Scenes from Dutch Formosa
Staging Taiwan's Colonial Past

Edited by Llyn Scott

"[This book] gives us a sense of the encounter between the yuanzhumin (the aboriginal populations that settled the island thousands of years before 1600), who were tribal peoples during the years of Dutch control, and . . . the Dutch relationship with both the Chinese who come to Taiwan to play the role of cultural/economic intermediaries and the Chinese Ming loyalist rebels who fought the Dutch for control of this emerging Han agricultural zone in the early 1660s. It also makes us realize just how the Dutch viewed these different Chinese and indigenous peoples from the perspective of its pastors who wanted to bring them to Christ. It gives us insight into the culture of the colonizers and allows us to discover where they fit in the evolving VOC mercantile and military imprium based on Batavia (Jakarta) after 1602. Finally, it gives us new and interesting ways of looking at how the Dutch attempted to deal with a mighty enemy, the Chinese/Japanese ethnic hybrid Coxinga who was pirate, Ming loyalist, warlord, and the fierce and implacable—if sometimes indecisive—foe of the new Manchu conquerors of China who took over the Dutch colony after months of hard and bloody fighting in the 1663 siege of the Zeelandia and Anping fort compounds"
—From the Introduction by Murray Rubinstein

Llyn Scott is Associate Professor, Department of English, Aletheia University, Taiwan, where she teaches speech, Western drama, and performing arts and directs English-language theater productions. Currently, she is researching popular performance works based on early Taiwanese history and culture.

Fall 2012 275 pages illustrations index
ISBN 978-1-937385-28-6 pbk $35
ISBN 978-1-937385-29-3 cloth $75