The Portuguese gained rights to settle and trade in Macau in 1557. The Dutch, a constant rivalry of the Portuguese, attempted to invade Macau in 1622. The 3-day attack ended in victory of the Portuguese. The Dutch occupied southern Taiwan (formerly called Formosa) in 1624 as a base to trade with China and Japan, while Spain controlled northern Taiwan. The photograph above shows the historical site Fort San Domingo which is located at Tamsui in northern Taiwan. Built by the Spanish in 1628, the fort was dismantled by the Spanish when the Dutch ousted the Spanish in 1642. The Dutch built a fort at the original site and named it Fort Antonio. In Chinese, it is known as 紅毛城, literally ‘red hair fort’ (Âng-mn̂g-siânn in Hokkien). What did ‘red hair’ 紅毛 refer to? The old China hand William C. Hunter explained in his book The ‘Fan Kwae’ at Canton Before Treaty Days 1825-1844 (pp. 16-17): “tradition said the Dutch had red hair, which led the Chinese facetiously to apply the terms ‘Red-headed Devils’ ever after to all foreigners alike.”
An apparent problem in multiethnic communication is language barrier. In situations like the plantations in Hawai‘i, where laborers speaking different languages amalgamated, new languages called Hawai‘i Pidgin English and later Creole English were created to function as a common language. New languages may also emerge in situations where international commercial interactions were active and regular. One example is Canton 廣州 (Guangzhou), China in the olden days.
Profitable trade in tea, silk, porcelain, and other commodities in China attracted many Europeans to do businesses in Canton and the city soon became a hub for international trade. A pidgin called Canton English or Chinese Pigeon/Pidgin English emerged so that foreign traders and Chinese could communicate with each other. A pidgin is a language with reduced vocabulary; the grammar shows influence from multiple languages participating in the contact situation. The pidgin English spoken in Canton contained words mainly from English. However, since the trade networks were very extensive, words from other languages such as the examples listed below also contributed to the pidgin.
Portuguese: compradore, joss (from deus), sabe
Malay: candareen, catty, tael
Hindi: chop, shroff
Chinese: chin-chin, chop-chop, sampan, taipan, cumshaw
Though often being described as “baby talk” and “corrupted” English, the Canton English was an integral part of China trade. The word “pidgin” is believed to be a pronunciation of business by the Chinese. Therefore, the language was essentially a means to facilitate businesses between Chinese and foreigners.
As more and more foreigners and their families arrived in Canton in the 19th century, the demand for Chinese who could speak the pidgin increased. Many Chinese could learn the pidgin quickly with the help of phrasebooks like 紅毛通用番話 hung4 mou4 tung1 jung6 faan1 waa2 (The common foreign language of the red-haired people) as shown in the images. The American missionary and sinologist Samuel Wells Williams mentioned one type of such book in his article “Jargon spoken at Canton” in The Chinese Repository (1836: 432).
“We have before us a manuscript book, in which the English sounds of things are written in Chinese characters, underneath the name of the article also in Chinese. Similar books are very common among the people in Canton, and it is deemed one of the first steps to the acquisition of English, to copy out one of these manuscripts.” As an illustration, the Chinese entry 買辦 (compradore) is transcribed into characters as 公不多 gung1 bat1 do1.