Abstract

ABSTRACT This work of creative nonfiction begins with the last days of George Psalmanazar, an eighteenth-century fraud who claimed to be the first native of Formosa (present-day Taiwan) ever to visit Europe. Scholars believe that Psalmanazar’s fraudulent account, published in 1705, formed the birth of Taiwan studies in Europe, leading to an explosive scientific, commercial and evangelical interest in the island. The essay traces the entwined histories of camphor, Christianity, and indigeneity on the island in the centuries following Psalmanazar’s hoax.

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