Global Colonization In Works Of Tonio Andrade And Xing Hang

In the chapters by Tonio Andrade, he centers his work on the successive colonization of Taiwan in the 17th century, with emphasis on the idea of “co-colonization” between the Dutch East India Company and Chinese merchants. He asks the question, “How do we understand the great colonial movements that have shaped our modern world?”. While Andrade focuses on the internal dynamics of the island, Xing Hang’s book focuses on the Zheng organization, the role to which it played in cross strait integration, and how the Zheng fit into a global story of increased state-building and international commerce.

These works help to identify how global colonization defines statehood, economic growth, and the extent of self-determination and identity. Hang, in particular, addresses the notion that “the Zheng achieved greater economic diversification away from the profit-oriented monoculture under Dutch rule”. Putting to rest the notions of Europeans somehow introducing “advanced” business practices to “backward” and “traditional” East Asian economies. The successful transition of the Zheng organization into a fully functional state by the 1660s raises the realistic possibility of a durable institutional framework involving two independent Chinese polities or a unified Chinese empire with an autonomous maritime dependency. Hang’s insights allow scholars to re-examine the complexities of cultural development, away from Western tradition, not only as a case in Taiwan but in a greater global context.Upon reading both works it is apparent that each author is a master storyteller. They successfully illustrate captivating narratives, each with fresh, albeit differing, positions on the processes of cultural development.

One of the more stark and obvious differences is from whom each viewpoint is lead. While not in its entirety, Andrade approaches his work from a more colonial interventionist perspective. His study draws heavily on primary sources, including archival materials, such as the four volumes of the diary of the Dutch garrison of the Zeelandia fortress in Tayouan, and the collection of documents regarding the aborigines, The Formosan Encounter. These sources help him to form the opinion that “without the Dutch East India Company, Chinese colonization would not have occurred when and how it did”. To an extent I agree with his assertion that by allowing for Taiwan to become a relatively safer and more stable region, the Dutch played an important role. However, I think that while the sources to which the author relies on validates his point, they offer a concerning “pitfall” in scope. Perhaps it was Andrade’s work, or others like him, that influenced Hang to write his book. For a key motivation for his work is “to bridge the ‘split-personality’ of the Zheng reflected in the historiographical divide among narratives between East Asia , East Asia and the West, and the West and late imperial Chinese and maritime historians. This aim is to engage multicultural perspective on differing views of the Zheng in historical records.” Hang has “tapped into a large number of sources, ranging from memoirs, Zheng documents from private collections and Qing archives, along with Dutch, English, Japanese, Korean and Spanish historical records, and inscriptions collected during field work in Fujian.

The merit of Hang’s work is that he gathers together a large number of previously disconnected elements in Chinese and Western scholarship, including intra-Asiatic economic changes, military issues, ideological frameworks and business techniques, and he has thus drawn a very complete picture of an autonomous polity, at the periphery of the Chinese empire during the Ming-Qing transition”. Hang repeatedly explains both sides of an issue, why scholars think as they do, and his own opinion. In most cases, Hang refuses any simple explanation and incorporates elements from multiple accounts to make a more complete understanding of the peoples and situations involved, such as how the Zheng demonstrated both loyalty and self-interest. Hang argues with particular passion and support that the Zheng family successfully forming a lasting and stable state in an independent Taiwan with Qing diplomatic recognition was in fact a plausible outcome. To support this, he points to numerous diplomatic exchanges between the Qing Dynasty and the Zheng family.