Apostolic Vicar in the Midst of Conquest

The Manchu Annexation of Taiwan in Thomas Dunin Szpot’s Historiae Sinarum Imperii

Abstract

This article analyzes Tomasz Dunin Szpot’s accounts of two events in 1683: the Qing conquest of the Zheng regime in Taiwan and the accidental landing of Bishop François Pallu on the island. Although the collapse of the Zheng kingdom marked the beginning of Qing imperial rule over Taiwan, Szpot treated it only briefly and with notable inaccuracies, omitting key battles and compressing several years of developments into a simplified episode. By contrast, he devoted considerable attention to Pallu’s arrival, since it was closely connected to disputes over missionary authority and the Chinese Rites Controversy. Szpot’s narrative priorities reflected his role as a historian of Catholic missions in China rather than as an observer of Chinese political history. His perspective was shaped by Jesuit networks centered in Peking, as well as by rivalries with the Dominicans and the Paris Foreign Missions Society. In his work, Taiwan appears as a remote and marginal space “beyond the seas,” consistent with contemporary Qing geographical imagination. His maps and descriptions emphasized missionary sites rather than strategically significant maritime locations such as the Penghu Islands. This imbalance in Szpot’s narrative reveals how missionary concerns, spatial perceptions, and ecclesiastical disputes shaped early European knowledge of China, often obscuring major political transformations while foregrounding internal Church conflicts.