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Reviews: East Asia
Charles Guillaum Joseph Émile Le Gendre served as the American Consul at Amoy in China from 1866, and was subsequently (1872-75) an adviser to the Ministry of Foreign Affairs to the Empire of Japan. This comprehensive and unabridged collection of his writings is essential reading not only for historians of Taiwan, but also for those working on the histories of early treaty port culture, China-Japan relations, and the growth of American imperialism in East Asia in the nineteenth century.
There would probably be general agreement among those who do study the history of Taiwan that the work of the American correspondent James Davidson - in particular his book The Island of Formosa: Past and Present (published in the early twentieth century) - has made a valuable contribution to documenting the island's history. My feeling is that this four-volume compendium of writings is of equal importance, not least because they remained unpublished during Le Gendre's lifetime, remaining in his possession until his death in Korea in 1899 (p. xiv). Davidson, who writes on Taiwan during the Japanese colonial period, may be juxtaposed to Le Gendre, whose works document developments during a period of Japanese imperial design towards the island.
The first volume charts the background to his expedition to the island and offers a detailed description of both its geography and fauna. The second provides much greater detail of the journeys he made shortly after...