Camphor Press

06/01/2025

Fantastic news, as Lord of Formosa continues to sell strongly in Chinese translation!

㊗️狂賀二刷！㊗️
　　
𝕷𝖔𝖗𝖉 𝖔𝖋 𝕱𝖔𝖗𝖒𝖔𝖘𝖆｜福爾摩沙之王
揚帆啟程，今日迎來二刷！繼續向前！
　　
《福爾摩沙之王：國姓爺與荷蘭東印度公司的臺江爭霸》
　　
▲臺灣史上，最引人入勝的一幕
▲聚焦大員灣，中國人與歐洲人間的軍事衝突現場
▲看海盜之子鄭成功如何成長為國姓爺
▲開啟臺灣的明鄭時期，從此改寫了福爾摩沙的命運
　　
感謝各位讀者的支持！
﹍﹍﹍﹍﹍﹍﹍﹍﹍
　　　
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06/01/2025

With Kondo the Barbarian author and translator Paul Barclay has performed "a great service to the fields of Japanese and Taiwanese history, modern colonialism and global indigeneity". John Kanbayashi writes that that the book offers "insight into factors underlying the Musha Incident but also much more: a textured and ambivalent first-hand account."

08/05/2024

The 13th International Symposium on Taiwan Culture is coming soon to Shi-Da (National Taiwan Normal University). For details and registration information, see https://since1624.org

29/03/2024

Hello friends of Camphor Press. John Ross here writing my first CP post on FB (Mark has been making the recent posts). A pity it has to be on such an unpleasant subject. The third Camphor chap, Michael Cannings, has been ignoring the great majority of emails for many months now, so, if you've written to us and not had a response, then my apologies. Unless specifically addressed to Mark and myself, we did not get those emails.
You can write to me at [email protected] (sorry about the underlines in the email address - it seemed clever at the time).
Also, apologies to Camphor Press newsletter subscribers for not sending out a Camphor Press newsletter for such a long time. I've wanted to but not been given the required code. If that remains the case, I will set up a new newsletter.

Regards,
John

24/03/2024

Taiwan's camphor districts.

One of the noteworthy aspects of this map is its frequent use of Taiwanese place names.

source: "Investigation of the shô-gyu and yu-ju oils produced in Formosa," by Nagai Kazuo. Taihoku: Monopoly Bureau, Government of Formosa, 1914.

18/03/2024

Our Formosa tea series continues today with a trademark from 1888 that's bold and stylish enough to bring to mind those cool covers for CDs by Taiwan's own Muddy Basin Ramblers. It's extra choicest!

13/03/2024

Last week I posted about exports from Taiwan in 1871. Of the $515,775 worth of exports that year, 78 percent were tea. But what about imports?

Taiwan had a significant trade deficit, which was due to just one product: o***m.

Just how much o***m? In 1871, Taiwan imported a total of 1,627 peculs of o***m.

A pecul (often spelled "picul") was "a traditional South and East Asian unit of weight, based upon the load of a shoulder pole and varying by place and over time but usually standardized at about 60 kg" (often at 133.33 pounds).

So just for the year 1871 that's 216,928 pounds (98,397 kg) -- around one hundred tons -- of o***m. That's about 1.4 ounces for every man, woman, and child in Taiwan at the time. (Not that everyone was smoking it, of course.) And that's not counting the stuff that came in illegally.

Cloth ran a distant second to o***m in terms of imports: about $200,000 and $900,000 worth, respectively.

The o***m from India was the cheapest, while that from Turkey was quite expensive.

09/03/2024

Special sale!

We're offering a special deal on *Lord of Formosa* for Taiwan-based customers. This is *the* novel of the Dutch period in Formosa. If you don't already have it, now's a great time to pick one up.

Due to shipping problems, a box of paperbacks of Lord of Formosa arrived too late for Joyce Bergvelt’s recent promotional tour of Taiwan. We’re offering copies for NT$600 each (or NT$1000 for two). As an extra-special bonus, postage is free -- again, for Taiwan addresses only.

We’re not currently selling books through our website, so to purchase a copy or two, you’ll need to write directly to John ([email protected]). While supplies last.

05/03/2024

These days Taiwan is known for its exports of semiconductors. But what about century and a half ago? Here are the figures for 1871. Although the list covers specifically only items shipped to Amoy (Xiamen), many of the goods (e.g., tea) were merely being transhipped and were bound for America and elsewhere.

"Ground nuts" refers to peanuts, I think, which would make peanut cakes Taiwan's second top export by value, topping even rice, camphor, and coal. Does anyone know what ground nut cakes were? These days, if one buys peanut candy in Taiwan it's likely not from Taiwan proper but from Kinmen, which is of course just a stone's throw from Xiamen.

Source: "Amoy and the Surrounding Districts: Compiled from Chinese and other Records," by George Hughes, commissioner of Imperial Maritime Customs at Amoy (1872).

02/03/2024

Camphor Press author M.A. Aldrich and his book Old Lhasa: A Biography are featured in today's Taipei Times:

Bringing Taiwan to the World and the World to Taiwan

28/02/2024

Scott Forbes Crawford's Silk Road Centurion continues to win praise. At the Historical Novel Society, writer Aidan K. Morrissey called the book "clearly very well researched" and "an excellent first novel from a writer this reviewer will certainly be looking out for in the future."

Silk Road Centurion is a remarkable story of a Roman soldier, Manius Titinius, whose duties mean he avoids the devastating Roman losses at the battle of Carrhae, in 53 BCE, but is nonetheless captured and taken far to the east and enslaved to a particularly savage group of wandering warriors, the Ke...

25/02/2024

The New Indian Express has a new piece on Scott Ezell's "Journey to the End of the Empire: In China Along the Edge of Tibet."

The reviewer points out, "While it is a paean to Tibet, the book is ... more too. It is, in its way, an act of subversion, a song for freedom and for the right to live as one would wish."

American poet, musician and multi-genre artist Scott Ezell opens his travelogue, Journey to the End of the Empire: In China Along the Edge of Tibet, with a memo