1.Historical Mapping of 17th-Century Formosa Manuscripts
Ann Heylen （國立臺灣師範大學）
摘要/Abstract
The purpose of this presentation is to elaborate the process involved in applying digital software to 17th century Dutch handwritten manuscripts that document the presence of the Dutch community in Taiwan and are indispensable for our understanding of Taiwan history in a global setting. The following steps will come to the attention. First, how to deal with issues of transcription and transliteration in view of the orthography and spelling that was not standardized. This particularly pertains to place and personal names that are used as main entries in PN recognition. Second, documenting how the set of training documents to generate word-clips are applied to generate candidate PNs. Case study is the digitalized version of the Church Minutes (Kercboek) of the manuscript Kercboek, Brievenboek van Formosa, 23 januari 1642-1644 maart, covering the years 1642-1649. Its digital humanities exercise envisions to extract findings on: (1) discern routes where the same villages surface, i.e. visible connection between two or more villages with rotating personnel. In addition, the ommeganck (or quarterly visit by the clergy to the villages) elucidates and contributes to the spatial demarcation and its scope of geographical occupation; (2) temporal distance in correspondence between Formosa, Batavia and the patria. Post was by definition surface mail, and usually the name of the ships embarking in Formosa either coming from Japan or sailing for Batavia are mentioned. The frequency of letter writing and correspondence to and from Batavia will be outlined, and contributes to the letter post history and its relation to literacy practices; (3) information about the Dutch community and the daily activities of its actors seen from a grassroot level. In particular their mobility within the island, often coupled to the interchangeability of professions suggests a number of theoretical hypotheses regarding the status and role of the Tayuoan factory in the VOC.
2.Using GIS Technology to Make Territorial Claims and Document Forest Loss in Cambodia
Cambodia’s transition to a market economy was both rapid and rapacious. The once vast old-growth forests were quickly converted to plantations, submerged under dams, subjected to mineral extraction, and fell prey to small holder encroachment. In the face of forest loss and livelihood transformations, the Kuy indigenous community of the Prey Lang Forest in north-central Cambodia were actively patrolling their forest, protesting plantation encroachment, confronting illegal loggers, and new settlers who came looking for land. In 2014, two projects run independently by academic researchers began collaborations with the Kuy. The first was interested in biodiversity accounting and the second in land-based climate change mitigation projects. Kuy requirements brought changes to both researcher’s projects. The first project modified their GIS-based smart phone biodiversity data collection tool to record forest crimes, and the second project added a GIS-based territory mapping component used to map forest encroachments and to map indigenous territories that landed inside the boundaries of industrial agriculture plantations. While the Kuy community has made themselves recognized by the government, their activities as monitors of forest resources are being blocked by a powerful syndicate of well-connected loggers. A new project will use GIS mapping technologies and the ArcGIS storymap format to help the Kuy show and tell the story of their transformation.
