英文摘要 |
Between 1817 and 1867, officers and sailors of the British East India Company and the British Admiralty conducted numerous surveys of the ports and coastal waters of Taiwan and the Pescadores. Knowledge in the form of plans, charts, sketches, sailing directions, etc. produced via these surveys was transmitted to the Hydrographic Office in England, where staff of the British Admiralty catalogued, cross-referenced, and summarized that information. Subsequently, Admiralty cartographers retrieved the stored data to create a series of official maps that transformed the maritime space surrounding Taiwan and the off-shore islands into the flat surface of numbered Admiralty maps. With time, these cartographic representations became the standard authority used by foreign ship captains, merchants, explorers, and consular agents attempting to navigate "Formosan waters." Using this surveying of Taiwan as a case study, I seek to test claims regarding the roles played by British field agents in the development of "comprehensive knowledge of the peoples and territories" of the Qing empire. In particular, I examine the investigative practices and the epistemological objects of British surveyors, artists, and cartographers who produced the basic knowledge of Taiwan's maritime spaces. Secondly, I probe the impact of local knowledge, gained from fishermen, pilots, sailors, interpreters, officials, etc., in determining the content of the cartographic representations penned by British field agents. Finally, I analyze both the modalities and the networks by which this field-level information was communicated to "centers of calculation" in England, where it was processed as part of the larger epistemological complex of the British Empire. Sources for this article include cartographic charts, plans, surveys, landfall views, and textual supplements currently held in the British Hydrographic office archives; Admiralty maps published by the Hydrographic office; sailing directions in the India directory (1 836) and The China pilot (1855, 1861, 1864); and various publications penned by captains and crew members of British surveying vessels. |