The Psalmanazar Affair and the Birth of Taiwan Studies in Europe: a Reassessment of the Historic Hoax

Original Publication

Chien, Hung-yi. " The Psalmanazar Affair and the Birth of Taiwan Studies in Europe: a Reassessment of the Historic Hoax", International Journal of Taiwan Studies 3, 1 (2020): 112-136, doi: https://doi.org/10.1163/24688800-00301008

Abstract

A history of European Taiwan studies must mention a controversial man: George Psalmanazar. He not only claimed to be a native Formosan at meetings of the Royal Society but also published a book filled with his fictitious fantasy. This study suggests that Psalmanazar’s bold imposture encouraged the Royal Society to conduct a pioneering study of Formosa/Taiwan. Rather than rely on published travelogues to study remote places, the Royal Society found a qualified witness who had been to Formosa/Taiwan to offer reliable information. Based on Samuel Griffith’s testimony, the Royal Society agreed to reject Psalmanazar’s account. However, they remained silent in public and archived the conclusion against Psalmanazar. After the affair, Psalmanazar repented by providing correct information about Formosa/Taiwan in books that he was later involved with editing in the mid-eighteenth century. Thus, Psalmanazar was not only a catalyst of Formosa/Taiwan studies in Europe but also a researcher of the island.

Keywords: George Psalmanazar; history of Taiwan studies; qualified witness; matters of fact

Introduction

A history of European Taiwan studies must mention the controversial work of George Psalmanazar. In London in 1703 Psalmanazar claimed to be a native Formosan and attended meetings of the Royal Society, then published a geographical book full of fantasies the following year (Psalmanazar, 1704, 1705).[1] Although Psalmanazar’s credibility was short-lived, lasting only a few years, the controversy surrounding him led some learned people in England to examine his account seriously. Following Psalmanazar’s presentation at a society meeting, fellows of the Royal Society attempted to verify the authenticity of his account in various ways. In June 1705 a series of letters from outside the society satisfied the fellows’ curiosity and led them to agree to reject Psalmanazar’s account (Griffith, 1705a, 1705b; Newman, 1705a, 1705b).

Since Frederic J. Foley’s comprehensive biographical study of Psalmanazar (Foley, 1968), scholars have continued to study various aspects of the Psalmanazar affair, including: the receptions of Psalmanazar’s works across his lifetime (Day, 1990); their intertextuality in English literature (Shufelt, 1998, 2005); European stereotypes of Asia, religious rhetoric (Yang, 2011); and the readership of Psalmanazar’s book during the Enlightenment (Breen, 2013). Besides these issues in literature studies and the history of ideas, problems trusting ethnography during the early modern era (Keevak, 2004; Stagl, 2004) also have strong implications for modern scholars. If a deception like Psalmanazar’s could succeed, it threatens the trustworthiness of ethnography (Needham, 1985: 75–76). Since the early twentieth century, ethnographers have developed several methods to protect their community from hoaxes. Fieldwork is the gold standard, generalised discourse converts subjective experience into an objective description, and the professional community checks its members’ reports to ensure authenticity (Stagl, 2004: 203–207). These controls either did not exist in Psalmanazar’s time or were in their early stage of development, thus enabling Psalmanazar’s imposture to succeed briefly.

When the fellows of the Royal Society were undertaking the verification of Psalmanazar’s account, they might not have been aware that they were the pioneers of Taiwan studies[2] in Europe. Before the society’s investigation, most reports on the people and culture of Formosa originated from Discourse and Short Account of Formosa Island (Discours ende Cout verhael, van’t Eyland Formosa), written by the Dutch chaplain Georgius Candidius in 1628.[3] First published in 1645, Candidius’s account was translated into several languages and adapted into several travel and geography books during the following decades. Although Candidius’s report on Formosa was not the only one written during the seventeenth century, no attempt was made to compare the various reports or pursue any criticism of them in Europe prior to the Psalmanazar affair. Fellows of the Royal Society were the pioneers who tried to obtain new and reliable empirical accounts to refute Psalmanazar’s fictitious Formosa by establishing facts that contradicted Psalmanazar’s account.

Unusually, the fellows of the society did not publish their conclusions about Psalmanazar. It was not until the mid-twentieth century that Frederic J. Foley discovered the Royal Society’s study of Taiwan in the society’s archives and used the materials in his biography of Psalmanazar. However, Foley oversimplified the methods the society used to reach its conclusion and overlooked the importance of the event in the history of Taiwan studies. This was not Foley’s fault; Taiwan studies did not exist in the 1960s. Although the present study did not discover many new sources beyond previous studies conducted on Psalmanazar, it reviews known sources and highlights the importance of the Psalmanazar affair during the early history of Taiwan studies in Europe.

This paper proceeds as follows: first, it provides a brief biography of Psalmanazar, which details the controversy around him following his arrival in England. In light of this historical background, the paper discusses the rhetoric Psalmanazar used to convince people of his false account of Formosa. After discussion of Psalmanazar’s role in the affair, the paper turns to the Royal Society. It describes the methods the Royal Society used at the beginning of the eighteenth century and revisits their study of Taiwan with reference to Royal Society archives. This discussion demonstrates that choosing qualified witnesses helped the Royal Society to form a socially agreed judgement. However, this paper does not intend to describe the triumph of Royal Society science, but by comparing cases that reach socially agreed judgements, it demonstrates that the Royal Society’s conclusion was based on confidence in trustworthy witnesses rather than fellows’ empirical observations at Gresham College. Finally, the paper discusses Psalmanazar’s later works to reveal his judgement of Candidius’s and the Jesuits’ reports on Formosa. Psalmanazar never trusted Candidius’s account and considered the Jesuits’ reports the most reliable source of information about the island in the eighteenth century.

The Psalmanazar Affair

Most biographical information about George Psalmanazar is derived from his posthumously published memoir (Psalmanazar, 1765). According to the clues in his memoir, he was born in 1679. He never revealed his birthplace, although it was clearly not Formosa. Some of his contemporaries believed he was from Flanders or the Netherlands, whereas others suggested that his accent and excellent French revealed a Gascon background, a region in southern France (Foley, 1968: 6–7). When Psalmanazar’s narrative about his wandering after leaving school is examined, it seems he is most likely to have been native to southern France. Psalmanazar recalls his education with Franciscan, Dominican, and Jesuit teachers in his memoir. During his unhappy schooling, he learned Latin, some philosophy, some theology, and general knowledge (Foley, 1968: 8). He might also be considered a linguistic genius as he was always placed in more advanced Latin classes than students his own age. His schooling experience was painful but he endured it (Psalmanazar, 1765: 83–84).

After leaving school, Psalmanazar could not support himself and neither could his mother; therefore, he decided to visit his father for assistance, who was separated from his mother and lived in Germany. His excellent Latin helped him to become acquainted with priests in churches during the journey to Germany. On arrival, he discovered his father was even worse off financially, and his father advised him to go to the Netherlands. Around this time, Psalmanazar invented his second fictitious persona, claiming to be a Japanese man who had been converted by the Jesuits. When he arrived in Cologne, he joined the army to continue his journey to the Netherlands and forged another identity: a pious Japanese heathen. He inhabited this role of a strange soldier who read his own scripture every day and criticised the Catholic and Protestant churches. In 1702 Psalmanazar and fellow soldiers were deployed to Sluits near the Atlantic coast. In early 1703 his strange behaviour caught the eye of an English general, George Laude, and General Laude invited him to discuss his heathenism. During this meeting, Psalmanazar met an English chaplain, Alexander Innes. Innes soon grasped the potential benefits of converting Psalmanazar to the Church of England. However, when Innes applied to the bishop for permission for Psalmanazar’s conversion, he accidentally discovered that Psalmanazar’s identity was false. Innes, who was eager to be congratulated for having converted a heathen to the Church of England, did not expose Psalmanazar. Rather, he planned a greater fraud in England (Foley, 1968: 8–14).

Psalmanazar arrived in England with Innes during the spring of 1703 and played the role of a native of Formosa who had been converted to the Anglican Church. In addition to attending social events in London, he began to create manuscripts of the ‘Formosan’ script, which he alone invented. These manuscripts included a catechism, the Lord’s Prayer, and several portraits of Formosan people (Mason, 1999). All these resonated with the prevailing anti-Catholic and anti-Jesuit atmosphere of early eighteenth-century England.

Psalmanazar’s first encounter with the Royal Society occurred on 11 August 1703. He was permitted to present himself at a meeting of the society, claimed to be a native of Formosa, and revealed his plan to publish a book about the island. However, according to the minutes of that meeting, society members clearly had some doubts and several attendees felt that Psalmanazar ‘looked like a young Dutch-man’ (Royal Society, 1703). Psalmanazar’s second participation in a Royal Society meeting occurred on 2 February 1704 (Royal Society, 1704a). The meeting appears to have been eagerly anticipated, but for some reason, the society wished to keep the invitation secret (Chamberlayne, 1967 [1704]: 412). Psalmanazar arrived at the meeting in John Chamberlayne’s coach, a man who would later play a crucial role when attempting to verify Psalmanazar’s account. At that day’s meeting, another guest was invited, Jesuit Jean de Fontaney, who had just returned from China on an English ship. The society’s minutes do not contain the details of this meeting, but according to Psalmanazar’s account, the two invitees had a great debate about Formosa. After the meeting, Psalmanazar and de Fontaney met twice more in London. Psalmanazar claimed that de Fontaney did not present any objections in these meetings (Psalmanazar, 1704: vii–xi). A single account is never verifiable, however. If Psalmanazar was telling the truth, de Fontaney might have carefully avoided further debate with the impostor.

During the debate with de Fontaney, Psalmanazar was also finishing his fictitious book, An Historical and Geographical Description of Formosa. The second edition shows that the preface to the first edition was dated ‘London, Feb. 25, 1703’ (Psalmanazar, 1705: xvi). The date is displayed in the Old Style, which was used in England until 1752. In the Old Style, the new year began on 25 March. Therefore, if written in the New Style, the preface would have been dated 25 February 1704. If Psalmanazar began writing sometime around his first presentation to the Royal Society, completing the book would have taken approximately six months. In his memoir Psalmanazar claims that he wrote the book in only two months (Psalmanazar, 1765: 183), but this may not have included the time required to translate it. Psalmanazar’s English was insufficient to write a book at that time, therefore he drafted it in Latin, and someone called Oswald translated it from Latin to English. The Description is divided into two parts. In the first edition, the first part describes his fictitious journey from Formosa to Europe and contains a lengthy theological discussion. A falsified history and geography of Formosa are presented in the second part.

Psalmanazar found inspiration in several sources. The source Psalmanazar himself mentions is German geographer Berhardus Varenius’s Description of the Kingdom of Japan (Descriptio Regni Japoniae) (Varenius, 1649), which was provided by Innes (Psalmanazar, 1765: 182). Varenius’s book was outdated following the publication of Dutch pastor Arnoldus Montanus’s Atlas Japannensis in England in 1670. However, Montanus’s work was available only in Dutch (Montanus, 1669) and English editions (Montanus, 1670), which Psalmanazar could not read; therefore, the work of Varenius was the only readable text available to him. Nevertheless, Varenius’s book contained no inaccurate information about Formosa but rightly describes it as a trading place (Varenius, 1974 [1649]: 174). In addition to textual sources, Psalmanazar also utilised images. For example, Psalmanazar’s image of a floating village (Psalmanazar, 1704: 276ff) is similar to an image depicted by Joan Nieuhof in his travelogues of China (Nieuhof, 1665: 126, 1669: 96). Moreover, in the second edition, Psalmanazar states that rich Formosans eat with ‘two sharp-pointed sticks’ (Psalmanazar, 1705: 115). This image must have originated from Dutch author Olfert Dapper’s geographical book about China, which was published in England with the new title Atlas Chinensis and misattributed to Montanus (Montanus, 1671: 48). Psalmanazar probably accessed this book during his stay in Oxford in early 1705, and subsequently added a passage in the second edition, which was published later that year.

The debates with de Fontaney and the publication of the Description did not increase Psalmanazar’s fame, but rather prompted another investigation of his account. As previously mentioned, Psalmanazar went to Oxford to study theology and revise his Description. In Oxford, he met several scholars including Samuel Reynolds, who became good friends with Psalmanazar. However, Innes, Psalmanazar’s protector in England, was promoted for converting Psalmanazar, and deployed to Portugal in early 1705, leaving Psalmanazar alone in London upon his return from Oxford. Without his protector, Psalmanazar kept fighting. He published the second edition of the Description during the second half of 1705. He swapped the geography and theology parts of the text in this edition. By putting the geographical part first and enlarging it, Psalmanazar reframed the Description as more of a geographical book to attract readers who were interested in foreign countries. He also published Dutch and French editions in 1705. The German edition appeared in 1716 after the affair was settled in England (Foley, 1968: 81–82).

Among these translated editions, the French edition is particularly interesting. Michael Keevak discovered that the Amsterdam publisher, Estienne Roger, had also published the French edition of the seventeenth-century authority on the early history of the Dutch East India Company in 1702, which contained Candidius’s report of the Formosan people and culture. Thus, the Amsterdam publisher had an opportunity to verify the content of Psalmanazar’s book by comparing it with Candidius’s report but elected instead to publish the fantasy (Keevak, 2004: 34).

In fact, several English editions of Candidius’s report had already appeared by 1704, and Psalmanazar was aware of at least one of them. In 1704 Psalmanazar became aware of the English translation published that same year (Churchill & Churchill, 1704: 526–533), which was based on an earlier German translation (Hulsius, 1649). Psalmanazar attacked the absurdity of Candidius’s account in the preface to the first edition of his Description,as discussed in more detail below (Psalmanazar, 1704: ii–iv). In addition to the 1704 translation, Candidius’s report had also appeared as a section in Montanus’s Atlas Japannensis (Montanus, 1670: 46–55), and the same section had been inserted into the English edition of Dapper’s Atlas Chinensis (Montanus, 1671: 10–17). However, it seems that these books had been forgotten by most by the beginning of the eighteenth century. They were only mentioned during the very late stage of the Psalmanazar affair.[4]

Psalmanazar’s Techniques for Faking Formosa

Psalmanazar was a master at manipulating facts and telling lies. Keevak (2004) indicates that Psalmanazar wisely chose an island in the Far East as his false origin. An island implies isolation, and the Far East ensures inaccessibility. Thus, an island in the Far East was a blank canvas, which allowed Psalmanazar to paint any fantasy he liked. His readers were also eager to learn anything that could fill this gap in knowledge. Psalmanazar had chosen Japan originally, but he then chose the more mysterious island, Formosa. Situated near China and Japan, Formosa could be influenced by both of them, allowing Psalmanazar to employ both Chinese and Japanese ingredients in his fantasy. Moreover, Formosa was nearly a terra incognita to European people, so Psalmanazar could monopolise the right to interpret the island that he claimed as his native home (Keevak, 2004: 15). In Psalmanazar’s own words, ‘I might the more easily make whatever I should say of it’ (Psalmanazar, 1765: 182).

His monopoly of interpretation is demonstrated by his using partial truths to fake information, manipulating the true parts to protect the whole lie from attack. A good example of his manipulation was his use of the names Tyowan and Formosa. Psalmanazar insisted that Tyowan and Formosa were different places and that the Dutch occupied only Tyowan. This was partially true. During the seventeenth century, Formosa and Tyowan were two distinct place names to the Dutch and English. Formosa meant the main island of today’s Taiwan, whereas Tyowan referred only to Anping in Tainan City, which was an offshore barrier sandbank until the nineteenth century. Formosa is now nearly always equated with Taiwan (Tyowan), but this was not so in the seventeenth century. Psalmanazar’s account extracted some truth from seventeenth-century fact but exaggerated the distance between Formosa and Tyowan to 12 miles, which is a fantasy (Psalmanazar, 1705: xxxv). By confusing geographical facts, he could claim that the Dutch colonised Tyowan (true) and not Formosa (actually, they did). This claim meant that the Dutch did not have to be involved in his fantasy.

Another strategy Psalmanazar devised was to diminish his opponent’s authority. At his first meeting with Father de Fontaney, he used de Fontaney’s confusion over Tyowan and Formosa to reinforce his argument that the Dutch colonised only Tyowan, not Formosa. Psalmanazar then invented a place name, Pak-Ando, from a real name for Taiwan in the early seventeenth century (Paccan), and he questioned whether de Fontaney knew the name. De Fontaney fell for Psalmanazar’s trick, answering that no Chinese words end in ‘k’ and that only one language was spoken in China. Father de Fontaney was incorrect; various dialects were spoken in China. Catching de Fontaney’s mistake, Psalmanazar highlighted China’s language diversity, which he probably learned from the Jesuits in school. By providing seemingly correct information about China, Psalmanazar successfully diminished de Fontaney’s authority on the Far East, making his objection to Psalmanazar’s account appear unreliable (Psalmanazar, 1704: viii–ix).

Psalmanazar adopted a similar strategy to counter those who cited Candidius when attacking him. In his memoir, Psalmanazar stated that Candidius’s report was full of ‘monstrous absurdities and contradictions’ (Psalmanazar, 1765: 182). To Psalmanazar, the greatest absurdity in Candidius’s report was the claim of restricted pregnancy. Psalmanazar discredited Candidius’s report that Formosan women were only permitted to become pregnant once they had reached 38 years of age. He criticised this custom as absurd and barbaric and stated that such an unbelievable custom must be false; thus, Candidius’s whole account must also be false (Psalmanazar, 1705: xl–xli). Despite Psalmanazar’s logical fallacy, he attempted to convince his readers that Candidius’s account contained errors whereas his own account—that of a native—was faultless and reliable.

In addition to using rhetoric, Psalmanazar appealed to sincerity to establish his authenticity. Stagl (2004) indicates that a travel writer in early modern Europe had to have visited the place they were writing about to claim sincerity. Psalmanazar even exceeded this requirement; he was a native of the place. By claiming this supreme sincerity, Psalmanazar again monopolised the right to interpret Formosa as long as no other Formosan was present to challenge him (Stagl, 2004: 200). Moreover, appealing to religion was another strategy for earning a reputation for sincerity. Yang Chi-ming (2011) highlights the role of religion in Psalmanazar’s performance. Psalmanazar’s Description demonstrated a skilled articulation of religion and ethnography, combining a flattery and praise of Anglicanism, while describing Formosa and his journey to England. Psalmanazar presented himself as a religious miracle (a native Formosan converted to Anglicanism) so that in the geographical part of the text, he could expound upon his native country as an undeniable and godlike speaker. Yang’s point also explains why Psalmanazar attempted to elicit sympathy from theist supporters. Theists were inclined to believe in miracles; therefore, they may have accepted Psalmanazar as a miracle and extended such a belief to his Description (Yang, 2011: 79, 82–86).

The Royal Society’s Scientific Methods

While Psalmanazar appealed to piety to support his account of Formosa, the natural philosophers in England who suspected his account or wanted to expose him, would not simply accept his religious appeal. A passage in Psalmanazar’s memoir vividly describes the tensions between Psalmanazar and the natural philosophers:

Drs Halley, Mead, and Woodward; and as I had then several zealous patrons of great candor and integrity, who made it their business to search into the bottom of those reports, they found so much sophistry and disingenuity in them, that I cannot but observe here, that the too visible eagerness of these gentlemen to expose me, at any rate, for a cheat, served only to make the more serious and candid part think the better of me, and to look upon me as a kind of confessor, especially as the three gentlemen abovementioned, but more particularly the first, were known to be no great admirers of the Christian. (Psalmanazar, 1765: 196–197)

Although the natural philosophers were not able to win the battle of public opinion, they sought materials to form a judgement that met modern scientific criteria and then objected to Psalmanazar’s account within their circle.

New scientific methods had appeared in the seventeenth century and this phenomenon was a consequence of social transformation kindled by flourishing commerce. Since the sixteenth century, European navigators had returned with not only Asian and American merchandise but also first-hand overseas information as a result of their long-distance voyages. Religious orders and commercial organisations also established their knowledge network to collect and circulate information and facilitate missionary work or commerce. Several trade centres, such as Lisbon, Seville, Antwerp, Amsterdam, and London emerged during this period, where merchants gathered to exchange commodities and information. This was the environment that gave birth to modern science. As Harold J. Cook has noted, merchants and scientists shared several common values, such as exchange, commensurability, precise language, and credibility. These values were associated with travel, monetary systems, information circulation, and trust in the commercial world. When these commerce-orientated values were applied to the study of nature, it led to the birth of modern science (Cook, 2007: 49–57).

Since the seventeenth century, many scientific methods had been proposed by leading scientists or natural philosophers, such as Francis Bacon, René Descartes, and John Locke. This paper cannot discuss all the scientific methods that emerged during the scientific revolution; instead, it focuses on the methodology developed by the Royal Society since its establishment in 1660. This methodology and its historical background were reviewed critically by Steven Shapin and Simon Schaffer.

According to Shapin and Schaffer (1985), Robert Boyle’s series of experiments to prove the existence of vacuums established a set of guidelines for the study of nature. These guidelines were influenced by the moral evaluation system of seventeenth-century England, and after their introduction in the 1660s, they became technologies for constructing matters of fact, which mirrored reality and helped to identify scientific facts. Shapin and Schaffer reported that Boyle employed three technologies in his experiments, namely material technology, literary technology, and social technology (Shapin & Schaffer, 1985: 25). In Boyle’s experiments, the material technology of the air pump was essential, because the air pump was the prerequisite of all experiments. Literary technology guided people to reproduce experiments to increase witnesses. Moreover, collective witnessing was a social technology that ensured certainty. If collective witnessing could provide the certainty that warranted a judge to sentence a criminal to death, it could also judge certainty in science (Shapin & Schaffer, 1985: 56). In addition to collective witnessing, a qualified witness with knowledgeability and faithfulness was required. Knowledgeability was determined by an individual’s education; thus, professors were more suitable scientific witnesses than farmers (Shapin & Schaffer, 1985: 58–59).

The social technology for ensuring certainty had been applied to the systematic collection of information since the establishment of the Royal Society. Robert Boyle proposed sending questionnaires to overseas outposts to collect foreign information (Stagl, 2004: 152). During the late seventeenth century, British academia also utilised questionnaires to collect geographical information. Charles W. J. Withers’s study shows that scholars of Scottish geography during the late seventeenth century distributed queries to parish ministers, nobility, and local gentry. Their social authority ensured they were deemed credible sources about their country. Although informants with a less prominent social status were not ignored, it took certain efforts to transform their reports into trustworthy and acceptable accounts in an English gentlemen’s world. Among these less prominent informants, a Highland-born researcher had struggled for years to bring his Highland fellows’ local knowledge to an academic audience in a credible form. With royal patronage, he eventually published a book about the Western Islands of Scotland in 1703 (Withers, 1999: 503–507, 511–517).

The year 1703 was also the year that Psalmanazar arrived in London. Like Gaelic-speaking Scottish Highlanders, Psalmanazar was also an outsider to gentlemanly London, making it difficult for him to gain credibility among an English audience. However, Psalmanazar’s bold performance overcame this disadvantage to some degree. At least, the fellows of the Royal Society were sufficiently interested to verify his account of Formosa.

Identifying trustworthy, unbiased, and consistent testimonies to triangulate Psalmanazar’s account was the only practicable method to verify him. According to this requirement, a person who had been to Formosa qualified as a knowledgeable witness. By identifying himself as a native of Formosa, Psalmanazar claimed supreme sincerity as a witness, but he was only one witness among several other reporters on Formosa, and his account contradicted theirs. The greatest rival of Psalmanazar was Candidius, who was frequently cited in objections to Psalmanazar. However, Candidius could not speak for himself in eighteenth-century England and his account could not be considered reliable. Even today, many details in Candidius’s account are unverifiable due to a lack of comparable sources. In the 1700s, no public account existed other than those of Psalmanazar and Candidius.[5] Thus, Psalmanazar and Candidius were two separate constellations that shared only one star—Formosa. Other than their common claim to report on Formosa, the two accounts had no similarities. Therefore, Psalmanazar could boldly criticise Candidius because in 1703 and 1704 no other account was available to his opponents.

The Royal Society’s Investigation

As mentioned above, although the Royal Society had been highly sceptical of Psalmanazar and his account since their first encounter on 11 August 1703, no reliable and qualified sources were available to refute him. They invited Father Jean de Fontaney to their second meeting with Psalmanazar on 2 February 1704, who was an authority on China and had just returned from the country. However, de Fontaney fell for Psalmanazar’s trick and thus could not contest his account. The Royal Society did not invite Psalmanazar to their regular meetings again but their investigation continued.

In March and April 1704, two entries in the minutes of the Royal Society indicate that they were collecting more information about the Far East. On 1 March 1704, Hans Sloane presented several Chinese objects provided by Father de Fontaney (Royal Society, 1704b). Father de Fontaney maintained regular communication with Sloane. In a letter dated 1 August 1704, de Fontaney reported counter-evidence to Psalmanazar’s autobiographical claims that no one in Avignon knew a Formosan as Psalmanazar claimed about himself (Hug, 2010: 119–120). In addition to de Fontaney’s intelligence shared with Sloane, the famous astronomer Edmond Halley presented ‘a very exact Chart of China and Formosa, drawn in the year 1667’ on 26 April, and this map differed greatly from the one published by Psalmanazar (Royal Society, 1704c). After the two meetings, Psalmanazar’s name was not mentioned again in Royal Society minutes of 1704. It appears that the society encountered some difficulties compiling strong evidence to refute Psalmanazar’s account because none of the fellows had visited Formosa.

Meanwhile, some private efforts were made outside the Royal Society. For example, Edmond Halley devised a clever test for examining Psalmanazar’s claims about Formosa. Given that Formosa was situated on the Tropic of Cancer, Halley knew that sunlight must come down a straight chimney on the summer solstice. Halley asked Psalmanazar if the sun shines downwards in Formosa every year, but Psalmanazar replied in the negative and argued that the Formosan chimney was not straight but crooked (Psalmanazar, 1705: xlviii–xlix). Halley perhaps felt he had successfully exposed Psalmanazar’s imposture, but Psalmanazar’s specious argument appeared to undermine Halley’s test. Psalmanazar dared to record this anecdote in the preface to the second edition; thus, he was probably confident that Halley’s test did not harm his authority.

Halley tested Psalmanazar in mid-1704, a year before the publication of the second edition of the Description. From mid-1704, the Royal Society’s investigations appeared to stagnate for nearly a year. The breakthrough occurred in spring 1705, when someone outside the society provided a qualified witness. The critical man was Henry Newman. Born in Massachusetts and a Harvard College graduate, Newman was a member of the Society for Promoting Christian Knowledge (SPCK) in London. Prior to his residence in England, Newman had been the librarian of Harvard College, a chaplain on a merchant ship, a merchant, and a magistrate in Newfoundland after his graduation with a Master of Arts from Harvard in 1690 (Cowie, 1956: 12). When Newman was in Newfoundland, he became a corresponding member of the SPCK. This society, as the name suggests, was an Anglican society devoted to the promotion of Christian knowledge among the poor, by establishing charity schools and workhouses, and distributing bibles (Cowie, 1956: 22–23). Moreover, the SPCK did not limit itself to activities in a particular region but readily served any place where people were interested in the Christian religion. Newman had surely felt the SPCK’s religious zeal when he was a corresponding member in Newfoundland. In a letter that arrived with books from the SPCK, Newman was asked to initiate a project to print a Spanish bible and distribute it in the Spanish colonies of the Americas (Cowie, 1956: 24).

The reason Newman was interested in verifying Psalmanazar’s account remains unclear, because the SPCK minutes do not contain any clues about this issue. However, in light of the religious initiatives of the SPCK, it can be inferred that they considered sending missionaries or employing other means of promoting Anglicanism in Formosa after reading Psalmanazar’s Description. If this was so, the SPCK had to first verify whether Psalmanazar’s claims were true. Newman had certain connections with the Royal Society. His colleague in the SPCK, former secretary John Chamberlayne, had been elected a fellow of the Royal Society in 1702. It was Chamberlayne who escorted Psalmanazar to the meeting with Jean de Fontaney on 2 February 1704. When Chamberlayne learned that Newman could obtain reliable information on Formosa, he urged Newman to ask more questions about the island. Eventually, the Suffolk physician, Samuel Griffith, offered the crucial testimony about Formosa, which he had visited in the 1680s. Two copies of the letters between Newman and Griffith remain in the Royal Society’s archives, including Newman’s copy read at the meeting on 20 June 1705, and the entries in the letter book.

Samuel Griffith was a merchant and physician in the East India Company (EIC). According to the EIC archives, Griffith joined the company in June 1671 as a merchant and was paid £30 annually. Griffith also specialised in medicine and pharmacy; therefore, he was appointed a physician when he was deployed to Formosa in 1672. From that point, he regularly appeared in letters sent from Formosa. His last appearance in Formosa according to the EIC archive was in a letter sent from Emoy (today’s Xiamen), dated 2 November 1677 (Chang et al., 1995: 113, 237, 289, 732). Griffith described his experience of serving in Asia in his second letter to Newman, and his account is consistent with the information in the archive. Moreover, he added that he had sailed from Batavia (today’s Jakarta) to England in 1682 and went to Bengal in 1684. He returned to England and retired in 1688.

In Newman’s first letter to Griffith, dated 24 April 1705, he mentioned Psalmanazar’s book and his suspicion that Psalmanazar was an impostor due to the inconsistency between Psalmanazar’s account and those of others. Newman heard from several people that Griffith had lived in Formosa; therefore, he sought his assistance with verifying Psalmanazar’s account (Newman, 1705a). Griffith’s reply was quick, dated 27 April, because he had purchased the book upon its publication and already perused it. In the reply, Griffith answered all 12 questions asked by Newman. Most answers were consistent with the current understanding, except for two mistakes. Griffith stated that the nation expelled by the Dutch was the Portuguese, but it was actually the Spanish. He also misstated the year that Koxinga (Zheng Chenggong) took over Formosa as 1660; it was actually 1662. Griffith described Psalmanazar’s account of an annual sacrifice of 20,000 nine-year-old boys as romance, and Psalmanazar’s journey with the Catholic father as not credible (Griffith, 1705a).

Newman’s second letter to Griffith was dated 29 May 1705. Newman requested a pardon for further troubling Griffith but stated that he had shown Griffith’s letter to an acquaintance in the Royal Society who hoped to hear more of Griffith’s account to enable them to expose Psalmanazar’s imposture (Newman, 1705b). The acquaintance was likely to have been John Chamberlayne because he was on the list of thanks after Griffith’s letters were read at a society meeting. Newman thus asked more questions about Psalmanazar’s book in the second letter. Again, Griffith gave a prompt reply, dated 1 June 1705. In the reply, Griffith provided a brief but clear description of Formosa, including its geography, commerce, products, and native culture. He concluded the letter with a description of his career in Asia (Griffith, 1705b). This conclusion was essential to the letter, because Griffith’s career supported the sincerity of his travelogue and confirmed the authenticity of his account. Moreover, as a travelling representative of a commercial organisation (the EIC), his travel and career were verifiable. Even today, Griffith’s account can be verified by consulting the EIC archive.

Finally, Newman presented the communications with Griffith to the Royal Society. The letters were read at the meeting on 20 June 1705 and constituted reliable facts about Formosa. The Royal Society then reached the conclusion that they could reasonably object to Psalmanazar’s account. The society thanked Newman, Griffith, and Chamberlayne (Royal Society, 1705). The collaboration between Chamberlayne and Newman not only concluded the Royal Society’s investigations, but also indicated the involvement of the SPCK in refuting Psalmanazar’s account. Unfortunately, no details about the Psalmanazar affair have been found in the SPCK minutes.

Reputation and Sincerity

The Royal Society was satisfied with the information provided by Newman and Griffith. However, this study will examine the applicability of the evaluation system used to reach their decision. In addition to a multiplicity of witnesses, the witness’ personal qualifications were also essential for establishing facts. Psalmanazar was considered an inferior witness because his sincerity was highly questionable. He was also benefitting from his account of Formosa financially and in terms of authority, fame, and zeal. He could not afford to lose the battle because that would leave him with nothing. By contrast, his opponents had high social status in English society or the greater republic of letters; Psalmanazar could not command any authority over them.

A good example was Nicolaas Witsen. Being a member of a prominent merchant-politician family and the burgomaster of Amsterdam from 1684 to 1705, Witsen was a prominent Dutch politician during the reign of William III. Before Witsen became a fellow of the Royal Society in 1689, he presented a map of Tartaria to the society in 1686. This map covered today’s Russia, central Asia, Mongolia, and the northwestern coast of the Pacific Ocean. The fellows of the society praised this map similarly to Columbus’ discovery of the New World, but they were also curious ‘by what Magick’ Witsen could have completed the map (Witsen, 1686: 492). Similar to Formosa, Tartaria was unobservable using the material technology of the time, and no comparable work was available in the late seventeenth century to verify Witsen’s map. Thus, Witsen’s map and Psalmanazar’s Description should have been equally subject to suspicion. However, the Royal Society clearly trusted Witsen more than Psalmanazar. The key difference may have been Witsen’s sincere and reasonable explanation of his sources. He stated that since his return from the embassy to Russia, he had maintained correspondence with people in all parts of the country, and collected journals and reports about Tartaria (Witsen, 1686: 493). As a learned scholar, a former member of the Dutch embassy to Russia, and the incumbent burgomaster of Amsterdam, Witsen had sufficient experience and reputation to convince people of the Tartaria map’s authenticity; therefore, his colleagues in the Royal Society accepted his account.

Another example was astronomer James Pound, who was elected a fellow of the Royal Society in 1699 but was not in England during most of the Psalmanazar affair (Foley, 1968: 94). His friend Samuel Reynolds and a group of Oxford scholars knew him well and never questioned his credibility or honesty. Reynolds also cultivated a warm friendship with Psalmanazar and faithfully trusted his account. However, when Reynolds received Pound’s letter from Batavia in 1706, he had to change his mind. Pound expressed a poor opinion of Psalmanazar’s account in his letter and instructed his friend to compare the catechisms in Formosan languages prepared by Dutch ministers (cited in Foley, 1968: 105). Pound’s letter to Reynolds is not extant, but it may be considered similar to Pound’s note about Formosa kept in the Bodleian Library, Oxford (Pound, [1705?]: 41–42). In this note, Pound refuted many of Psalmanazar’s ethnographic descriptions, although he also thought that the Portuguese had occupied Formosa. Pound never visited Formosa but stated that he heard about Formosa from Dutch and British people who had been there. Like Samuel Griffith, these people’s experiences in Formosa were also verifiable with extant archives. Oxford scholars were completely convinced by Pound’s letter, and Psalmanazar’s account could never triumph in a contest with these materials and people.

However, it is also necessary to note that, in both cases, the reporters (Witsen and Pound) had never been to Tartaria or Formosa. They loaned their social authority to their informants and adapted their accounts into trustworthy and reliable reports. This comparison reveals that the social technology employed by the Royal Society could only reach a socially agreed conclusion, rather than a definitive or empirical truth. This loophole, as well as the Royal Society’s silence on the Psalmanazar affair in public, gave Psalmanazar the opportunity to struggle to defend his Formosa account over several years.

The Aftermath of the Psalmanazar Affair

After the Royal Society decided to object to Psalmanazar’s account in mid-1705, Psalmanazar was still struggling to rescue his fame. In addition to reiterating his Formosa account, he also rallied supporters through religious appeals. In 1707 he published a dialogue between a Japanese individual and a Formosan person, attacking the deist positions of John Locke and John Toland (Psalmanazar, 1707). This dialogue echoed the lengthy discussions on theology in the Description, which took a strong anti-deist attitude, rallying the sympathy of theist supporters (Foley, 1968: 41).

Samuel Griffith’s letters were also exploited to support his Formosa account. In a pseudonymously authored pamphlet, An Enquiry into the Objections against George Psalmanaazaar of Formosa, a group of self-claimed plebeians asserted that they had performed a thorough investigation and reached a positive conclusion, supporting Psalmanazar’s account. They researched Formosa and Tyowan by comparing published and unpublished sources and making numerous enquiries. The authors reiterated Psalmanazar’s claims that the Dutch colonised only Tyowan and that the Siraya Formosans were coasters living in the remote region ([Psalmanazar?], [1710?]: 1–11). They also publicly answered Griffith’s letters and intentionally misinterpreted his account, claiming that it did not contradict Psalmanazar’s contention that Tyowan and Formosa were distinct places ([Psalmanazar?], [1710?]: 12–21). In addition to answering Griffith’s criticism, they created a non-existent person to support Psalmanazar’s account. This was a Polish missionary with a noble background who wrote a long account of Formosa that echoed that of Psalmanazar ([Psalmanazar?], [1710?]: 21–25). Psalmanazar mentioned this imaginary missionary in a private letter (cited in Foley, 1968: 92), indicating that he had participated in publishing this pamphlet.

These efforts to rescue Psalmanazar were in vain, and he eventually lost all credibility in Great Britain. However, the ‘knowledge’ provided by Psalmanazar did not stop circulating but continued to be reproduced and read outside the English natural philosophers’ circle. The French edition was reissued three times during the eighteenth century, and the German edition also appeared in 1716 (Foley, 1968: 82), more than a decade after the affair was settled in England. The silence of the Royal Society failed to warn their colleagues in the republic of letters about Psalmanazar’s invented account. Benjamin Breen found that the prominent French natural philosopher Comte de Buffon cited Psalmanazar to criticise Dutch traveller Jan Janszoon Struys’s account about tailed men on Formosa. Although Struys’s travel account was also suspicious and similar to common travel lies popular in the Malay world (Skott, 2014), Comte de Buffon was still wrong to refute Struys with Psalmanazar’s invented account. Nevertheless, Psalmanazar’s invented specimens of language, alphabet, and numbers were also seriously considered by several scholars until the late nineteenth century (Breen, 2013: 405–408). Even William Campbell, a famous Scottish missionary to Taiwan, and a pioneer of Taiwan studies, reprinted Psalmanazar’s 1707 dialogue with authentic Dutch-Formosan catechisms (Campbell, 1896: 103–121), and listed Psalmanazar’s works in the ‘Bibliography of Formosa’ in his authoritative translation of the Dutch archive of Formosa: Formosa under the Dutch (Campbell, 1903: 602).

An Honest Psalmanazar: Another Taiwan Study

In later life, Psalmanazar abandoned the identity of a native Formosan and established a normal life to earn a living with his linguistic genius and erudition as a literary hack (Foley, 1968: 40–45). He could not brush off the stigma of being the Formosan pretender, and he never revealed his real name. In the title of his memoir, he referenced himself as ‘commonly known by the name of George Psalmanazar’. However, he repented by discrediting his own false Formosa account and providing reliable information about the real Formosa.

Among the works he participated in, two books which endeavoured to provide readers with correct information about Formosa must be mentioned. First was cartographer Emanuel Bowen’s A Complete System of Geography (Bowen, 1747). According to Psalmanazar’s memoir, he volunteered to write the part about China and Formosa (Psalmanazar, 1765: 196). In this section, Psalmanazar revised and shortened Jesuit Joseph de Mailla’s 1715 report of his travel to Formosa the previous year for a survey of the atlas of China under imperial order.[6] This was a significant event for Psalmanazar. During the 1700s, he strongly criticised Jesuit Jean de Fontaney, but here he turned to the Jesuits for correct information about Formosa. In Bowen’s book, Psalmanazar explained in the third person that he had been influenced by people with bad intentions into his imposture. These people were now dead, he claimed, so he was free to tell the story as he wished. Psalmanazar also announced that he would leave a posthumous memoir that would tell the story. Now he appealed to the greatest source of sincerity—that of the man taken by death.

After this confession, however, Psalmanazar turned his pen again to Candidius. He dismissed Candidius’s account as ‘fiction’ and stated that it ‘deserves as little credit, as that of our pretended Formosan’ (Bowen, 1747: 251). This accusation shows that Psalmanazar never believed Candidius’s account was true. However, Psalmanazar did not explain his reason for discrediting Candidius in 1747. The real reason was revealed in 1759 in a large set of history books entitled An Universal History.

An Universal History (Sale et al., 1730–1766) was created by a group of book merchants in London in 1725. They planned to publish a history from the creation of the world to modern times. Psalmanazar participated in the project and became the editor-in-chief after the original person chosen for the job resigned. When the accounts of ancient times in An Universal History had been completed in November 1744, the publishers began to prepare the modern part, about the histories of nations that formed the modern world. Although the editor-in-chief of the modern part was Tobias Smollett, who wrote many sections himself (Martz, 1941), Psalmanazar also participated in the editorial work (Foley, 1968: 72). When all volumes of An Universal History had been completed in 1765, they numbered 23 volumes in folio or 64 volumes in octavo. These numbers greatly exceeded the publishers’ original plan, and the resultant book became a historical account unsurpassed in the eighteenth century (Abbattista, 1985: 9–20).

The section about Formosa appeared in the eighth volume of the modern part. The organisation followed the scheme created by Jesuit Martino Martini; describing China by province. Each province was given a general introduction, followed by descriptions of its prefectures. In the section on Fujian Province (Smollett, 1759: 45–60), An Universal History listed all prefectures but discussed the Quanzhou and Zhangzhou prefectures only briefly (eight lines each). The then increasingly prominent seaport of Xiamen, located between Quanzhou and Zhangzhou, received 17 lines. In sum, however, all these sections covered only one page.

By contrast, 13 pages were devoted to Formosa (Taiwan) and the Pescadores (Penghu), comprising more than 80 percent of the section on Fujian Province. This imbalance in page distribution shows that the editor strongly intended to provide reliable and detailed information about Formosa, which Psalmanazar had faked five decades earlier. The sources used in this section include de Mailla’s travel report in 1715, an extracted translation from the Gazette of Taiwan Prefecture (Taiwan Fuzhi), and Chinese Jesuit Dionysius Kao’s account of China and Formosa (Kao, 1706). Ironically, Psalmanazar had criticised Kao in 1706 (cited in Foley, 1968: 89) but relied on his account as well as de Mailla’s for the history. Eventually, Psalmanazar admitted that the Jesuit Society provided the most accurate information about China and Formosa at that time. Psalmanazar also stated his distrust of Candidius in An Universal History because he thought the report about Formosan abortions before women were 38 years of age was absurd (Smollett, 1759: 54). This statement was similar to that made in 1747; therefore, it is clear that Psalmanazar’s criticism of Candidius in 1705 was genuine. To Psalmanazar, Candidius’s account was as unbelievable as his own immature imposture; thus, this lack of credibility was unforgivable. However, it should be noted that it was Psalmanazar’s judgement that discredited Candidius. Due to the lack of direct evidence other than Candidius’s report, it is still difficult to determine if the ‘mandatory abortion’ ever existed in Siraya society. A convincing explanation is offered by anthropologist John Robert Shepherd (1995). Shepherd pointed out the traditional method to trigger miscarriage by massage had been safely practised in Thailand and the Philippines, and he argued successfully that the ‘mandatory abortion’ was to reconcile the conflict between male age grades and matrifocal households. Thus, from an anthropologist’s view, this seemingly incomprehensible practice was a rational solution to the matrilineal puzzle in Siraya society.[7]

Concluding Remarks

The Psalmanazar affair occurred during an age of change. Europeans were still digesting a tremendous amount of information that had been obtained by missionary groups and trading companies since the sixteenth century; natural philosophers were developing a new methodology for comprehending the world; and a new value system was being constructed in the aftermath of the Protestant reformation. During this age of uncertainty, Psalmanazar claimed to be an authentic native of Formosa to portray a fantasy of a country in the Far East and satisfy European people’s curiosity. His attempt was successful for a short period. However, Psalmanazar clashed with the increasingly influential natural philosophers. The natural philosophers found qualified witnesses to provide reliable testimonies, building their own facts that exposed Psalmanazar’s fantasy. Although Psalmanazar appealed for support from the Church of England through his strong piety, this strategy did not have much success during an age of disenchantment.

The Royal Society devised a methodology for collecting reliable testimonies to establish matters of fact that could refute Psalmanazar’s account. Their evidence did not rely on historical reports of foreign people who could not speak for themselves. Through a difficult process, the Royal Society eventually found Samuel Griffith to offer his testimony, which was a crucial step in the history of Taiwan studies. Previously, people had simply copied travellers’ accounts of the island without critically studying them. This lax attitude offered Psalmanazar’s imposture a chance for short-term success. Therefore, finding a living individual—Samuel Griffith—who could offer an empirical account and was ready for interrogation if necessary was critical. Moreover, fellow-elect James Pound also provided his empirical account of Asia as a modern anthropologist avant la lettre. Eventually, the endeavours of the fellows of the Royal Society culminated in the birth of Taiwan studies in Europe.

Although the story of the Psalmanazar affair may end here, this study also traced Psalmanazar’s efforts to provide accurate information about Formosa during his later years. His method was that of the old era; when writing, Psalmanazar copied and revised sources that he believed to be reliable, and he discovered the Jesuit reports at this time. This choice must have been revolutionary for this literary hack, demonstrating his deep repentance in later life. Moreover, Psalmanazar critically compared various accounts of Formosa and judged Candidius’s account as unreliable. Although Psalmanazar was hardly a scientist, he did his best as an editor and made a contribution to Taiwan studies during the mid-eighteenth century which remains worthy of admiration today.

Acknowledgements

I wish to thank both reviewers for offering thoughtful, encouraging, and inspiring comments that have helped me to revise and improve the manuscript.

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Footnotes

[1] The preface to the 1705 second edition of Psalmanazar’s An Historical and Geographical Description of Formosa has no pagination. I counted the pages and added pagination in citations to indicate a clear location.

[2] In this paper, Formosa and Taiwan are considered synonyms, though it was not Psalmanazar’s usage. When the context is before the twentieth century, ‘Formosa’ is used; otherwise, ‘Taiwan’ is used. However, to highlight the continuity of Taiwan studies in Europe, the study of Formosa is referenced ‘Taiwan’.

[3] The modern edition that reflects the published text in the seventeenth century was published by Jacob A. Grothe (1886: 1−35). A manuscript discovered in Utrecht, which was considered the closest copy to Candidius’s original, was published in 1999 (Blussé, Everts, & Frech, 1999: 91−137).

[4] Interestingly, it was probably Psalmanazar himself who cited Scottish traveller David Wright’s account of Formosa and ‘Tyowan’ from the book by Montanus (actually, Dapper) to support his account ([Psalmanazar?], [1710?], pp. iii–vi).

[5] In fact, there was David Wright’s account in Atlas Chinensis (Montanus, 1671: 17−37), but no one mentioned this account until a pamphlet, in which Psalmanazar probably participated (discussed below), cited Wright to support Psalmanazar’s fake account ([Psalmanazar?], [1710?]: addenda).

[6] William Campbell translated Joseph de Mailla’s letter in his Formosa under the Dutch (Campbell, 1903: 504−511).

[7] The author thanks one of the reviewers for the reminder that the original wording may look too credulous to mature Psalmanazar’s words and pointed out Shepherd’s study as a convincible theory to explain the ‘mandatory abortion’.