriginal population. The Shun Ye Ethnological Museum, devoted
to the conservation and display of Taiwan's native material traditions, was opened in
1994. Within the framework of the cooperation agreement signed between the Shun-Ye
Foundation and IGEER of Leiden University in 1995 one Taiwanese student of anthropology is now at Leiden University engaged in the comparative study of Taiwanese
aboriginal culture and other Southeast Asian cultures. At the same time, on a part-time
basis, the staff of IGEER is preparing a multi-volume source publication of Dutch
seventeenth-century data on the native populations. Volume one of this series covering the
1625-1635 period is scheduled to be published in 1996.
Eveline Frech-Nije is the co-editor of the Shun-Ye project