"I often feel like the fool on the hill," quips Professor Leonard Blusse in his office at Leiden University's Institute of Sinology, quoting a line from the popular Beatles song of the 1960s.

Comparatively speaking, Professor Blusse is one of the younger and haedier "fools" on the sparse hilltop of research related to the history of the Dutch occupation of Taiwan, because in Taiwan and Japan there are a few old hands who have been cultivating that piece of academic territory for decades.

One of them is Ts'ao Yung-ho, the only Chinese specialist in the history of Taiwan who can read early Dutch, and another is Nakamura Takashi, an authority on history at Japan's Tenri University, who laments the fact that fewer and fewer students in Japan these days are going in for rangaku, or "Dutch studies."

The main reason that scholars on Taiwan have been lax in studying the island's seventeenth century history, Dr. Nakamura feels, is the shortage of historical materials available to them. During the seventeenth century the aborigines still lived by hunting and fishing, and the Han Chinese immigrants were mostly poor farmers and fishermen who left no written records behind, while the historical documents of the Cheng clan (descendants of the Ming loyalist Koxinga) were destroyed during the Ching dynasty. As a result, almost the only historical records that have survived are the files of the Dutch East India Company, which have been preserved by the Dutch government.

Professor Blusse graduated from Leiden University's Institute of Sinology in 1970 and then studied in the department of archaeology and anthropology at National Taiwan University, where he engaged in extensive field research with Professor T'ang Mei-chun. "I was probably the first foreigner to do field work in the Pescadores," he recalls with pride.

The local inhabitants treated their guest from afar with special warmth, and as Blusse got to know them better, the old-timers began to tell him stories about the "red-haired barbarians" of the distant past.

"Before I went to Taiwan, I had no idea that the Dutch had been there for some 38 years," he says. As he became more and more interested in that episode of three centuries ago, someone recommended that he look up Ts'ao Yung-ho, who was then in charge of the graduate school library at National Taiwan University. Ts'ao promised to "guide him along, if he was interested." And that was how he began his study of the period of the Dutch occupation.

As for Ts'ao Yung-ho, who is now a research member in the Institute of the Three Principles of the People at Academia Sinica, the story of his connection with old Dutch is even more curious.

Ts'ao began working in the National Taiwan University library shortly after the Retrocession in 1945, and he audited a course on relations between China and the West during the Middle Ages at the same time. Wanting to learn more about the Dutch East India Company and the Dutch occupation, he began studying Dutch from a Japanese primer and started to make use of the historical materials that had been left behind by a Japanese professor.

Ts'ao also turned his hand to writing papers, which happened to come to the attention of Professor Iwao Seiihi, who had just returned to Japan. Professor Iwao helped him obtain a oneyear grant from UNESCO to study with him in Tokyo.

Some people have called Ts'ao "Taiwan's Wang Yun-wu [China's most noted modern-day autodidact]" because of his outstanding achievements through diligent self-study, but Ts'ao just shrugs: "I've only been following my interests."

Besides following his interests, Ts'ao, like his old teacher Iwao, has always done all he can to help along others. It was under Ts'ao's influence that Blusse went to Japan to research materials after finishing his studies in Taiwan. He studied at Kyoto University for three years, returning to the Netherlands in 1975, where he worked at the Indonesian Studies Center and then took over the Center for the History of European Expansion in 1976. The next year he began collating the center's historical documents on Zeelandia, as the early Dutch called Taiwan, and planning publication of Daily Registers of Taiwan.

Since 1977, scholars from the ROC, the Netherlands, and Japan have worked together putting in order tens of thousands of documents from the period 1629 to 1662, which are being published in four volumes by the Netherlands' authoritative national publishing house. The first volume appeared in 1986, and the second is about to go to print. The whole project represents a major event in the study of both Chinese and European history.

From the standpoint of Taiwan history, Ts'ao says, the period of the Dutch occupation is highly significant as the era when Taiwan entered formal recorded history. On the level of Chinese history, it was the main stage of expansion of the Han Chinese to Taiwan and it worth exploring for the light it can shed on the process of development, on relations between the Han Chinese and the aborigines, and on the history of the Cheng clan. And from the viewpoint of world history, it offers a fresh and vivid approach to seventeenth century maritime trade and international relations.

"If younger scholars can't take over for him for a while, at least Mr. Ts'ao could come back to Holland and do some more research!" Professor Blusse says with a note of impatience. He adds that Ts'ao's earlier stay in Holland, when he took part in editing Dagregisters Taiwan, was made possible by a grant from the Philips Corporation, and he wonders whether a company from Taiwan might be able to come forward and help now that its firms rank among the tops in the world.

Ts'ao, indifferent to fame and nursing an ailing wife, has no plans to make such a long journey. But with fewer and fewer students coming to his house to learn Dutch, he hopes, "It would be nice if Professor Blusse could come here and teach for a year or two to attract more students."

The "fools on the hill" keep singing away, waiting for those with wisdom enough to hear.

[Picture Caption]

The three leading authorities on the history of Taiwan during the Dutch occupation: from left to right are Ts'ao Yung-ho, Nakamura Takashi, and Leonard Blusse.

Before he started researching the sub ject, Professor Blusse, like most other Dutch people, knew nothing of the Dutch occupation of Taiwan.

The Dutch National Archives contains abundant historical materials on the period of the Dutch occupation.

Frail and yellowing, the Records of Zeelandia are in urgent need of attention from friends of learning.

Ts'ao Yung-ho, who has "just followed his interests," has a reputation as "Taiwan's Wang Yun-Wu."

After more than a decade of labor, six scholars from the ROC, the Net herlands, and Japan finally achieved initial results with publication of the first volume of　Daily Registers of Taiwan. Volume two is in press.

Ts'ao Yung-ho has played a key role in carrying on research in the history of the Dutch occupation.

Formosa Under the Dutch, from which this illustration is taken, is a reference work that cannot be neglected in studying the period.

Nakamura Takashi,.

Leonard Blusse.

Before he started researching the sub ject, Professor Blusse, like most other Dutch people, knew nothing of the Dutch occupation of Taiwan.

The Dutch National Archives contains abundant historical materials on the period of the Dutch occupation.

Frail and yellowing, the Records of Zeelandia are in urgent need of attention from friends of learning.

Ts'ao Yung-ho, who has "just followed his interests," has a reputation as "Taiwan's Wang Yun-Wu.".

After more than a decade of labor, six scholars from the ROC, the Net herlands, and Japan finally achieved initial results with publication of the first volume of　Daily Registers of Taiwan. Volume two is in press.

Ts'ao Yung-ho has played a key role in carrying on research in the history of the Dutch occupation.

Formosa Under the Dutch, from which this illustration is taken, is a reference work that cannot be neglected in studying the period.