Abigail Gautreau The Invention of Lying: George Psalmanazar, the Society of Jesus, and the Truth about Asia

in the Seventeenth Century

(Presented at the Southeast Conference of the Association for Asian Studies, January 2012)

A young man calling himself George Psalmanazar arrived in London in 1704. He was by most accounts blond and fair-skinned, and he spoke excellent Latin.1 Unlike most new arrivals from the continent, however, Psalmanazar claimed to be neither European nor a long-time Christian. He had lately been converted by his companion, the Anglican Reverend Alexander Innes, and he claimed to be a native of the island of Formosa. He spoke a language he called Formosan, and had written a book, complete with illustrations, describing his homeland entitled An Historical and Geographical Description of Formosa, an Island subject to the Emperor of Japan, giving an Account of the Religion, Customs, Manners &c. of the Inhabitants. The book did not simply discuss Psalmanazars homeland, it included a lengthy treatise on his conversion in which he described in scathing terms the sordid activities of the Jesuits on Formosa. The book was not unique in form; what set Psalmanazars story apart from other travel accounts and memoirs was that it was a complete fabrication. Psalmanazar was most likely a Frenchman, and he had certainly never traveled beyond the boundaries of the continent. What he lacked in worldly experience, he made up for in bravado, a gift for languages, and a singularly brilliant imagination. The ruse succeeded only briefly before Psalmanazar faded into obscurity, and he spent the latter part of his life as a Grub Street hack writer and Hebrew scholar.2 He was never officially revealed as a fraud, and despite
1

Frederic J. Foley, The Great Formosan Impostor (Taipei, Taiwan: Mei Ya Publications, Inc, 1968), 6-7. 2 Psalmanazars later life is explored in detail in: Robert Adams Day, Psalmanazars Formosa and the British reader (including Samuel Johnson). In Exoticism in the Enlightenment ed. GS Rousseau and Roy Porter, (New York: Manchester University Press, 1990). 1

acknowledging his hoax in his posthumous memoirs, his invented language remained alive and well with scholars. The story of the Formosan faker was kept alive mainly by compendia of famous hoaxes in history, alongside the likes of the Princess Caraboo. His story remains a novelty for modern readers unable to imagine a world in which a blond man could pass himself off as Asian. A handful of contemporary texts plucked Psalmanazar form obscurity. Frederic Foley, himself a Jesuit, published the first scholarly text on Psalmanazar in 1968, arguing that Psalmanazar was popular for his attacks on the Jesuits, rather than successful in fooling his contemporaries. A handful of articles address Psalmanazar as an inspiration to satirists and his relationship with Samuel Johnson.3 The most recent in depth treatment is Michael Keevaks The Pretended Asian, which devotes special attention to Psalmanazars Formosan language. This paper blends the two interpretations, and contextualizes Psalmanazars story against changing European attitudes toward China. First, though, we must take a brief look at what Europeans knew about Formosa at the time of the hoax. Despite Psalmanazars claim that Formosa was under Japanese rule, by 1704 it was under the control of the Chinese. He can be forgiven for his error, however, as the island changed hands many times during the seventeenth century. The island was briefly colonized by the Dutch, and a 1670 account of Formosa in the Atlas Japonensis borrowed heavily from the account of a Dutch missionary. It described an island of barbaric aborigines engaged in perpetual warfare. Headhunting, theft, adultery, and murder were common occurrences. The dead are not buried, but dried over a fire and hung up in baskets in the huts of their descendents. Most memorably, women are not permitted to give birth until age 37, and had abortions if they
3

See: John Shufelt, The trickster as an instrument of enlightenment: George Psalmanazar and the writings of Jonathan Swift, History of European Ideas 31 (2005). 2

became pregnant prior to that. The abortions were performed by priestesses who danced on the womens bellies.4 This sort of nonsense passed for factual information in Europe, and in China, the situation was not much better. There may not have been stories of dancing priestesses, but Formosa was part of the Chinese periphery. Though it the island is not far from the mainland as the crow flies, the Taiwan Strait was hazardous, rendering Formosa inaccessible by Chinese standards.5 Furthermore, the Chinese presence on the island was limited, like that of other would-be colonizers, to the coastal plains; the interior of the island remained under the control of the aborigines.6 This lack of information made the island the perfect setting for Psalmanazars hoax; it was a real place, but its details were fluid and the only information supposedly known about it was outlandish. Psalmanazars construction was of Formosa was no eccentric. He described an annual sacrifice of 20,000 boys (later scaled back to 18,000 for the sake of realism) to a god who looked like an ox, men who wore nothing but a brass, silver, or gold plate tied over their genitals, and the eating of raw meat, a habit which gained Psalmanazar some notoriety. He claimed that the islands fauna included rhinoceros, elephants, camels, and sea horses, all of which are tame, and very useful for the service of Man.7 To the present-day reader, this conjures images of

See Donald F Lach and Edwin J. Van Kley, A Century of Advance, vol. 3, book 4 of Asia in the Making of Europe (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1993), chapter 22.4. 5 See Laurence G Thompson, The Junk Passage Across the Taiwan Strait: Two Early Chinese Accounts, Harvard Journal of Asiatic Studies 28 (1968), 170-194. 6 Father de Mailla, SJ, The Early History of Formosa. Translated from the French. In Lettres edifiantes and curieuses, 1715. Reprinted from The Celestial Empire (Shanghai: Loureiro & Co Printers, ????), 14. 7 George Psalmanazar, An historical and geographical description of Formosa ...: Giving an account of the religion, customs, manners, &c., of the inhabitants. Together with a relation of what happen'd to the author in his travels; particularly his conferences with the Jesuits, and others, in several parts of Europe. Also the history and reasons of his conversion to Christianity, with his objections against it (in defence of paganism) and their answers .... (Printed for D. Brown, 1704), 3

childrens cartoons, but for the early modern European who only knew these creatures from engravings, the claims might not have seemed so outrageous. Psalmanazar carefully pointed out that there were no mythical beasts like unicorns or griffons, as Formosans knew these creatures to be, fictions of the Brain.8 Psalmanazar walked a careful line on his fantastic tales, commenting on the exotic and avoiding subjects well known to his contemporaries. A tame rhinoceros was one thing, but a unicorn crossed the line. This blend of the familiar and exotic was integral to Psalmanazars fraud and his success. By making his origins strange and unknown, he established himself as the only expert on the subject, the only person capable of making this unknown space known. This was no happy accident; his memoirs, which are generally acknowledged as being truthful by scholars, reveal a young man who was exceptionally conscious of what and how his contemporaries saw the world around them. The path to Psalmanazars fraud began when he was fairly young, having been sent away by his mother, who had fallen on hard times, to live with his father. After a hard journey, he found his fathers circumstances were no better, and he set off again.9 During his travels, he saw that people were more charitable from those who were from far away than to their own countrymen, so he began trying to pass himself off as an Irishman. This scheme did not last long, as he regularly ran into people who spoke Irish or were familiar with the island. He then adopted the pretence of being a Japanese convert to Christianity, as he was less likely to meet anyone who was familiar with Japanese language or customs. He had learned about Japan from http://books.google.com/books?id=C3_psCzPD7EC&ots=2SGDCnd8S1&dq=psalmanazar%20d escription%20of%20formosa&pg=RA1-PA264#v=onepage&q&f=false [Accessed May 2, 2011], 264. 8 Psalmanazar, Description, 265. 9 George Psalmanazar, Memoirs of **** Commonly known by the Name of George Psalmanazar; a Reputed Native of Formosa 2nd ed. (London, 1765), 98-99, 123. 4

the Jesuits who taught him in school. He remembered very little of what he had been taught, but as the saying goes, a little knowledge is a dangerous thing, and he decided to simply make up anything he did not recall. However, I was rash enough to think, that what I wanted of a right knowledge of them, I might make up by the strength of a pregnant invention, in which I flattered myself I might succeed the more easily, as I supposed they were so little known by the generality of Europeans, that they were only looked upon, in the lump, to be Antipodes to them in almost every respect, as religion, manners, dress &tc.10 The notion of Antipodes became central to Psalmanazars supposed identity; being Japanese was a negative state without inherent meaning, so the only thing it meant to be Japanese was to be Not European. If Psalmanazar could sort out which behaviors Europeans considered to be distinctly their own and behave in the opposite way, he would, for all intents and purposes, be Japanese. This is also gave him room to counter accusations about his appearance. Europeans were aware the Asians did not look like them, but concepts of race had no scientific or pseudoscientific baggage in the early eighteenth century. As Keevak points out in Becoming Yellow, color terms were evaluative rather than descriptive. Being white was a function of cultural sophistication.11 Therefore, being Formosan or French or English meant acting Formosan or French or English. And, since Psalmanazar was defining what it meant to be Formosan, all he had to do was follow his own prescriptions. Psalmanazar set about writing a fake language, and remembering that Asian languages were not like European ones, he wrote right to left and named his letters.12 He joined an army in the pay of the Dutch to better secure his living, and found that his assumed Japanese identity had the desired effect of setting him apart from his comrades and gaining the attention of the officers,
10 11

Psalmanazar, Memoirs, 113. Michael Keevak, Becoming Yellow: A Short History of Racial Thinking (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2011), 28. 12 Psalmanazar, Memoirs, 114. 5

which is how he met the Anglican Reverend Alexander Innes. Innes discovered Psalmanazars fraud by asking him to translate the same passage from Cicero twice. When he found the discrepancies, rather than revealing Psalmanazar, he encouraged him to better learn his language, and devised a scheme whereby Innes would convert Psalmanazar (a Catholic pretending to be a Japanese heathen) to Anglicanism and bring him to London. There is no mention of Formosa until Innes intervention. Psalmanazar agreed to the scheme and set about adopting behaviors that would mark him as a Formosan, including eating raw meat, which he claimed never made him ill, but rather that, peoples surprize at [his] diet, served [him] for a relishing sauce.13 He claimed that his skin was fair because the wealthier sector of the population lived underground and were unaffected by the heat (a common explanation for variance in skin tone).14 Psalmanazar stuck to his story relentlessly, but he was soon basically discredited by interviews with scholars and Jesuit priests who had been to China and the East. After spending six months at Oxford, he returned to London more notorious than popular, and found that Innes had abandoned him to his fate. Psalmanazar had appealed to Europeans on a number of levels; his language, a supposedly Asian tongue written with an alphabet rather than characters, seemed to offer a bridge between European tongues and Chinese, a possible key to the clavis sinica. His attacks on the Jesuits came at a time when the popularity of the Jesuits was waning because of their accommodationist policy toward ancestor worship among Chinese converts, which they considered to be civic and social rites rather than idol worship. This particular Jesuit interpretation had long been criticized by the Dominicans. The mendicant order also found fault with the Jesuits adopted practice of styling themselves as Confucian scholars (ru) to win
13 14

Psalmanazar, Memoirs, 163. Psalmanazar, Memoirs, 165-166 6

converts from the top of Chinese society down, rather than working among the people as the Dominicans did. Jesuit success in becoming ru paid off; their adoption of Chinese manners, behavior, and dress earned them entre into the royal court, where they won a respectable number of converts. They were perhaps not so unlike Psalmanazar in this respect, though of course the Jesuits never attempted to pass themselves off as ethnically Chinese. While the Jesuits taught astronomy and worked on conversions, they also sent back information about China to Europe. Their letters and bits of material culture formed the basis of the only information most Europeans had about China, and Jesuits steadily constructed an idea of what China was like for the European audience. It would be unfair to cast this in a malevolent light; the Jesuits certainly had their own motives, but they were neither expected nor equipped to act as ethnographers, not that such a discipline even existed at the time. The Jesuits were not in China to simply observe and report back; they were on a mission from God to convert the Chinese, which required the spiritual and financial support of their European backers. The Chinese could not be made to seem too paganistic, lest conversion seem hopeless. The Chinese mission had to be a two-way street; Europeans poured educated men and money into China, and they needed to receive something more than a handful of souls in return. The Jesuit construct of China was a response to this need. Cynthia Klekar specifically addresses this issue in her article, Sweetness and Courtesie: Benevolence, Civility, and China in the Making of European Modernity.15 Klekar examines the letters of several missionaries of both the Jesuit and Dominican orders, using them to illustrate how the missionaries used Chinese behavior as an exemplar to European monarchs. The letters describe the Chinese emperor as a father to his people, happy to give up his own
15

Cynthia Klekar, Sweetness and Courtesie: Benevolence, Civility, and China in the Making of European Modernity Eighteenth-Century Studies 43, no. 3 (2010). 7

luxuries to see to the needs of his people.16 Chinese social structure is also a good model, as people at all levels of society share the same behavioral qualities and express themselves with equal grace.17 These letters were not the only idealized vision of China the missionaries created; they also translated the Four Books into the Confucius Sinarum philosophus, published in 1687. The text included extensive Jesuit commentary alongside the original text, and selective translation of terms to better fit the tenets of Christianity. Lionel Jensen has argued convincingly that Confucius himself is really a Jesuit construct loosely based on the philosopher and teacher Kong fu zi.18 Again, the goal of the Jesuit efforts was not to deceive Europeans for their own ends, but rather the process of making Confucianism known and knowable for Europeans necessarily involved the infusion of the Western, Jesuit perspective. Consequently, everything Europeans learned about the East was filtered through the lens of the Jesuit construct. The letters of the missionaries praised Chinese society for its emphasis on education, but neglected to mention that education was the primary means of upward mobility through the civil service exams. These exams were available to everyone, but many families were unlikely to be able to afford to send a son to school or hire a tutor to prepare him. The examination process could also stretch out over years as students failed and re-sat different levels of exams. The Jesuits did not simply send back stories and books, they also sent a handful of young Chinese converts to Europe. While these visits did not always go smoothly, the young Chinese men they brought over were usually potential candidates for the priesthood, and hand-selected to give a good impression. One of the most successful young visitors was Shen Fuzong, who arrived in Europe in 1683 and toured Paris, Rome, Lisbon, and London. The young man
16 17

Klekar, Sweetness, 364-6. Klekar, Sweetness, 361. 18 18 Lionel Jensen, Manufacturing Confucianism: Chinese Traditions and Universal Civlization, (Durham: Duke University Press, 1997), 8. 8

delighted the monarchs of Europe; James II had a portrait of Shen painted and hung it near his bedchamber, and Louis XIV turned on the fountains for him at Versailles.19 Shens appearance was novel, and his blend of familiar and exotic customs was intriguing. Psalmanazars behavior and appearance no doubt held similar appeal. China was, to Europeans, what the Jesuits showed them. The success of the Jesuit construct of China was largely due to the nature of knowledge in early modern Europe. The Scientific Revolution was underway, and the Enlightenment was in its infancy, but both of these phenomena were novelties. There was one absolute truth, and it was the Word of God as recorded in the Holy Bible and explained by the Church. All other facts were fluid, and had to be adjusted and interpreted to match the Bible. When the Chinese demonstrated that they had documented history predating the Western timeline for the creation of man, calculations were adjusted to fit the new figures. For Westerners, there was simply no inherent, knowable truth about China, and for the missionaries, the China they manufactured was the authentic, real China. By the time of Psalmanazars arrival in Europe, the Jesuit version of China was under heavy criticism. Dominican friars claimed that the Jesuits allowed converts to keep altars to Confucius alongside those dedicated to Christ, and complained that the Jesuits hid images of Christs Passion from their Chinese converts until after baptism, because the images disturbed the Chinese deeply.20 This infighting compounded the objections raised during the Protestant Reformation, which was still a fresh wound. The year of Psalmanazars arrival in Protestant London coincided with the censure of the Jesuits by the pope for their accommodationist policies
19

DE Mungello, The Great Encounter of China and the West, 1500-1800, 2nd ed. (New York: Rowman & Littlefield Publishers, Inc, 2005), 78-79. 20 J.S. Cummins, A Question of Rites: Friar Domingo Navarrete and the Jesuits in China (Brookfield, Vermont: Ashgate Publishing Company, 1993), 59. 9

in China. These factors contributed to make London ripe for a young Eastern visitor with scandalous tales of the wrongs committed by the Jesuits in Formosa, far from papal oversight. Foley points out in his work that while the Jesuits emphasized the positive qualities of the Asian populace, taking the attitude that they were good people lacking only the revelation of Christ, Psalmanazar did the opposite, playing up the salacious barbarity of his supposed homeland.21 Psalmanazar offers to set the record straight, presenting himself as the keeper of the truth and casting further doubt on the claims of the Jesuits, who had imposed so many Stories and such gross Fallacies upon the Public.22 Psalmanazars attack was doubly effective because whether one believed his story or not, his Description illustrated how easily the story of a civilization could be invented. While the troubles of the Jesuits cast doubt on their assessment of Chinese civilization and cultural practices, the growing consensus that Psalmanazar was an impostor and his book an elaborate forgery undermined faith in such documents as proof of the known. Psalmanazar created a knowable construct of an unknowable place; the Jesuits misrepresented their activities in China and the nature of Chinese civilization and society. The positive, idyllic vision of China created by the Jesuits was suspect, and Psalmanazars antics only intensified the criticism. By appearing to be European and yet behaving in antipodal ways, Psalmanazar indicated and insurmountable obstacle to the equivalence of European and Asian civilizations. The Jesuit emphasis on commonality of culture fell by the wayside, and as the seventeenth century wore on, tensions between East and West increased steadily. Psalmanazar faded quietly into obscurity, and became something of a joke to Europeans. The ease of this transition illustrates the increasing certainty of knowledge, or at least a rise in
21 22

Foley, The Great Formosan Impostor, 29-31. Psalmanazar, Description, A3. 10

criticism giving way to a decline in gullibility. This skepticism made Europeans more certain of their own identity and superiority; the Society of Jesus was shortly dissolved, and Jesuit China along with it. Psalmanazar had perpetuated his hoax in a Europe where appearance was secondary to behavior in determining identity, and his story offers a case study in the intellectual revolution that transformed modern European thought.

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