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A Brief Journey through Tainanfu, Lugang, and Bangkah

Publication date: 14 Oct 2015
Author: Huang Hsiang-chi |Staff member of the Archives of Institute of Taiwan History

Taiwan has been an important stronghold in the Pacific Ocean since the Age of Discovery. Tainanfu, Lugang, and Bangkah were three critical commercial port cities that played a crucial role in the trading history of Taiwan. These three cities witnessed Taiwan’s involvement in the international trade zone and symbolized its busy business activities starting in the seventeenth century. This article investigates records created by a Qing official Shen Bao-zhen, the Hsu family enterprise in Lugang, and the Chen family enterprise in Nagasaki to illustrate the rich history of these three port cities.

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IV. The equipment and technique of photography that John Thomson applied

The photography technique that John Thomson applied was wet-plate collodion, which was invented by Frederick Scott Archer in 1851. The equipment included a wooden camera, a portable tent to be a dark room, glass plate negatives, collodion and silver nitrate used to be sensitizers and developers. However, walking in the old-growth forest with the equipment was not convenient at all. Hence, John Thomson hired several porters assisting him to take photographs. Since the exposing process of wet-plate collodion took several seconds to 2 minutes, the photographer’s expertise and his interaction with the models were both tested. Surprisingly, there were no serious conflicts between the plain aborigines in Taiwan and western people. It was likely that Dr. Maxwell’s introduction already won the trust from Taiwanese plain aborigines. Therefore, they were calm and comfortable when facing John Thomson’s lens. According to what Thomson wrote in Through China: with a Camera, we can know that Taiwanese plain aborigines were very hospitable.


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