探掘自然書寫的拼圖缺塊：帝國、旅行、十九世紀三位英美自然史旅者筆下的福爾摩沙

Abstract

自十九世紀以降，歐洲列強的帝國勢力快速擴張，此時美國的領土亦迅速擴張。西方列強仗著船堅砲利優勢在世界各處探尋自然物產和大地資源。歐美強權國家在海外殖民地的擴展為此時空催生了大量與旅行相關的書寫──亦即出自海軍探險者及軍艦成員、自然史科學家、海外商人、外交官等人的旅行書寫。在這段時空下，福爾摩沙早已成為西方列強眼中的肥羊。十九世紀以前，台灣鮮為人知。1860年，清廷因天津條約被迫開放打狗和基隆等港口，大批西方人士於是造訪福爾摩沙。此文聚焦於漢卡克、鼓里馬、禮密臣這三位十九世紀英美旅行者的自然史文本，探究他們如何為福爾摩沙這個神秘而詭譎的島嶼書寫自然史、如何為台灣的本土物種和自然資源做科學觀察與描述、如何在其充滿帝國主義動機的旅行自然史作品中交織夾雜了他們的初期環境意識與生態感知。藉此探討，此文填補自然書寫的拼圖缺塊，呈現十九世紀英美旅行者筆下的福爾摩沙自然史建構以及初期生態感知，同時為生態批評與自然書寫拓展新疆域。  Prior to the mid-nineteenth century, Formosa was little known and largely unexplored by English and American travelers. After the discovery of Formosan coal by Anglo-American navy explorers in 1847 and Formosa’s ports had been opened for trade by the Western Powers in 1860, a great number of Western explorers, navy investigators, naturalist scientists, merchants, and diplomats visited Formosa. Through their writings, these travelers documented the island’s unknown landscapes and natural resources, including heavy timber and forest trees. This paper focuses on the traveling natural histories of three nineteenth-century English and American travelers —William A. Hancock (1847-1914), and Francis Henry Hill Guillemard (1852-1933), and James Wheeler Davidson (1872-1933). It explores the historical and cultural underpinnings of natural resources in the island’s eco-geopolitical history and is interested to examine the ways these travel writings represented Formosa’s environmental productions (such as coal, sulphur, camphor). It addresses the following questions: What might be the links between nineteenth-century imperial motivations and representations of Formosa’s natural resources? How might the genre of natural history relate to imperial-colonial travel narratives and science narratives? How did Hancock, Guillemard, and Davidson report their scientific observations on Formosa’s natural productions? How might British and American imperial travel narratives reveal an environmental consciousness embedded in the history of colonial/imperial exploitation of Formosa’s natural resources?