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Christopher Joby, "Christian Mission in Seventeenth-Century Taiwan: A Reception History of Texts, Beliefs, and Practices" (Brill, 2025)
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Sarah Bramau Ramos
Welcome back to New Books in East Asian Studies, a podcast on the New Books Network. My name is Sarah Bramau Ramos and I am one of the hosts on the channel and I'm here today with Christopher Joby to talk about his new book, Christian mission in 17th century a reception History of Texts, Beliefs and Practices. This came out in 2025 with Brill and this book looks at how Dutch and Spanish missionaries attempted to introduce new ideas, new beliefs and new practices to Taiwan in the 17th century. So it is, as the title suggests, a reception history of the texts, beliefs, and practices that missionaries used to convert indigenous Taiwanese or Formosans to their mode of Christianity. So there's a lot in this book. There's a lot of texts, there's a lot going on in terms of translation and the introduction of new ideas and the circulation of knowledge. So with all of that, I'm excited to dive into it. Welcome back to New Books, Chris, and thank you so much for taking the time to talk with me today.
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Christopher Joby
Thank you. Great to be here with you.
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Sarah Bramau Ramos
Awesome. So, you know, I said welcome back because you have been on new books before to talk about one of your other books, the Dutch language in Japan, 1600 to 1900, which came out, I think, in 2020. And in that interview, I was listening back to it. So you start by talking about how, you know, how you came to, you know, language, to work on language, how you started learning and then teaching Dutch, and then how by following the history of the Dut Dutch language and the Dutch East India Company, the voc, you started working on the history of the VOC in Japan, which led you to write the Dutch Language in Japan. But this book, of course, is a little different, and it's a little different in terms of scope because you're focusing here on Taiwan. So how did you come to be interested in the history of Taiwan?
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Christopher Joby
Thanks for that question. I think there are two sort of streams that fed into each other to, you know, lead to my interest in Taiwan and ultimately to write this book. The first was that since about 2011, I'd been working with a. A Belgian scholar who teaches Taiwan studies in Taiwan. That's Anne Halen Haylen at NTNU in Taipei. And she was working on a manuscript called K, which is the minutes of the Consistory of the Dutch Church in Taiwan. And she was looking for someone who could read 17th century Dutch. And my name came up and we started working together on. On this project. And as it happens, that that will be published eventually, either later this year or beginning of next year. But in 2017, Anne invited me over to Taiwan to take part in a conference in Tainan. And while I was there, I thought, oh, this is quite a nice place. I like it. And then I went back in 2019 for a fellowship and made a discovery. Perhaps we can talk about that a bit later. And so one thing kind of led to another in that regard. That was One stream. And the other was that while, as you say, I was working on my book on the Dutch language in Japan, I necessarily came across references to the Dutch stopping off in Taiwan. The first Dutchman to be in, in South Korea, where I was working, had actually set off from Taiwan to Japan, but winds led him towards Jeju Island. So it ended up being shipwrecked on Jeju rather than getting to Japan. And so, you know, I was starting to see connections, if you like, being made between what was happening in Japan, what happened in Taiwan. And eventually when I'd got my book on Japan ready for publication, I started to focus more on Taiwan.
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Sarah Bramau Ramos
Awesome. So, you know, you were talking there about, you know, collect, just kind of, kind of, I was getting the sense that you were kind of collecting these connections, connecting these examples, connecting these texts. At what point did you think there's a book here because, you know, this is your third book. At what point did you, did you think, oh, I actually have enough material for this to be a full book length project?
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Christopher Joby
Sure. During the fellowship that I had from the, from the Ministry of Foreign affairs, in fact, in 2019 in Taiwan, I identified a text which was a translation into a foremost language of the Gospel of St. John. I'd read that, you know, some scholars were writing, well, it probably doesn't exist or we can't find any copies. So of course that was a great challenge for me to go and find a copy. And as it happens, I did find a copy in the national or the Royal Library in Copenhagen. And what I guess I started that project, look, wanting to look more at language. But when I identified that text, you know, I started to think, oh, okay, maybe we can talk about the Bible, the reception of the Bible in Taiwan. And so the project kind of grew from there. And I eventually decided, okay, let me write about Christian mission in toto in the 17th century in Taiwan.
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Sarah Bramau Ramos
So it kind of started with text and then expanded from there.
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Christopher Joby
Yeah, that's right. I mean, being in Taiwan, you know, I visited places, you know, associated with the, with the Spanish colonial period as well as with the Dutch colonial period. So I started to see there was a much bigger story that needed to be told there. I came into contact with descendants of the indigenous people who the Dutch and the Spanish will have had contact with, you know, and that, that set me off in various research directions. So gradually the idea grew that perhaps I could focus not just on language, but also on religion, on theology and how that was received in Taiwan. I may be jumping ahead a bit here, but from my initial research, one of the things I did was to write an article on the use of Latin in 17th century Taiwan. Who knew that that could be a research subject? But I went for that and I submitted it to a journal, and the editor was the wonderful Jill Kray, who I think works at the Warburg Institute in London. And we batted it back and forth. And I really got a sense during that process of what it means to write a reception history, because that's what the journal that she edits is all about. And again, that made me think, yeah, this needs to be a reception history.
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Sarah Bramau Ramos
I'm glad you brought that up because that is, of course, it's in the subtitle of your book. As you just pointed out, this book does very much take a reception study approach to the topic of Christian missionaries in Taiwan. So could you unpack that a little bit? You just touched on kind of how you came to understand what a reception history is. So what then did it come to mean to you to write a reception history? Like, what does that mean? And what does that kind of look like in your book?
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Christopher Joby
Sure. Thank you. Yeah, it is a complicated idea, but I thought it was the best way to try and frame, if you like, the events and the history that was going on in Taiwan at this time. If we take the example of the Bible, you know, it occurred to me, well, the Spanish missionaries were using the Bible in quite a different way from how Dutch missionaries were using it. And we can talk about, you know, the Christian story within the Bible, how the Dutch missionaries use that, as opposed to how the Spanish missionaries used it. So Taiwan is quite unusual in that there were both Catholic and Protestant missionaries working there. And I really felt this was an opportunity to kind of compare their approaches to mission, see if one was more successful than the other, but certainly to, you know, compare and contrast how they went about trying to convert Formosans to their version of Christianity. Hmm.
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Sarah Bramau Ramos
You mentioned their sort of history of, you know, the. The history of the reception of the Bible and that. That is its own sort of. That is a whole field. That is. That is a whole field with. With whole conferences. And, you know, much has been written about that. Similarly, much has been written about, you know, early Taiwanese history. Much has been written about missionary linguistics. Much has been written in the field of translation studies, of course. And your book is, you know, combining and pulling from all different areas. Of course. I already sort of highlighted it, and I'm sure we'll come back to this. The fact that, you know, your book is dealing a Lot with the history of book and print culture, cultural studies, you know, there's a lot going on. So thinking of, you know, how you went about combining all of those different fields, was that an important. Was the combination of all those different fields particularly important to you as you came to write and craft this book?
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Christopher Joby
Yes. I mean, as you, you may remember, there's. There's a phrase, a cubist perspective, which I, I introduced. It's not mine, I borrowed it from someone else. But that spoke to me, if you like, as, as a way of approaching this subject from different angles. As I said, initially the project was to look at the reception just of the Bible, but I realized that that really wouldn't do justice to the various ways that the missionaries were trying to convert the four mosants. So I wanted to look obviously at practices as well. Things like the introduction of the week, which, you know, people will think, well, don't we all use the week? Well, in fact, if we think no, we don't and we haven't. And there's a Taiwanese scholar who's written about the introduction of time in indigenous cultures after World War II. And I thought, yeah, that really speaks to me that, you know, how was it to have to stop doing things every seventh day and stay at home when you really want to go to work or, you know, go hunting, that sort of thing. So it's not just about religion, it's also about culture as well. How, how was it to introduce a new culture to these people and how receptive were they to. To, you know, what they're being introduced with? Often at the end of a barrel of a gun, it must be said. But yeah, just so many threads, so many interesting threads. And what we have now actually is, is a second version of my book. The, the first version had about 100,000 words more and I had to brutally cut that down. But, you know, when, when you are following all these threads, it's quite difficult to, to, you know, keep control of word count, if you like. But I had a very good reviewer who helped me focus the book to, to get it where it is now.
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Sarah Bramau Ramos
I imagine, though, that that was quite an intensive process that cutting and you know, mo. Most of what we're going to be talking about is, of course, what is in the book. But, you know, you, you mentioned quite a large number of words that were cut. I guess, kind of curious, is there anything in what you cut? Was there anything in particular that, you know, you love but just didn't fit the book? You know, we all have those Things that just don't make it in for whatever reason, they just don't work. They just don't fit. Is there anything in particular that, that you ended up having to cut?
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Christopher Joby
Yeah, the one main area that I, I cut was an analysis of pre colonial cultures outside, outside the ones that the, the Dutch and Spanish had contact with. You know, I was reading a lot of ethnographies by Japanese researchers and you know, they, they were talking about the Pyuma and the Ami and the Attael and lots of interesting stuff there that I, you know, I was really trying to set the scene, if you like, for how, how was it, what was Taiwan like when the missionaries arrived? But obviously, on reflection, I realized, well, some of them are interesting but won't necessarily help tell the story I'm trying to tell. So I, I had to get a lot of, I had to get rid of a lot of that material. I then put that into, if you like, future projects to, to look at, look at pre colonial Taiwan. But for the purposes of, of this book, I needed to, to cut that ruthlessly. And, and as you, as I'm sure you know, it's, it's one of the hardest things to do to, to cut your own work, to delete paragraphs and pages that you've been working on for ages.
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Sarah Bramau Ramos
Oh, yes, I think everybody has a folder somewhere on their computer that sort of, you know, had to cut, return to at a later date where those precious paragraphs then go to live. But you know, as you were talking there about, you know, what Taiwan was like when the missionaries arrived and you mentioned that, you know, a lot of that you did have to cut for reasons of word count and it just didn't quite fit. You do keep some of. I imagine some of that did remain. And I say that because as if we'll move a little bit into your book. The book does begin with kind of the Prelude, which looks at the history of what the Dutch and Spanish sort of colonial powers were doing in the region more broadly. And then in particular in chapter two, you look at the history of the Dutch mission in Taiwan and this is where you do keep a little bit of kind of the prehistory of the groups and the peoples that did have contact with the Dutch. I guess if thinking about what remained, that all stays. And so there is a lot here. And I guess even just thinking about the fact that you had to cut material relating to, you know, communities and peoples that the Dutch and the Spanish did not engage with, we already get a sense that there Are lots of different groups of people involved? So there it is a very. Taiwan is very complex at this period of time, and the Dutch and Spanish missions are also very complex. So there's a lot going on. But in amongst all of that, especially for listeners who might not know that much about this part of the world and this history at this period of time, what would you like to most emphasize and sort of most talk about when it comes to this kind of wider context? What do listeners need to know about?
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Christopher Joby
Sure. Thank you for that. Yeah, you've got it exactly right. In terms of what the first two chapters involve, if we take the example of belief systems, I think that's quite a good way into this subject. One, one of my aims with, with the larger story, which, you know, I had to cut down, was to show that there were, although we call these people indigenous or Formosans or Austronesians, they had very different cultures. And in the case of religion, even though I winnowed it down to the three major groups that the Europeans had contact with, there's still some diversity there. So, for example, the Soraya, according to an ethnography that one of the VOC employees wrote, had deities. They had a pantheon of deities, but they also believed in animist and ancestral spirits. Another group called the Favelang, who lived in the central western plains of Taiwan, believed in a dualistic deity, both good and bad, called haibos. And, you know, you don't find that in the Soraya, with whom the Dutch had intensive contact, or the Bassai, with whom the Spanish had contact. And at least from the Spanish texts, the basae don't appear to have had deities, but rather just, you know, believed in ancestral spirits. They're effective and animist spirits. So even within the three groups that the Europeans had contact with, there's, you know, a difference in terms of what they believed. And the importance for my story is obviously that then meant that the missionaries had to take different approaches to, you know, convert them to the fact that in their worldview there's one all powerful God. So, yeah, I think that's quite a good example of showing the context in which the missionaries were doing their work.
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Sarah Bramau Ramos
As you were talking there about different religions, there are also, of course, lots of different languages. And I mention this because this is kind of something that missionaries are having to take different approaches to. Could you speak a little bit about the different. What are. What is kind of the linguistic. What is going on with all the languages?
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Christopher Joby
Sure. Thanks again. There's a lot of diversity, but the Languages, the indigenous languages that the Dutch and Spanish came into contact with, we now know all belonged to the Austronesian language family. And those who may know a bit about the history of that language family will know that there's a theory called the out of Taiwan theory, whereby those languages, in fact, emerged from Taiwan and spread to the Philippines, to Indonesia, to New Zealand, and even to Madagascar. So the indigenous people that the Europeans are encountering speak these languages, but they often comment that, you know, even though what they might use a word like surya for one group, there was diversity within that. So, you know, one village might use different words from what another village would use, even though they were still seen to be within the. The same, if you like, cultural ethno linguistic group. So, yeah, there's a diversity there. Also, interestingly, although there wasn't so much contact with the outside world and Taiwan before the Europeans arrived, there were certainly Chinese merchants who were either trading with indigenous people or, in fact, settling in villages on the coast. And there's evidence, for example, that there was a trade jargon that the indigenous people and the Chinese would use to communicate with each other to buy and sell things. And there was also contact with some Japanese as well. So there was quite a bit of linguistic diversity there before the Dutch and the Spanish made it even more complicated.
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Sarah Bramau Ramos
Thank you so much for sort of outlining that. You know, you were talking about the different approaches, you know, as the Dutch and the Spanish are making things more complicated. The missions themselves are also. They also seem to be quite complicated in different ways. You have different approaches. Some approaches are later criticized. Some approaches don't seem to have worked so well, or maybe they did, or maybe they didn't. So there's also a lot, really, interestingly, going around when it comes to sort of the missions themselves and how to best go about doing the work. And some of this, at least, comes up when it comes to the creation of texts. Right. So you talk quite a bit in your book about how important texts are and how at this period of time, it was seen as being important to create texts in indigenous languages for the purpose of conversion. So this then allows you to kind of shed a light on how indigenous people are engaging with the creation of texts, how they're getting involved with the creation of texts. Because, of course, with all of this linguistic diversity, there had to have been indigenous involvement and informants who were, you know, helping different missionaries in creating these texts. And so these texts kind of form the heart, I guess, or what I think of as the heart of your book. And you look at them over the course of a few different chapters. So in chapter three, you kind of survey and introduce the different kinds of texts that were created. So this includes lexicons, catechisms, the Lord's Prayer, sermons, prayers, hymns, translations of the Bible and so on. Then in chapter four, you look at some of the beliefs and practices that these texts tried to convey, convey. And then in chapter five, you focus, you do a very deep dive on sort of Dutch missionary linguistics. So you're really looking here at how Dutch missionaries used and created texts written in indigenous languages. So kind of what did that look like? And how did they then take on the challenge of translating religious concepts and words? Right. How did those two things happen at the same time? So there's a lot here, you look at a lot of texts and you introduce many of them. But I guess thinking of, you know, what you're doing, thinking of all of these things together, is there perhaps one text that you want to sort of highlight and maybe start us off with in terms of, you know, what is the text? What is it doing? What are missionaries using the text to do?
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Christopher Joby
Yeah, thank you for that question. My favorite text in this whole process.
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Sarah Bramau Ramos
That's another way of asking the question. Could you tell me about. Your favorite text.
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Christopher Joby
Is what's called the Utrecht Manuscript, which is in Utrecht University Library. And it was a bilingual word list, effectively of about a thousand and seventy words with Dutch on one side and the indigenous language, Soraya on the other. And I just love it because it's possibly the first record, written record of a Formosan, a Taiwanese Austronesian language. I like that idea. The fact that we can see the manuscript, you can see the marks on the page. It may not have been, if you like, the first draft of that sort of word list, but clearly it's from the 17th century. And I just love the idea that it somehow brings us closer to the story of the Dutch mission and the Soraya response to that. It also, as you suggest, necessarily involves cooperation between the Dutch and the Soraya to make that, that word list. And you can analyze it, you know, for what it tells us about Soraya culture and, you know, things like Soraya food, what they were eating, different types of fish, different types of vegetable that they could be eating. So it has some religious vocabulary, but also non religious vocabulary as well. And it also includes for short dialogues, which were probably used by trainee missionaries to get to grips with Soraya. They were sort of based on the Berlamont dialogues that were popular in 16th century low countries, Noel de Berlamont's language learners. And they're dialogues between two, probably Dutch schoolboys, but in. In Soraya, which adds another level of sort of cultural mixing to it. So I like it from, you know, from a historical perspective, this is history. This is where, you know, this is where it was happening. This was how they went about learning. You can see the mechanics almost of how they're going about learning the Sarai language. But also. So it's interesting for me. It's been interesting for me because of the reception of the manuscript. And unfortunately, when it was first transcribed and the transcription was published in 1840 or so, there were a lot of mistakes for whatever reason. Interestingly, it was a Dutch person who transcribed it, but it has about 70 errors in it. And then, unfortunately, subsequent scholars I say, unfortunately, that's obviously from my perspective. But subsequent scholars, rather than going back to the manuscript, went to the transcription for their versions of it, including translations into English. So they just repeated those mistakes. So eventually I came along in 2021. I. I had a look. I thought, okay, we need to do something about this. So I went right through the manuscript and tried a better, cleaner version of it and tried to correct some of the errors that had been introduced when it was first transcribed. And I kind of see that as a good example of reception, you know, how a manuscript can be received. Also I produced a database, an online database of the manuscript, which takes it, if you like, into the digital age. Whereas the first transcription was merely printed, so it comes in different forms. So the reception of it is an interesting thing. But also the manuscript itself I find interesting for a number of reasons.
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Sarah Bramau Ramos
You were talking there about, you know, both men. You know, the story you were telling there about how you came to work with this manuscript is fascinating. And you also kind of hinted at the fact that some of these manuscripts have gone through different. How to put it, have gone through different ways of being received, or they just haven't survived. Right. You talk a lot in this book about how not all texts have survived, and it seems that some have only survived in translation. So we don't have what was originally produced, we just have what was later translated. So it seems that you're working with a really interesting body of text that is in itself, I imagine, very frustrating, very exciting, but very frustrating just in terms of how much has been lost, what hasn't survived. Could you talk just a little bit about what it's like to kind of work with some of the texts that you work with in this book?
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Christopher Joby
Sure. Let me take two examples. One's an early ethnography by the first Dutch missionary called Georgius Candidius. And he wrote this ethnography in about 1628 in order to understand, you know, the Sarai culture, the Serai practices, in order to then, you know, work out his strategy for converting them to Christianity. But the way in which that text has then been received has been problematic, to say the least. The earliest example we know of it being printed was a quite corrupt and summary version, which was printed in 1635, so only seven years after Candidius wrote it, by someone who'd never been to Taiwan, Seichit van Rechteren, who'd worked in the East Indies but didn't go to Taiwan, but clearly, obviously thought, I'll collect all these texts and print them. I may make some money from doing that. But he, for example, calls the shamans in his first text a. Well, from another source we know, actually they're called inups. So he's probably just misread the manuscript there. It was reprinted in 1639. Then longer versions appeared and, you know, trying to fit all those different versions together and see whether there's some duplication going on or whether one text disagrees with another. And then, of course, they're in different languages. How are they being translated? They translated into English in 1671, for example. So trying to put all that together and sort of try to come to a conclusion. Well, what did Candidius actually say about this? Was quite difficult, let's say. And a later ethnography, and this is quite an interesting one, was all we know about the author is that he was called David Wright, and it seems he was a Scot who was working for the VoC. That wasn't unusual in itself. But he doesn't appear in any of the other sources. So we have this ethnography from this David Wright, and he lists all the deities that he hears about of the Seraia. But again, these names of the names of the deities keep on getting mangled. So in different editions of Wright's work, and unfortunately, we don't have the manuscript that he wrote, we just have printed versions. The names of the deities tend to vary. So again, trying to put together, well, what were these deities actually called? Is problematic, again, to say, at least we can have a go. But we also have to say, well, you know, this isn't 100%, 100% certain, particularly because some of the names sound quite similar to other names. So those. Those are perhaps examples of some of the challenges that I faced. If I can just add one more to that. We haven't mentioned the catechism published by Robertus Junius. Junius, he was the second missionary Dutch missionary in Taiwan from 1629 to 1643. And in about in the mid 1630s he produced a catechism. It was an ABC Catechism, really quite a basic catechism which would include the Lord's Prayer, the Ten Commandments, etc. And we know from a letter that he'd got, because it was still in manuscript, he'd got some other VOC employees to make copies of it. So for about 10 years it was being circulated in manuscript and there were doubtless errors in those manuscripts. But hey. So when Junius then returned to the Dutch Republic in 1643, he clearly had a copy in his bag and he took that to a printer in Delft called Andreas Kluting, who then printed the catechism and that copies of that were sent back to Taiwan. However, there were voices in Taiwan and indeed in the Dutch Republic saying, well, we're not quite sure about this catechism. Some of of the translations that Junius has made, you know, we're a bit suspicious of them because he seems to depart from the core text and the core meaning quite a bit. And eventually that catechism was replaced. But there was clearly also a bit of professional jealousy at work because Junius had come back to Europe and trumpeted the fact that he converted 6,000 Formosans and was taking pretty much all the credit for that. So that may have been behind it. And just finally on that one, sadly, unfortunately, we can't find any copies of it at the moment. If anyone out there has got knows of where a copy is, do let me know. But transcriptions were made of the Lord's Prayer and of the title, so we have those. Some of the, you know, the transcriptions differ a little, but we've got the basic idea of what his Lord's Prayer looked like and then we can start to comment on his approach to mission from that.
- [36:54]
Sarah Bramau Ramos
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- [37:18]
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- [37:46]
Sarah Bramau Ramos
No, his. The example of him in particular is just fascinating because you talk quite a bit about his claim to have converted 6,000 Formosans and then the very swift criticisms that follow with just a little bit of professional jealousy there about what he was getting up to. You know, you were talking there, though about the introduction of sort of errors in the process of transcribing, right? So later scholars, or scholars at the time have transcribed something and then errors get introduced and then they're copied and copied and copied until someone like you comes along and fixes them. So I was thinking about the introduction, unintended introductions, I guess there we have errors. You mentioned before, for example, you have examples in the book about some of the unintended or unexpected consequences of some of these new ideas that were introduced. You mentioned, for example, time, right, as being one that missionaries did not necessarily maybe set out to introduce a seven day week, but in trying to explain the importance of keeping Sabbath, you kind of have to explain what a seven day week is. So I guess I'm wondering then, are there any sort of other unexpected consequences or unexpected beliefs or practices that missionaries kind of introduced or found themselves having to introduce in this context of 17th century Taiwan?
- [39:17]
Christopher Joby
Yeah, that's quite a challenging one. I think perhaps we can just jump into sacraments. How about that? To look at how they went about that, because that brings up some interesting contrast between the Dutch and the Spanish approaches to mission. So the Dutch believe that there are two sacraments that, that should be celebrated by, you know, converts. And the first of those is baptism. And so that's why, you know, Junius was so cock a hoop about having converted and baptized about 6,000, you know, indigenous converts. But one thing in terms of language is that in soraya they use a word which means to sprinkle water on, whereas in favelang they use a word to push down, to push someone down into water. Now, whether that means they were taking different approaches to how they administered baptism, we don't have the evidence for that. But it's interesting that they're, you know, encoding, if you like, different ways of doing baptism. But the other sacrament that the Dutch would administer is the Lord's. Supper, the Eucharist. And there's only really evidence that they did that once for the Formosans, specifically for the Sariah. And the reason for that is possibly because there's something called dividing the sacraments, whereby the converts were expected to reach a certain level of civilization, if you like, to wear their clothes, to do things in the European manner. And until they'd done that, even though they might, you know, be leading a good Christian life, because they weren't fully civilized in the European way, they weren't allowed to receive the. The Lord's Supper or the. The Eucharist. The Catholic missionaries, by contrast, celebrated the Mass frequently as, you know, if you like, a vehicle for divine grace. And because of the drama of the Mass, the singing and the, you know, actions and gestures and all that sort of thing, incantations, that was very attractive to the indigenous people. So we can see there, you know, the results of different approaches to administering the sacraments, partly based on different understandings of the sacrament.
- [42:16]
Sarah Bramau Ramos
No, fascinating. And it's really interesting for me to actually think through about what, you know, I was laughing there a little bit when you were talking about, you know, the spectacle of the Catholic Mass, because to me, I can recognize and see. Can recognize and see the pomp and the circle and the pageantry of it. But in thinking through about why that might have been actually very attractive, it's an interesting thing for me personally to sort of think through. This then, though, brings us very beautifully to thinking about the differences between the Dutch and the Spanish missionaries, which is something you kind of. You focus on in chapter six, on the example of Spanish missionaries who are in a different. They're in the north, they're in northern Taiwan. So you've already touched on a couple differences there already. But is there anything in particular that you want to highlight about what the Spanish are doing? And I almost feel like this is an interesting example to think through in relation to my earlier question about sources and what you have and what is lost, because it seems like there's much less that has survived about what they're doing. So given the limited kind of survival of sources, what do we know about what they were doing and how is it different?
- [43:38]
Christopher Joby
Yeah, that is an interesting point. Again, there may be some texts just waiting to be found produced by the Spanish missionaries. And what I did, as you know, in chapter six, because some of those texts just haven't been found, is look at what was happening in the Philippines from where missionaries came and, you know, read across from the catechism, the Doctrina Christiana that was produced in Tagalog. Read across from that to see what might have been happening in Taiwan. But beyond texts, one of the differences that I highlight between the Dutch and the Spanish concerns material, material culture. And the Dutch are really working out from the idea that God is spirit. So, you know, in that view of things, the material world can't really divulge the divine, whereas for Catholics, you can have some access to the divine through material culture. So the three examples I give are a statue of Mary which is brought in in an entrada, another bit of drama in the village of Senar, near Tam Shui. Crucifixes which were put outside churches or on high hills to mark, if you like, Spanish Catholic territory. And rosaries. Most of the missionaries were Dominicans, and rosaries are particularly important in Dominican piety. But certainly the cases of rosaries and the statue of Mary. And another theme that allows me to discuss is native agency. Because when the statue of Mary had been brought into Sennaar and they'd had a celebration of the entrada, the Spanish took her away again because they probably wanted to introduce her to another village. But the villagers of Senhaar said, no, no, don't take it away. We, you know, we really like that statue. So they had a chat about it and they brought it back. So it's not just a case of missionaries imposing what they want on. On the indigenous cultures, but there is some element of negotiation going on there. And in relation to rosaries, the. The missionaries, the Spanish missionaries recognized that beads were an important part of the Basae indigenous culture. They used them for exchange or just, you know, to make jewelry. And so they thought, okay, let's introduce them to the rosary. That will help their piety, praying with the rosary, but it will also give them some sort of connection between their old life, if you like, and. And their new life. So the missionaries sent a letter to Manila, to the Philippines, to say, can you send some more rosaries so we can hand these out to the indigenous people? So that, again, is the response to say, aha. Okay, this is a way in to engaging with the local people. And of course, one other point about material culture is that it doesn't really require language. You know, it can be used for symbol, for imagery. And I think one of the problems that the Dutch faced despite Junius's success was that language barrier. The amount of work that, you know, would have been involved in learning the language, translating texts, communicating difficult doctrines to the Soraya, that would have all taken Time and a lot of intensive work. Whereas, you know, you can hold up a statue and already you're engaging the eyes with the senses with a bit of the sense of what this faith is about.
- [47:46]
Sarah Bramau Ramos
I think that difficulty sort of explains quite a bit. I think you mentioned in the book that the Dutch change their strategy for a moment. It seems that they're going to change their strategy. They're not going to learn Soraya any longer, they're going to bring people, teach them Dutch and then. So there's a bit of a switch there in terms of how people see the best way to missionarying is going to be what the best solution to the problem of all of these languages and all the very difficult languages is. There does seem to be a bit of a switch there. And that I guess is what you're touching on there, there.
- [48:28]
Christopher Joby
Sure, yeah. That was an ongoing question, not only in the Dutch commercial empire but also in the Spanish Empire. Is it better for a few missionaries to learn the indigenous language or for lots of indigenous people to learn the European language? There are pros and cons each side. That switch that you mentioned started to happen in about 1648 officially, and that that's getting towards the end of the Dutch colonial period. So, you know, one scholar argues if the Dutch had remained, it would have become a Dutch speaking island. Possible, but you know, we can't be categorical about that. But one interesting sort of coda to that discussion is that towards the end of the period they printed the, the Gospel of St. John. Sorry, the Dutch missionaries got the Gospel of St. John printed in Dutch and in Saria and also the Gospel of Matthew and a Dutch Sariah Heidelberg catechism and both the Gospels have parallel texts in Dutch and Seraia. But the Soraya text isn't necessarily, if you like, a pristine translation, which itself would be an authorized version of the Bible, but more a way of helping the Seraia to understand the Dutch text. The Dutch text would still have had priority and it's kind of like the, the Aramaic Targums as I mentioned in the book, you know, as a way of helping the Soraya to interpret the Dutch text. Which suggests that the, the movement was still towards Dutch at that time. But that's right at the end of the period. So we never really know whether that would have happened in reality. But it was an ongoing question which language to use.
- [50:26]
Sarah Bramau Ramos
Yeah, yeah, fascinating. So, you know, we're coming to the end of your book, the end of the Dutch period, the end of your book. But before we get there and before we talk about chapter seven, I just want to, you know, flag, you know, you're talking in this book about, you know, Christian missionaries in the 17th century, the engagement of these missionaries with indigenous languages. That is something that lots of different missionaries in different corners of the world were trying to do. This sort of a, you know, a project lots of different mission groups were engaged in. Is there anything in particular that you want to really highlight or that you found striking about what missionaries were doing in Taiwan in particular or even about their kind of approach? Right. Is there anything that makes this a particularly interesting example of missioning in the 17th century?
- [51:23]
Christopher Joby
I think the answer to that question, the short answer, is no in the sense that they weren't really doing something in Taiwan that wasn't happening elsewhere. I think the fact that you've got both Catholics and Protestants working in more or less the same environment, cultural, social environment, allows for that comparison that I tried to make throughout the book. But perhaps a couple of points. Firstly, the. That story isn't. Isn't that well known outside Taiwan. You know, I would guess that if you ask most 100 Dutch people, did you know that there was a Dutch colony in Taiwan, man to start with, let alone a mission, then, you know, you'd be lucky if half of them knew that. Even though we've just had the 400 year commemoration of the arrival of the Dutch in 1624. 2024. So it's a chance to bring that story to a broader audience, if you like. But what gives it, for me a particular resonance is the fact that, that one of those languages, Seraia, died out in the 19th century because, particularly because of Chinese Han assimilation of their culture. But with the end of the, you know, martial law in Taiwan and the development of democracy, indigenous rights have come more to the forest, and people who identify themselves as Soraya have begun to revitalize the language. And they've been able to do that using the Dutch texts that were produced in the 17th century. So, you know, in a sense that means this isn't just, if you like, an abstract, interesting historical inquiry, but it's a story that continues to have some sort of resonance and traction and meaning in. In the 21st century.
- [53:33]
Sarah Bramau Ramos
Fascinating. You know, you mentioned you're talking there about, you know, the afterlives of the text, and you mentioned one in particular that clearly, or, you know, one particular way that the texts have real resonance today, that people have found real meaning in them and use them for, you know, purposes that their creators could not have imagined.
- [53:53]
Christopher Joby
Right. If we put it that way. Yeah, exactly.
- [53:55]
Sarah Bramau Ramos
If we put it that way, this of beautifully brings us into sort of the, the core of chapter seven, which looks at what happens after 1662. And 1662 is kind of a hard, hard stop there because the Dutch were ejected from Taiwan. And, you know, you, you look in this chapter at what happened in Taiwan. So some of the, the texts, the traces, the religious practices and even scripts that kind of, you know, continued after 1662. But you also then look at what happen Europe, and here you're following different texts that were circulated about Taiwan, ethnographies that you've already mentioned and translations and how they were sort of circulated. In some ways, you've already kind of brought us full circle in talking about a text that was created by missionaries brought to Europe and is now finding a real afterlife back in Taiwan again. But along with that, is there any other particular text whose kind of reception and long afterlife that you want to kind of highlight light?
- [54:59]
Christopher Joby
I think that that takes the, the, the Lord's Prayer in Junius's catechism is, is an interesting one because it kind of shows that the story hasn't yet ended as, as I point out a couple of times, you know, reception histories have a certain end, but you can keep on pushing that end back. And the fact that we haven't yet found a copy of the 1645 Catechism means, if you like, we can't yet close the book on that story. But as I've also suggested in the meantime, the fact that the Lord's Prayer from that catechism was copied was useful for linguists. It also has allowed us a rare insight into precisely how Junius went about converting or trying to convert the indigenous people. And that included an element of accommodation to their culture. But also, of course, there's the famous case of George Psalmanazar, who was probably the most famous fraudster in 18th century Europe, who produced what he claimed was a Lord's Prayer in the foremost language. And it was only because copies of the Junius Lord's Prayer had been made that people could say, hang on a minute, that's nothing like this. Psalmanazar had an explanation. You know, he said that this text was produced by the people on the coast and mine was from the inlanders. So, you know, he was clearly a clever chap. But that is quite an interesting, if you like, code to this story. And according to one scholar at least, the Psalmanazar episode kicked off Taiwan studies in some sense, because even then most people hadn't heard of Taiwan but it kind of put it on the map.
- [57:11]
Sarah Bramau Ramos
Very, very cool. Thinking again of the very, very long afterlife, very, very long reception, very, very long and sort of very, very fascinating story of that particular text. And I should note that, you know, we very, very lightly scratched the surface on the text that you have in this book because there are so many. But now that this book at least is, if not closed, then at least out in the world and done in that sense of being done. Congratulations on it being done. But now that this book is done, what are you working on? Now you've already mentioned a forthcoming project and future projects maybe touching on pre colonial Taiwan. But what is most occupying you at.
- [58:08]
Christopher Joby
The moment in relation to Taiwan? It's really going back and looking at language practices in the colonial period. Clearly, you know, the book touches on language, but that's more in relation to theology and the process of conversion. Whereas I want to look more broadly and, you know, introduce other non religious sources into the story to look at how languages were used, how people, people distinguish themselves socially through language, how Dutch VOC employees could, you know, climb the ladder, if you like, by gaining a knowledge of the indigenous languages, how knowledge of a language such as Latin could open doors, but also close them. So more of a sociolinguistic analysis of the, the history of, of Taiwan in the European colonial period rather than focusing more on the religious element of it. So that should keep me busy for a little while.
- [59:19]
Sarah Bramau Ramos
Very, very likely, I would say. So best of luck with that. It sounds like a fascinating project with a lot of other interesting texts to pull into it. So best of luck with that project. I look forward to hearing more about it and reading it in the future. But for now, thank you so much for taking the time to talk with me about this project.
- [59:43]
Christopher Joby
Thank you.
- [59:57]
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