Sonntag, 3. Dezember 2017

Photographic Documents towards the Contemporary Intercultural Living Together in Germany









Ficition, Fantasy or Forgotten Paradise ?



THE ORANGES FROM FOKIEN 

or

NASSAU BAY AND ISLAND 
NEAR SWATAU (SHANTOU)
 KWANG TUNG PROVINCE



Dipl.Biol. Peter Ulrich Zanger



A parallel Contribution to


Foto CID in China








Blog in Edition 

since 4. December 2017



1. Introduction

An old legend tells us the following episode about what - maybe ? - could be the Genesis of the historic transitory namegiving in german language to a settlement at the nowadays Rongjiang River mouth at the Southern Chinese Coast :

"Discovering the far east of Asia for the European noble counties in the year 1669, two ships sailing under the flags of the White Swan from Oldenburg and the golden Nassau Lion arrived simultaneously at the estuary of the then still HO called River. The landing boat of the Oldenburg ship was faster approaching the beach, so that Arthur von Solenburg, the captain of the "Freiesland", stood already with both boots inside the sand where he rammed the flagpole of his counties banner in the virgin beach when the dinghy of the "Lahnwein" came near with William the Angry from Nassau on board, who wanted to be the first to marker the coast for his governance. "NASHAU ?" he cried exited from inside his boat, driven by the heavy oaring of his hungry sailors. "´S WAT !" answered unimpressed from the beach the quietly there waiting Freiesland captain Arthur and offered him in his wide outstreched hands two SINASAPPLES that growed in unimanginable abundance all along the coastline."

Knowing Germany as a German, it is rather probable that from this rich in content conversation later could have emerged the name of S-WAT-AU for the new settlement founded at the simultaneous landing site of the two German sailing ships in 1669. To foreigners without German language knowledge must be explained, that "Nashau" would have been understood by Arthur von Solenburg as "Shall I beat your nose ?" and that his answer "´S Wat" spoken in the dialect from Friesland meant "Ess was" in high German what in English can be understood as "eat something". Sinasapples, so far probably everone understands, are "Chinese Apples" or better said the citrus fruit Orange.




"Do you know the country where the oranges flower ?"
Floral Artwork by Jacqueline Marx
1983



Reality or phantasy the introductory anecdote ? A fact that doesn´t matter so much, because the reason, why the edition of this article was started consist in the much more concrete and comprehensible documented fact, that on at least three ancient world maps a coastline sector of Southern China was first called "Nassouwe Bay" in 1662 (Peter Goos), then 
"Nassou : wen bay" in 1670 (Nicolaes Visscher) and at length "Nasß ouws bay" in 1685 (Johannes van Keulen). Curious is, that on all furtheron studied maps of the Southern Chinese coast opposite of southern Taiwan the during four decades Nassau Bay named place cannot be found again, meanwhile other ancient Nassaus as the Nassou Island west of Sumatra and the Nassau River in Queensland remain mentioned on most maps until contemporary times. (Annotation: It must be mentioned here, that not already all exisiting nautial charts from 1600 - 1900 have been submitted to this investigation so that the exact time lapse of the dissappearance of the name Nassau Bay ist still unknown)

Which historic context contributed to the exemplary different site name development in China when most other Nassau or Orange name foundations during the historic european colonization centuries have been maintained so resolute ? The most probable hypothesis is the following :

Many of the world´s Nassaus and Oranges founded by British, Dutch and German colonial expeditions have been fortified as military fortresses and remaind as visible and sensible symbol of alien intrusion in the already exisiting local societies, so that the European habitants of these sites maintained inside their architectonic isolation their initial european culture and personalities, what often inhibited their sane natural growing together with the native population and culture. In consecuence their colonial settlement remained named in foreign language over centuries.

In China a hopeful different development might have ocurred, that contributed fast to the disappearance of the new site name given in foreign language. This difference might consist in the good understanding of the european newcomers with the local native population and their fast adaption to the already existing culture in China, so that the immigrants where assumed fast by the local people and integrated in their new society that teached to them most unknown knowledge and that they inspired with their own knowledge and abilities, what led to an mutual enrichment - a fact that probably promoted a certain tendency to hide the new gathered social status of acceptance, integration and consciousness by transforming initial German namegivings into Chinese language.




2. The Nautical Chart Interpretations

The history of mapping and map drawing from it´s mere beginnings until the actuality is an interesting metamorphosis from drawing dreams and phantasies over more and more realistic imaginary paintings of more and more exact maps that detail more and more reality-near the earth surface until the final precision of the modern satellite born digital photographic earth overviews that substitute nowadays our common printed or painted orientation helps in alien surroundings.

Before international conventions agreed worldwide unique standards about geographical and nautical maps and their conveniences, mapping was a more or less secret-society styled, monopolized orientation-knowledge gathering for more or less open military and colonial interest groups. Every country or county or town with worldwide active shipping companies elaborated mostly secret their own maps and sea charts to reach their oversea trade places what led to a numerous spreading of rather different maps and multilingual site name attributions for one and the same place on earth.

The most active european oversea trade and former colonial countries Portugal, Spain, Italy, France, Netherlands, England, Germany and Denmark tried to subdivide the earth surface in influence areas for their economic exchange, what led to a monopolization of the distribution of the nowadays convenient world site names on European maps in english, spanish, portuguese, netherland or german language. European names often overdrawed until today the real or originary native site names. 

In world areas where native nations and languages predominated over european cultural intromissions as for example in East Asia, the european mapping between 1500 and 1950 generated an interesting mélange of transitory site names in different languages that have been seldom able to overposition native given geographical site definitions as town, bay, river or mountain names. But also native languages are product of linguistic evolutions so that it can be supposed, that a lot of place names now considered as originary Chinese, Japanese or Corean might be phonetical integrations of european site names once given on a map or to a new founded trade post or mission, but lateron disappeared because the native language was stronger and more able to integrate.

The main example considered in the following study is the nowadays island name of NAN`AO, what is translated from chinese 南澳 to english as "South" and it´s possible genesis from the european term "Nassau" that sounds phonetically rather similar. The same could be presumed for the words Guang and Orang but would maybe blow up this framework.

Parallel to the question, if "Nan´Ao" at all could be a site name and linguistic transition product of the German word "Nassau", the question is studied, why during the course of the centuries from 1670 until 1900 the Nassau site name got lost on european maps of the South China Coast meanwhile at most other world´s places named Nassau it is maintained more or less in it´s originary version. This comparation could give a key to the understanding of a supposed systematic spreading of this site name all over the world on european maps in a way, that the name Nassau was attributed to places with a specific significance and very often related to nearby places named Orange and Goere. 

This systematic rather probable was military. Nassau as Central German county between Coblence and Frankfurt historically was a rather poor agricultural mountain region during medieval times with high deforestation and population growth rates and an enormeous emigration pressure. Lacking of own coasts, harbours or fleets led to the secondment of young men as soldiers or mercenaries under foreign flags as participants in foreign military campaigns (Cruzades 1000-1200, US Independence War 1775-83, Napoleonic Campaigns in Egypt and Spain 1790-1820) or colonization projects of Spanish, Dutch and English East- and West India Compagnies. Often the Nassau troops became quartered in fortresses named "in honour to their queen" Nassau or Orange. These sites remained as fortresses under same names until today for example in Senegal, Ghana, Bahamas, Lesser and Netherland Antilles, Brazil, Kwandang / Celebes Island, Ternate, Banda Neira, New Jersey and New York (See: Orange Nassau World Map). 

Relationed to military conflict, fighting and trouble, the term Nassau that in German names the town of Nassau in the Lahn Valley in the popular regional dialect is sometimes transformed from it´s original meaning "nass Au" (= wet riverbank, riparian floodplain) to "nass Aug" (= wet eyes, eyes with teardrops, crying eyes) or "Nas hau" (= nose beat, strike on the nose) what opens a wide interpretation gameboard for all distinct character types. Goere meanwhile, the often related term, means "bad educated girl" as well in german as in dutch language. Could a historic site naming of an new found place on a map in a foreign country with the terms Nassau and Goere indicate to the following travellers "Here we met a girl so bad that we got strikes on our noses and cried ?". 

Let´s continue to spin this thought thread more far then we come to the conclusion, that the experience with nose striking native girls led at many sites of the worlds coasts to the construction o a fortified camp for the mercenary men to protect them but in China presumably the native girls where able to give a different direction to this development and adopted the beaten and crying soldiers into their villages as domesticated husbands. 







3. Site location of the Nassau Bay in China on the maps of Goos (1662), Visscher (1670) and van Keulen (1685)

Painted evidence that proofed the existence of a Nassau Bay in China titeled so by Dutch world map cartographers existed during several decades in the 17th century. At the time of the edition of this article the author hasn´t yet found on which´s ships expedition is based the replication of this name-giving assumed by the cartographers. Sources most probably must have been reports of a VOC captain or an geographic scientist that accompanied the expedition or the evaluation of a ship´s logbook. For common participants of VOC´s ships excursions towards East Asia it was strictly forbidden to tell about facts and details learned during the voyage. 

The early namegiving on a sea chart probably was motivated to generate interest in future expeditions towards East Asia inside the members of the Dutch-German House of Nassau that pretended to establish more trade relationships with overseas. The cartographic naming dates so about two decades after the return of John Maurice Prince of Nassau-Siegen from Brazil where he occupied the function of a Dutch governor in Recife from 1636 until 1644 and 6 decades after the name-giving to the Island Mauritius in honor of Maurice of Orange from Nassau-Dillenburg, a second member of the House of Nassau that also carried the name "Moritz".

In fact, 100 years after the sea chart registry of a chinese Nassau Bay Charles Henry Nicolaus Otto from Nassau-Siegen participated in the expedition of Louis Antoine de Bougainville who sailed around the world in order to discover the legendary "terra australis incognita" from 1766-1769 parallel to the expeditions of Phillip Carteret and Samuel Wallis which followed the same vision. The voyager described "La Nouvelle Cythére" (Tahiti) but - following the expedition reports - none of their 4 ships approached to the Strait of Taiwan, where the chinese Nassau Bay or the later "Swatow" named town have been situated. The ships names have been "La Boudeuse", "L´Etoile", "HMS Dolphin" and "HMS Swallow".


Now the exact localization of that first in 1662 by Pieter Goos registered bay at the Southern Chinese coast opposite the southern tip of the Taiwan Island is not that simple but also not impossible. Rather unequivocally mapped are the Bay of Canton and Hongkong and the Bay of Hsiamen (Xiamen / Amoy) with the greater Quemoy (Djinmen / Kinmen) Island and a number of smallest islands. Between both and relatively more near to Amoy-Xiamen remains only the Bay of Shantou with the greater Island of Nan´Ao as inmediate neighbourhood of the Nassouws Bay. 




Sea Chart (extract) of the Dutch cartographer Pieter Goos from 1662 titeled "Paskaerte zynde t´Oosterdeel van Oost Indien, met alle de Eylanden daer ontrendt geleegen van C. Comorin tota aen Iapan" from 1662 that markers a "Nassouws Bay" (yellow highlighted) between the "Rivier van Canton" and the "Rivier van Chincheo" (= Zhangzhou / Xiamen Bay).  


Transferred to a sattelite map, the situation of the Nassouws Bay and it´s northern neighbourhood would be the following:


Sattelite view of South China with the localization of the sites mapped by Pieter Goos in 1662
Source: Google Earth / modified


By the meaning of the Dutch namegivings also the exact localization of the coastline charateristics should not be impossible. "Lang Voorland" indicates a "Long Promontory" that in fact at the coastline sector in mention can be found twice in the site of the map description in the surroundings of Dongshan. The "Kloex Bay" (= "Bay of Happyness") must be then the Jiushen Bay or the Dongshan Bay itself what also sounds probable due to the hidden anchor site that provides there the coast what is a "great luck" or fortune for a sailing ship. The next southward following bay is the Nan´Ao Island Bay that then corresponds to the "Drooge Inbocht" of the old map from 1662. "Drooge Inbocht" in Dutch indicates a bay that is "dry inside" what can be understood as a beach without river mouth or an river estuary wetland that does not allow to sail through. Exactly that environmental condition nowadays we find at the Sanyu Islet between Jingzhouzhen and Haishanzhen in the deep inside of the former "Drooge Inbocht".


The proper Nassouws Bay then would be located southward besides the RongJiang (before: Han) River estuary and occupy the sites of the Haimen Bay, Tangbian Bay and Guang´ao Bay.



Hypothetic localization of the Happyness Bay (Kloex Bay), the Long Land-Tongue (Lang Voorlandt), the Dry-Inside Bay (Drooge Inbocht) and the soft sculptured Nassouws Bay that nowadays corresponds probably to the HAIMEN BAY at Longtianzhen and the Lianjiang River mouth. 



Not 10 years later the Dutch cartographer Nicolaes Visscher published a next map of "East India" that paints the coastline of "Quan Tung" and "Fokien" (= Fujian) more exact and detailled but still with a lot of differences referring to the nowadays known locations and numbers of bays, river mouthes and islands. On his map drawing, Nicolaus Visscher repeats some namegivings from the map of Pieter Goos as "Reyerßsen Bay", "Nassou wen Bay", "Drooge Bay" and "Kloex Bay". The Nassou Bay - that calls for attention - on Visscher´s map is situated at the site of a bifurcates river mouth that corresponds probably to the nowadays Rongjiang River estuary, even if the river map seems to integrate simplifying the Rongjiang and the Hanjiang River courses. Instead of the names of the "Lang Voorlandt" the site descriptions Victorie Bay and Walvis Bay are attributed and another new site name appears with "Goere voor Goere" at the place of "Drooge Inbocht" on the map of Pieter Goos.



Extract from the Map "Indiae orientalis nec non Insularum Adiacentium Nova Descriptio" edited in 1670 by Nicolaes Visscher that shows the Nassou wen Bay at the Rongjiang River mouth.



In several furthermore characteristics the map of Visscher is distinct from the earlier and later maps drawn by P. Goos and J. van Keulen. It shows already the borders of the Fujian and Guandong Provinces and draws unorthodox several bay names inside the ocean what also could be a product of corrections written or painted later in time. River courses and Province limits indicate, that the cartographer had other and more information sources as his both colleagues. 

The map of Visscher also registers as special character near the Reyerßsen Bay and Nassou wen Bay the cross and circle symbols "+o+" that maybe might indicate dangerous reefs or places of shipwrecks. Similar cross symbols appear later in 1685 also on the map of van Keulen in front of the Penghu or Pescadores Islands. Single cross symbols as indicators for ship wreck sites are used on popular German navy-history maps leastways during the era 1860-1960.

Even if nearly 10 more years passed by since the drawing of the second here known map of Nicolaus Visscher with a Nassau Bay registry near the nowadays Shantou, a next map drawn by the Dutch cartographer Johannes van Keulen in 1680 and edited in 1685 seems to be a nearly unchanged repetition of the older sea chart from Pieter Goos from 1662, apart from some orthographic changes. The initial "Nassouws" is now written "Naßouws" by van Keulen what indicates the common practized orthographic adaption of the character "ss" into ßs, ß, sz. The transformation from "ss" to "nn" on maps and sea charts also ocurred, but more seldom and probably in consecuence of the printed size reduction of handwritten characters and the following reduced legibility of the letters. 

This last fact will gain further importance in the later discussion, if the actual island name of Nan´ao is a transformation from the word "Nassau" over a not exact transcription into "Nannau" and the following integration of that word into the chinese or Teochew dialect as "Nan´Ao".




The Naßouws Bay near Shantou drawn on the map "Nieuwe Pascaert van Oostindien" 
in 1680 and published about 1685 in the "Zee Atlas" by Johannes van Keulen





4. The parallel development of site names around the Nan´Ao Island Bay on sea charts between 1600 and nowadays

Considering the great amount of maps and sea charts that have been drawn during the past centuries, we should not give too much importance to the fact, that a Bay near Shantou China once - 350 years ago - has been named handwritten by 3 dutch world map editors "Nassau Bay". Hundreds or thousands maps of the South China Coast from british, german, french, spanish, portuguese, danish, swedish, russian, northamerican or other origin have been drawn between 1680 and nowadays without repeating this specific namegiving. But also we have to consider, that the nearly complete overall view that we all can gain over most existing maps nowadays (thanks to the Internet) has not existed even 3 decades ago. Many historic maps as drawn originals remained stored in secret in private collections and only their accessability to the public made possible to study the different levels of developments of knowledge advance about our earth geography.

The fact, that map designers from other countries than the region of the historic "House of Nassau" did not repeat the Nassau Bay namegiving on their sea charts and world maps shows, that this specific knowledge about the dutch VOC ships cartographic projects was maintained in secret inside an inner circle of Netherland ship owners, captains, trade companies and only became public, when the sea charts where published during the last decades of he past century.

The namegiving repeated first by Pieter Goos on his map from 1662 probably based on reports or logbooks of the dutch VOC Company East India fleet with home-base in Batavia (Jakarta) on Java Island. The fact, that the occidental neighbour bay of the Shantou Nassau Bay is named "Reyersens Bay" indicates, that the site names have been attributed during operations and mappings of that fleet under the command of a certain Cornelius Reyersen who figures as Admiral of the VOC East India Fleet during the first decades of the 17th century. 

The VOC established on Taiwan (former names: Isla Hermosa = Wonderful Island / Formosa) since 1590 harbour installations, trade posts and fortifications and considered during several decades the island as "governed under the rule of the House of Nassau". Taiwan was used as ship base to discover the South China coast and to establish trade relationships with the alreaday high developed states on the nowadays chinese territory. As already mentioned above the Nassau namegivings might have pretended to generate interest and to raise funds for future expeditions, investments and trade post foundations in Europe, stimulating by that way the interest of the members of the House of Nassau in "their" imaginary territories in East Asia.

The exact knowledge about the Nassau Bay near Shantou, that in 1660 probably has not existed yet as harbour town because only the name of a settlement called ChaoChao (maybe the contemporary ChaoZhou) was registered on some old maps, seems to have got lost during the following hundred years. But some more new maps start to name an island in the northeast of that Nassau Bay as Nangao, Nanngau, Tamoa, Samoa or Nan Ngao Tching. But the maps are rather unexact so that a secure localization of that name attribution is difficult. Nevertheless, the still existing Nan´Ao Island in front of Shantou indicates, that the originary dutch namegiving of Nassau Bay maybe by the Chinese has been transformed in their language and been attributed to their island by themselves.

From the book "War, Trade and Piracy in the China Seas 1622-1683" of the chinese author Wei-chung Cheng edited in 2013 (Academia Sinica / Brill) we can gain evidence, that in about 1626 the Island of Nan´Ao must have played an important role in the relationships between dutch and chinese and probably served as meeting and negotiation site for a dutch governor of Taiwan, Gerrit Fredercikz de Wit, and the chinese admiral Nicolas Iquan, who also carried his traditional name Zheng Zilong

Maintaining the mapped names by the Netherlands and the House of Nassau in secrecy, a myth and rumor about a wonderful place called Nassau in the South China Sea must have been strengthened, even more when the reports from the expeditions of Charteret, Wallis, Bougainville, Cook and others started one century later (1760-1780) to paint an marvellous phantasy about the living habits, customs and the desired free sexual behaviour of the habitants of East Asia under the eternal sunshine of the Pacific Oceans Coasts, started to motivate once more the European migrations and discoverys towards that earth region. New maps and charts have been drawn following new expeditions and explorations with the consecuence, that - for example - a settlement called Nassau appeared at the East Coast of Taiwan on some maps drawn by british and northamerican cartographers. Both maps localize their probably imaginary "Taiwan Nassau" nearly exactly at the height of the Shantou Bay (here called Tchon van and Tchun yan) but "one East Coast more far towards the Orient".


Map of China that mentions a Nassau settlement at the Taiwan East Coast drawn by the Editor G.G.&J. Robinson in London in 1799.
Source: www.raremaps.com


Map of China that mentions a Nassau settlement at the Taiwan East Coast drawn by the Editor A. Finley in Philadelphia (U.S.A.) in 1824.
Source: www.raremaps.com



   
    

5. The extraordinary significance of Shantou and it´s geographical surroundings


Parallel to the european marine discovery of the planet earth ocean trade routes have been established, trade posts and companies have been founded and the european comercial system was intended to establish over the whole world, a process that nowadays is called colonialism. Most of the worlds native societies participated in this process under the disadvantage that they didn´t provide the same enforcement techniques as the europeans could deploy. In a lot of occasions european trade posts have been established by force and against the declared will of native people and the trade and transport structure by ships was monopolized by the Europeans. 

During this decades of comercial extension the worldwide only state that could compete seriously with the foreigners from Europe was China that had on it´s deposal an own fleet of ships with comparable capacities. Mostly for that reason european East Asia Companies had to remain retrieved from the territory of China in naval bases in Java, Taiwan etc. and to develop from there sophisticated strategies to establish first contact to the chinese abroad during several centuries until in the midst of the 19 century and following the military pressure exercised during 2 "Opium Wars" the opening of 5 Free Trade Zones in south-east Chinese harbours made possible the direct economic intervention inside the complete East Asia continent. One of these 5 harbours was Shantou that from then on during 100 years carried also the german name of Swatau besides the harbours of Amoy, Fuzhou, Ningbo and Shanghai, meanwhile in Canton, Macao and Tianjin (Tientsin) the european colonial presence had already a longer history.

The southeast Chinese coast had been in the focus of interest mostly of the Dutch East India Compagnie VOC since about 1600 but was difficult to access due to dangerous coastal structures that made navigation dangerous and only possible with a lot of experience. Also the established own chinese trade and transport structures made an approach to these trade zones not so easy as for example on the Spice Islands. So the Durch acted during the decades of 1600 until 1660 comparable as the so called regional "pirates" and developed multiple cooperations with these what led for example to the historical events of the Kinmen Encounter in 1633 and the final displacement of Dutch troops from their fortresses Fort Zeelandia and Fort Provintia in 1662 and their retrieve from Taiwan to Batavia on Java. Negotiation partners of the Dutch in these occasion have been the catholic baptized and educated Nicolas Iquan Gaspard (Zheng Zilong) from Fujian and his half-japanese son Zheng Chenggong (Coxinga). 

Into the year of the formal retrieveal of the Dutch VOC from Taiwan and the takeover of their former trade basis by their chinese shareholder Zheng Chengong - 1662 - who established then the so called Chinese Kingdom of Tungning dates also the first namegiving of the Nassou Bay on a Dutch map drawn by Nicolaes Visscher. This Nassou Bay was situated nearly exactly on the same degree of latitude as the abandoned Dutch fortress Zeelandia in Taiwan but on the opposite coast of the Taiwan Strait on Chinese territory.

From the point of view of an progressing european establishment in Southeast China that acted comparable to piracy standards the area of the Han River mouth and the later Port of Chang Hai (Shantou / Swatow / Swatau) was an excellent site of interest for the construction of an hidden secret harbour with an naturally protected access difficulted by several islands in an narrow fairway and the further acces to the inside of the unexplored country by an navigable river. Furtheron several parallel hidden secret accesses by river forks of the Han River delta allowed to approach unseen from the Nassou and Reyersens Bay towards the deep inside of the Shantou harbour area. This condition of an secret naval & pirates base probably might have stimulated the interest of the Dutch and lateron British and German fleets that made grow fastly the later town of Shantou during the following centuries and probably is also the explaination, why the Swatau/Swatow history is so little explored and documented.



Location of the Nassau Bay and surrounding coastal structures around the Shantou Harbour and Han River mouth - a perfect hide for pirate-minded european sailors




Alternative access ways towards the Shantou harbour from Nassau and Reyersens Bay besides the usual harbour entrance. 







6. The appearance of the site name SWATAU and it´s possible roots


A research in the German National Bibliotheque DNB carried out in November 2017 gave as result for the topic SWATOW in publication titles only 1 hit, a fact that, considering the importance of that harbour for german expanison in East Asia during the decades of 1860 - 1950, arouses strong surprise. The books title refers to "Swatow Ware" and so to a proper porcelaine decoration style of the region around the town of Shantou. Meanwhile Swatow should be the former english writing version of the town Shantou´s name, the proper german spelling SWATAU as title research in the German National Library brings an even more mystic result: 3 notes from the german exile newspaper PARISER TAGESZEITUNG from 22. until 26. June 1939 as electronic ressource. The short articles treat the theme of the "advancing Japanese occupation" of Shantou seen from local german point of view. 

Most strange at first sight the fact, that never a german book title mentioned that Chinese towns name, not necessarily must mean anything important. On the other hand, and this will be displayed more deeply in the following chapters, Swatau and it´s harbour played an important role in the German navy presence in East Asia between 1860 and 1915 and also in the shipping of "exilers", emigrants that left the region arond Shantou in great number by ship transport during the same timeframe. This also so called "Kuli-Trade" awakened strong polemic during the processing of the consequences of the German colonial history 1950-1999 and led probably to the largely forgetting of  the former german town name of Shantou.

But what exactly means "Swatau" and who and when named the town of Shantou so ?

German dictionaries register scant numbers of words that begin with Swat-... Besides the old town name of Shantou we find here only the SWAT state, valley and river name in the former British-Indian province in nowadays Pakistan and the name of the Prince SWATOPLUK from Moravia from the 9th century D.C. Similar named sites with German / Dutch (Nassauian) colonial reference might be the SWAKOP River and the SWAKOPMUND District in "Deutsch-Südwest", the nowadays Namibia, and SWASILAND, the southeastern part of the Transvaal Colony, today South Africa. 

A proper and contemporary German town name that reaches nearly the letter composition of Swatau is BAD SCHWARTAU in the North German Oldenburg County that once surrounded important trade harbours as Lübeck and Wilhelmshaven. Nowadays the town belongs to the Schleswig Holstein State. In "Platt-Dütsch", the regional german dialect of the North German coast, Schwartau is named "Bad Swartau". The people from that town would be called the "Schwartauer" what in english might be pronounced as "Swartower". So far a lot of wrong interpretation possibilities for the foreign understanding of that site name are set. Bad Schwartau is worldwide famous for it´s "Schwartau" marmelade label.

In English language the similarity of the words SWATOW and SWALLOW is obvious. In naval, emigration and colonial history the swallow bird name was repeatedly used as ship name and dozens of H.M.S. Swallow left british harbours during the centuries. The popularly most hated one was that HMS Swallow, a battleship that was sent out in 1722 to chase and kill famous pirates such as Black Bart, Blackbeard, Anny Bonny and Mary Read, some of them probably emigrants from the Dutch-German-English Nassau Region. The fact, that still in 1870 the political argument for the necessity of construction of the first modern German East-Asia-Squadron was the "Chasing of Pirates in the South China Sea that threaten German colonial interests" shows, that the over centuries persisiting myth of "Pirates & Swallows" might have been also one of the reasons, why Shantou was named also Swatow like a secret code for a hidden and secure pirates harbour. 



Reality-near description of the history of the SMS ILTIS (1878-1896) a Cannon-Boat of the Royal German East Asia Squadron that operated mostly in China waters and in South Pacific to impose German colonial interests. The booklet´s title AGAINST PIRATES AND BEACH ROBBERS indicates a strong alliance between historic emotional themes and contemporary military policy. The brochure written by Otto Mielke and edited by Vice Admiral a.D. Kurt Caesar Hoffmann - the former commander of WW II Battleship Scharnhorst - for Moewig Publishers Munich was printed probably during the 1950ies. The booklet with detailed event descriptions leaves unmentioned direct interventions of "Marineinfanterie" land assault forces from SMS Iltis in Shantou to "Supress xenophobic movements in the Chinese population" during the years of 1882/83 that probably did not produce human victims. The lack of information and details about certain navy operations before 1918 might be explainable by the obliteration of "secret or compromising data" stored inside the German Marinearchiv during the so called November Revolution in 1918 what in turn led to the recapitulation and reprocessing of lost navy history information in the Moewig SOS-Series after the end of the 2nd World War. 


Kanonenboot SMS Iltis from "Ostasiengeschwader der Kaiserlichen Marine" in the roadstead in front of Swatau about 1880-1884


The etymologic transition from the words Swatau and Swatow towards Shantau, Shantow and Shantou might display the very common phenomenon in conceptual multicultural, mulitethnic and multilingual harbour towns, where often sailors languages and slangs dominate over pure native languages and where temporary namegivings fast became substituted by name variations of the same word or completely new names. A parallel name of that town also has been between 1800 and 1860 Cheng Hei, probably to generate intentioned confusion between colonial foreigners over the real situation of the mystic town of Shanghai - an everywhere practized artifice to defend countries from foreign intrusions and to maintain the monopole for cartographic orientation inside the countries originary habitants circle. Confusing double namegivings also have been practized then by colonial cartographers to protect "their" discoveries from their competitors.

Analizing the town names components the Shan are an ethnic group that live in Myanmar, the former Burma - a fact that might allow an more profound analysis of the actual 2017 refugee wave in Myanmar that appears parallel to the demolition plans of the Shantou cities historic old town. Further coincidences to Shantou we find here in the newly applied name RONGJIANG River (for Han River) and the false name ROHINGYA for the refugee people from Myanmar Arakan State as well as the coincidence of their new settlement near the town of COX BAZAR in Pakistan what is related to the name of the historic Shantou national liberation heroe COXINGA

Furthermore, a Shanty or Shantie is the sailors word for marine songs that describe transocean travels, life on bord of ships and relationships to multiple worldwide distributed families that live in all destination harbours, meanwhile Tau is the german word for a rope as most important tool on sailing ships but also for bonds and lashing. As last reminescence to sailors language under the aspect of marine justice and piracy might be named the word´s game that is insinuated by the combination of the two harbours names as Shangtau.

Probably the somewhat organized looking disappearance of the historic site names was not bad intentioned or thought consecuence due to colonial crimes but more to "redesign by forgetting and rediscovering" an historic "bad fame" of an illustrious town that might have been constructed by itself listening to sailors yarn and grandpa´s pirate stories. An old town formed by Sephardische Joden (Sefardim / Seefahrende Juden) in it´s typical architecture and that is worth to be conserved as Human Cultural Heritage Monument.



Views to the Historic Old Town of Shantou
that is threatened by demolition and dissappearance
Photos: Google Earth Panoramio


Airview on a sector of the Shantou historic old town
Source: Return of Shantou
YouTube / Animatie Kuiper Compagnons 












 

Stand : Montag 29.1.2018



Der nachfolgende Teil des Beitrages

zur Schriftenreihe

ORANGES UND NASSAUS DER WELT

ist noch in Redaktion 

und wird noch kontinuierlich verändert.

 

 

Probably it would be too superficial to determine, that in 1662 the Dutch left Taiwan to enter China directly over the Han River after having established relationships to exile chinese originary from Fujian and Guangdong regions and entrusted their former constructions in  Taiwan to those shareholders respectively their own descendants. But the mountainous countries midland region must have symbolized an enormeous attraction and challenge to them beeing setteled originary by amazing native people with a high developed social structure represented mostly by their still nowadays existing circular living building constructions. In mention are here the so called HAKKA People and their famous TOLU villages. The Hakka setteled in interiour Fujian mostly between the harbours of SHANTOU and XIAMEN (AMOY) and the towns of MEIZHOU and LONGYAN or better said there we can visit still nowadays their Tolu´s.




In 1662 probably difficult to access, nowadays exactly mapped and localized: 
the so called CHUXI TOLOU CLUSTER in YONGDING DISTRICT / LONGYAN 
deep inside inside the midland north of Shantou  
Foto: Wikipedia



A TOLU´s interiour
Foto: Vmenkov / Wikipedia


Contemporary literature sources teach, that the Hakka People setteled since 300 D.C. inside the mountains of Fujian and started between 1600 D.C. and 1700 D.C. first continental emigration waves towards Hainan and Taiwan. (See: Hakka - Die 5 grossen Auswanderungswellen / Wikipedia). Since then the Han River mouth, the later Shantou called harbour and maybe also the Nassou Bay must have played an important role for the boarding and shipping of the emigrants, who founded early settlements of so called "Overseas Chinese" in Asia promoted by chinese ships as transport structures.

Parallely in the era of 1660 until 1860 dated the begin of more or less organized settlements of Europeans in the Guangdong-Fujian region those who arrived by ship in East Asia, meanwhile the continental immigration to that region is less reported and followed a more slow and stepwise extension over the land route, the silk road and Kasachstan. These settlements of European emigrants from the ancient Nassau Empire ocurred without the existence of formal administrative structures, except the Dutch-Spanish management efforts on Taiwan between 1624 and 1660, British-Portuguese structures in Hongkong and Macao and a German settlement in Canton. Then, parallel to the administrative restructuration of the initial Nassau County in Germany inside the greater Prussian Empire first independent formal political german relationships with the Chinese government in Beijing started to be established - parallel to Dutch and British diplomatic activities. These first german state appearances in China date into the era of the "German Revolution" between 1848-1866 and are known as "Eulenburg Navy Expedition".

The Eulenburg Mission dates in 1859-1862 and is so situated exactly 200 years later then the 1662 Nicolas Visscher´s cartography of the Nassou Bay near Shantou. In Shantou, that was declared as mentioned above "Open Harbour" (a nowadays so called "Free Trade Zone"), Gemany or better said its administrative predecessor, the Prussian Empire, opened a German Consulate and later a german Post Office (1904) and founded a German School for german speaking chinese besides two german churches, a catholic and a protestant temple. Shantou was handling center for german trade goods exported to China and several german shipping lines regularly steamed up to that harbour, one of them the Hamburg Dampfschiffs-Gesellschaft Swatow.    



The Building Front of the German Consulate in Swatau towards the Shantou Harbour Roadline
From: Georg Wegener - Zur Kriegszeit in China 1900-1901



A letter stamp of the German Reichspost Office in Swatau

In Guandong and Fujian several catholic and protestant christian missions from german speaking countries extended their acitivties and started the christianizing of the native Hakka People, registered their language and cultural data and not seldom promoted also their emigration. Between these figure the Salvatorianer, Baseler Mission, Rheinische Missionsgesellschaft, Berliner Missionsgesellschaft / Ostasien Mission, Schleswig-Holsteinische Ev.-Luth. Missionsgemeisnchaft Breklum and the Hildesheimer Blinden-Mission. 


List of German Protestant Missions with number of Schools, Students and Employees in China in 1931
From: Handbook of Overseas Germans





6. Hakka Emigration, Couli Trade, Overseas Chinese and Foreign Shipping Companies