| Abstract |
After the mid-nineteenth century, an increasing number of foreigners began arriving in Eastern Taiwan, for various commercial, military, geopolitical, and other reasons. They surveyed harbors, drew maps, collected natural specimens, conducted anthropological investigations, recorded languages, and built churches. The one part of Taiwan that received particular scrutiny was Suao Bay, located in the eastern part of the island. The present article focuses on the investigations carried out by British researchers in the Suao Bay area. It considers how British investigators applied modern methods to investigate local harbors. The waterway surveys, nautical charts, and harbor maps left behind by the British are examined. The article shows that, compared with traditional, local forms of knowledge, modern modes of knowledge production, as exemplified by the British investigators, are on a far more abstract level; modern knowledge production can also be reduplicated, re-presented, and translated, far more easily than local knowledge. In my paper, I also consider the anthropological surveys of the British in the Suao Bay area. I look at how British investigators used anthropological methods to collect language materials, describe observed cultural traits, and develop ethnographic classifications. Their observations of the Peipo ethnic groups are discussed in some detail. |
