Historiography of the Other: Global History and the Indigenous Pasts of Taiwan

Abstract

This article argues that Taiwan’s distinctive historical position—at the centre of multiple overlapping colonial jurisdictions and historiographical traditions—furnishes an important opportunity to consider how indigenous pasts and experiences themselves played a role in disrupting or redirecting historical narratives of global connection. It examines texts by Ming travellers Chen Di (Dongfan ji, 1603) and Zhang Xie (Dong Xi yang kao, 1603); Dominican writers, including Jacinto Esquivel (1632); and later histories of early modern Japanese expansion and the dissemination of the Sinkan Manuscripts (Murakami, 1897, 1933). What all these foreign observers of Taiwan had in common was their struggle to integrate Taiwanese indigenous pasts into their existing grids of historical knowledge. By focusing on this ‘historiography of the other’, the article challenges commonplace assumptions regarding pre-modern foreign relations and indigenous forms of social organisation, showing how Taiwan can play a role in challenging operating foci of global history.

Food Culture in Precolonial Taiwan

“…The accounts on the Siraya that this article analyses contribute to a 'historiography of the other' (Jenco & Tremml-Werner, 2021).8 In general, there is often a tendency to conceptualise the 'other' as a homogenous group (Williamson, 2014: 123). Friedenreich observes that in delimiting 'Us' and 'not Us' with foreign food restrictions, the Abrahamic faiths do not draw distinctions among the 'not Us' (Friedenreich, 2011: 16).…”

“…These contrasts are examples of the construction of the 'other' or of a picture of alterity, which, Leigh Jenco and Birgit Tremml-Werner argue, is at the heart of Chen's discourse in Dongfan Ji (Jenco & Tremml-Werner, 2021). So important was grain (禾, he) in general to the Siraya, that if anyone should steal it, Chen writes, 'they are slain at the village altar (杜 she).…”

“…Jenco and Tremml-Werner (2021: n. 1) use 'indigenous peoples' and 'Taiwan aborigines' to translate the concept Taiwan yuanzhumin (臺灣原住民), 'an officially used term deriving from the self-identification of these groups' . This article, by contrast, merely references 'indigenous Formosans' , as the term 'aborigines' seems to have gained a negative connotation in modern discourse on these people.10.1163/24688800-20241310 | joby International Journal of Taiwan Studies (2024) 1-34 Downloaded from Brill.com 06/04/2024 12:26:43AM via Open Access.…”