Formosa: How the West "Discovered" an Island That Already Had People Living On It

30-second overview: The name "Formosa" has circulated on European maps for over four hundred years — but it may never have been given by the Portuguese in the first place. In 1704, a Frenchman who had never reached Asia spent a decade in London pretending to be a "Formosan native," using an alphabet and religion of his own invention. Before and after that, Dutch missionaries, British consuls, American diplomats, and French military officers each wrote about this island in their own language. But the Austronesian peoples of the island had already been there for six thousand years. They never needed to be "discovered."

A "Formosan Native" Who Had Never Set Foot on Formosa

London, 1704. A young man calling himself "George Psalmanazar" published An Historical and Geographical Description of Formosa, which immediately caused a sensation in European intellectual circles¹.

The book described a breathtaking island nation: 18,000 boys sacrificed annually to the gods; men who walked the streets fully naked; veins of gold and silver running through the mountains. He also invented a "Formosan alphabet" and "Formosan grammar," teaching several courses at Oxford University².

Jesuit missionary Father Fontenay, who had lived in East Asia for years, challenged his account to his face. But Psalmanazar was too eloquent, rebutting every point persuasively — and London society chose to believe him. The hoax lasted nearly ten years³.

His true identity remains uncertain. Most scholars believe he was from southern France, possibly the Languedoc region. He died in London in 1763; his posthumous manuscript confessed that everything had been fabricated⁴.

Curator's Note
Psalmanazar's story is not merely a historical joke. It reveals a structural problem in 18th-century European knowledge production: when a white man in fluent Latin, armed with an elaborately designed "exotic civilization," took the academic podium, no one in the audience thought to verify — because no one had been to Formosa. "Discovery" presupposes ignorance, and ignorance can be filled with any imagination. What Psalmanazar filled it with was every European fantasy about "the Orient."

"Formosa": A Name Possibly Given to the Wrong Island

The standard textbook story runs: Portuguese sailors passing through the Taiwan Strait in the 1540s cried out "Ilha Formosa!" (Beautiful Island!) — bestowing the name. But this may be wrong⁵.

Research by Academia Sinica Taiwan History Institute scholar Weng Jia-yin indicates that the island labeled "Fermosa" on a 1554 Portuguese navigation chart runs northwest to southeast and is approximately 100 km long. Taiwan runs northeast to southwest and is approximately 400 km long. That "Fermosa" more likely refers to Okinawa⁶.

The earliest clearly identifiable European document using "Formosa" to refer to Taiwan is the 1584 navigation log of Spanish captain Francisco Gali, recorded as "As Ilhas Fermosas" (those beautiful islands)⁷. "Formosa" as a settled name for Taiwan was only truly established after the Dutch East India Company (VOC) occupied southern Taiwan in 1624.

In 2019, Taiwan's official yearbook quietly revised its language on this subject, no longer asserting "named by the Portuguese" and adopting a more cautious formulation⁸.

For four hundred years Taiwan was known internationally as "Formosa." But the name may have been pointing to a different island from the very beginning.

People Had Been Here for Six Thousand Years

Before any European arrived, Taiwan had been inhabited for at least six thousand years. The Tapenkeng culture (approximately 5,000–4,500 BCE) is the earliest known Neolithic culture in Taiwan, closely linked to the expansion of Austronesian peoples⁹. Linguistic and genetic research indicates Taiwan was very likely the homeland of the entire Austronesian language family — which spans the Pacific and Indian Oceans and encompasses a population of 400 million.

Chinese historical texts recorded Taiwan earlier than European documents, but with similar vagueness. Whether "Yizhou" in the San Guo Zhi or "Liuqiu" in the Sui Shu refers to Taiwan remains a scholarly debate¹⁰.

✦ "The people on the island never needed to be 'discovered.' They knew where they lived. 'Discovery' is a word that only works when you're looking from outside the island."

The First Europeans to Actually Set Foot on the Island

In 1624, the Dutch East India Company established Fort Zeelandia at Tayouan (present-day Anping) in southern Taiwan, beginning 38 years of colonial rule¹¹.

Dutch missionary George Candidius wrote in 1628 what stands as the first serious ethnography of Taiwan by the Western world. He described the Siraya people's inibs (female priests), practices of induced abortion, beliefs about souls, and ritual ceremonies¹². This was not Psalmanazar-style fantasy — it was the field notes of someone who had actually lived among the villagers.

In 1670, Dutchman Olfert Dapper published a work that included a dedicated chapter on "the Island of Formosa"¹³. Dapper himself had never left the Netherlands, but he compiled and edited first-hand reports from VOC merchants and missionaries, accompanied by fine copper engravings. Europeans' visual imagination of Formosa derived largely from the illustrations in that book.

The 19th Century: Naturalists, Consuls, and Officers

After 1856, Western writing about Taiwan entered a new phase — no longer fragmentary accounts from missionaries and merchants, but systematic scientific surveys and diplomatic reports.

Robert Swinhoe was the first. The British consul stationed in Taiwan wrote 52 papers in four years, documenting 227 species of birds. What he saw was species.

Charles Le Gendre was the second. The US consul at Amoy made eight visits to Taiwan, leaving behind 1,600 pages of manuscript. What he saw was intelligence.

French military officer Eugène Garnot was the third. He came to Taiwan during the 1884–1885 Sino-French War and wrote a memoir of the expedition. What he saw was a battlefield.

French military medical assistant René Coppin wrote letters to his mother from the field recording seasickness, mildewing clothes, and four daily deaths from disease¹⁴. What he saw was suffering.

These observers share one characteristic: all of them came from outside the island, and each wrote about it through his own language, his own classification system, his own framework of interests. Their records are immensely valuable, but each carries an implicit premise: that Taiwan is an "other" that needs to be described.

Curator's Note
The National Museum of Taiwan History (NMTH)'s "Overseas Historical Sources and Taiwan" project has organized the manuscripts, correspondence, photographs, and maps left by 19th-century Western observers. Douglas Fix and his team spent over twenty years mining these documents from the Library of Congress, the Bibliothèque nationale de France, and Britain's National Archives — translating, collating, and publishing them¹⁵. The project itself is an act of "reversal": Taiwanese scholars proactively reclaiming the Western gaze directed at Taiwan, then re-reading it through their own framework.

From Being Written About to Writing for Oneself

In 1990, historian Ts'ao Yung-ho (曹永和) proposed the "Taiwan Island Historiography": with the island itself as the subject, observing how different incoming cultures in different periods interacted and were reconstituted on the island¹⁶.

This perspective overturned the entire narrative: Taiwan is not an appendage of any empire — not an object to be "discovered." It is an island that for six thousand years has been continuously landed upon, settled, and departed from by different human populations. The Portuguese, Dutch, Spanish, Qing dynasty, Japan, and the Nationalist government are each only one chapter in island history.

James W. Davidson's 1903 The Island of Formosa, Past and Present remains the most complete English-language history of Taiwan to this day¹⁷. Yet even in this most rigorous work, the word "Formosa" in the title is still a name affixed from outside.

In 1704, Psalmanazar invented a nonexistent Formosa in London. Three hundred years later, NMTH researchers flew to Washington, Paris, and London — and brought back the real Formosa, page by page, from archives scattered across those countries¹⁸.

From fiction to reclamation. From being written about to writing for oneself. Three hundred years to travel that road.

The people on the island are still traveling it.

Further reading:

• Taiwan Island Historiography — Ts'ao Yung-ho's 1990 framework: understanding history with the island as the subject, not from the perspective of any empire
• Prehistoric Era and Indigenous Peoples — Taiwan's six thousand years before European "discovery": Tapenkeng culture and the Austronesian homeland
• Dutch, Spanish, and Koxinga Era — The first European colonists' 38 years in Taiwan; where George Candidius's ethnography begins
• Robert Swinhoe — Archetype of the 19th-century Western observer: looking at Taiwan with scientific eyes, leaving a record that has outlasted his diplomatic career

References