The Nicolaas Witsen Project
The Nicolaas Witsen Project is aimed at an investigation of the minor peoples of Northeast Asia, their history, culture, language and (present day) way of life. It gets its inspiration from the book Noord en Oost Tartarije ofte Bondig Ontwerp van eenige dier Landen en Volken by the Amsterdam mayor Nicolaas Witsen who traveled to Russia in 1664/65 and collected data on the physical appearance of the country, its fauna and flora and, in particular, on the peoples of Siberia and the Far East. After coming back to the Netherlands he showed an ongoing interest in Russia and continued the collection of data on the country and its peoples.They were published in 1692 in the first edition of Noord en Oost Tartarije, the following editions appeared in 1705 and 1785, all in 17th century Dutch. In his book Witsen gives for instance the first lists of words in the Yakut language and in other Siberian languages, which provides interesting information for linguists.
Another book Moskovische Reyse 1664-65, the diary Witsen wrote during his trip to Moscow, was annotated and published by Locher and De Buck in 1966 and its Russian translation, made by V.G. Triesman, appeared in Saint-Petersburg in 1996. The Amsterdam Institute for Russian and Eastern European Studies has completed a Russian translation of the original book Noord en Oost Tartarije and is now preparing its edition with annotations.
An interdisciplinary team of specialists has been created which considers the various aspects of this project: history, ethnology, linguistics, geography, etc. We have established contacts with foreign institutions which are involved in the study of Siberia and the Far East, such as those in Russia (Saint-Petersburg, Moscow, Yakutsk) and in Japan.
Research has to be done in (mainly Russian) archives in order to find out from where Witsen got his information. Much of the linguistic material has been investigated and compared to the present day language situation in Siberia. The minorities in the Asian part of Russia will be further studied by organising field work expeditions and the results of these investigations will also be published in separate articles and books. It is important to pay attention to the survival of their language, culture and oral traditions and to preserve as much material as possible by creating a data base of this cultural heritage. For this purpose modern techniques of Information Technology will be applied.
The Witsen Project is co-ordinated by the Isaac Massa Foundation which has been established in Groningen in 1991 with the aim to study the relationship between the Russian Federation and the Netherlands, in particular its historical aspects until 1917.
Board Members of the Isaac Massa Foundation are:
Bruno Naarden (Amsterdam), chairman and
Tjeerd de Graaf (Groningen), secretary
Address:
Dr. T. de Graaf
Goudsbloemweg 9
9765 HP Paterswolde
tel. +31-50-3092218
e-mail: tdegraaf(a)fryske-akademy.nl
Article for Acta Slavica Iaponica
Slavic Research Center, Hokkaido University, Japan
Dowload the article with figures here.
Description of the border areas of
Russia with Japan and their inhabitants in
Witsens North and East Tartary
Tjeerd de Graaf and Bruno Naarden
Abstract
The aim of the Witsen Project is to publish a Russian translation of Noord en Oost Tartarije (North and East Tartary) written in 1705 by Nicolaas Witsen. For thirty years this Amsterdam mayor had collected data on the physical appearance, the fauna and flora and also, more in particular, on the peoples of the northern and eastern parts of Europe and Asia. For this article we used text fragments related to the border areas of Russia with Japan and to the people living there in the 17th century. We quote some relevant parts of the book, give our comments on these texts and clarify these with a number of annotations.
Introduction
In 1705, the Amsterdam mayor and amateur scholar Nicolaas Witsen completed the second edition of his book North and East Tartary with a very detailed description of the north-eastern territories of Eurasia, which until that time had been very little known. This bulky book is written in 17th century Dutch and presents a rather complicated mixture of various texts with encyclopedic details.
In 1945, the Ethnographic Institute (Kunstkamera) in Leningrad commissioned Wilhelmina Triesman (1901-1982), a Dutch citizen who had migrated to the Soviet Union, with the task of providing a Russian translation of this work. Although working conditions in the period immediately following World War II were difficult, Triesman was able to complete the translation of this extremely complicated text within about five years. Russian specialists of Siberian history acknowledged the unique importance of Witsen's book, but Triesman's translation was not published because the publication of such a long and complicated work was expensive and required much further study. Even plans in the nineteen-seventies to publish only those parts from North and East Tartary that concerned Siberia were not realized. Only much later, in the nineteen-nineties, could the preparation of the Russian edition start within the framework of the Witsen project, which had by then obtained financial support from a number of Dutch institutions.
In recent years, a group of Dutch and Russian scholars from St. Petersburg, Moscow and Amsterdam contributed to this project by producing a digital and corrected version of Mrs.Triesmans translation. They have prepared an extensive introduction and very detailed indices to the text clarifying many of the details in the book.
The authors of this article are very grateful to all participants in the Witsen projects, and in particular to Dr. N.P. Kopaneva. The Slavic Research Center of Hokkaido University, where part of this article was prepared, provided excellent facilities (in particular in the Northern Regions Material Collection). The first author should like to thank the staff of this institute for the hospitality during his stays in 2004 and 2005. He expresses his gratitude to the people who gave him important advice, in particular Prof. Toshiyuki Akizuki and Prof. Mikhael Vysokov. The authors also thank Laetis Kuipers for preparing an adequate English translation of the difficult 17th century Dutch text fragments and for her further help in composing this article.
This article presents a number of quotations from North and East Tartary related to the border areas of Japan and Russia and to the ethnic groups living there, in particular the Nivkh (Gilyak) and the Ainu, who have at present been reduced to very small communities living in Eastern Siberia and Northern Japan, respectively. The authors intend to show how important the text of North and East Tartary is for the study of the history of these peoples and their territories.
Figure 1. Title page of Witsens North and East Tartary with illustration
Nicolaas Witsen and his North and East Tartary
During his whole life, Nicolaas Witsen (1641-1717), devoted his time alternately to his political obligations and his love for scholarly activities. Thirteen times he was elected mayor of Amsterdam. He was also board member of the East Indian Company (VOC), extraordinary envoy to England and Fellow of the Royal Society. He was engaged in impressive correspondence all over the world and owned a highly reputed collection of maps, travel accounts, coins, antiques, shells, naturalia, curiosities, etc. He had personal contacts with Peter the Great, especially when the czar visited Amsterdam in 1697, and he was an important informant for the Russians regarding life and culture in Western Europe.
His interest in Russia was raised during his stay there in 1664, when as a young member he took part in a diplomatic mission sent to Moscow by the government of the Dutch Republic. During this mission, Witsen wrote a diary, which has been published in Dutch under the title De Moscovische Reyse (The Journey to Moscow). It was translated into Russian and published in St.Petersburg in 1996[1].
During the remainder of his life, Witsen kept a keen and lively interest in Russia and continued to collect information about this country, in particular about Siberia and its neighbouring countries, which he called North and East Tartary. He obtained these data from various sources. He consulted classical authors and Arabic medieval writers as well as his learned contemporaries in Europe. He used oral and written reports from Dutchmen working in Russia or sent to the East by the VOC. Most of his information about Siberia Witsen received through correspondence with many important people in the Russian empire, such as the Russian statesmen Golovin and Winius, and foreign scholars in Russian service such as the Romanian Milescu (Spatharius) and the Croat Krianić. In 1687, he designed a new map of Northern and Eastern Eurasia on the basis of this information. This map represented the world from Nova Zembla to as far away as China, and in 1689 he dedicated this map to Peter the Great. The President of the Royal British Society compared the publication of this map to the discovery of America by Columbus.
The book which accompanied and explained this map was also dedicated to czar Peter I and called North and East Tartary. It grew out into two large volumes with more than 1000 pages and 130 illustrations. Its first edition was printed in 1692. The second, enlarged edition appeared in 1705 and was reprinted in 1785. In this book, Witsen gave an account of all the information available to the Europeans at that time about the northern and eastern parts of Europe and Asia, and also about the Volga area, Crimea, Caucasus, Central Asia, Mongolia, Tibet, China, Korea and the neighbouring parts of Japan.
The book North and East Tartary is a remarkable product of the economic and scientific prosperity of the Dutch Republic in its Golden Age, which represents a period of intense Russian-Dutch co-operation and exchange. The book not only informs us about the flora and fauna of this huge territory, but it also provides details about the languages and traditions of the people living there. In the text, for instance, we find lists of 900 Georgian and 700 Kalmyk words and illustrations of the writing systems of Tibetan, Manchurian and Mongolian languages. Witsen provides word lists and other data on more than 25 languages.
Long ago, Russian scholars realized the importance of Witsen's book as a unique source of information about the history, geography, ethnology and linguistic data concerning the eastern part of their country. However, for most of them North and East Tartary stayed inaccessible, because of the fact that the book was a bibliographic rarity and written in 17th century Dutch. Therefore, the wish to obtain a Russian translation of the book was expressed many times. However, even in modern Russian, North and East Tartary is a difficult text for the present-day reader, who needs further explanation in order to understand these difficulties. Witsen's world view and his scientific methodology are not familiar to us. In all probability, he was a follower of Decartes and Newton - as many representatives of the intellectual elite in the Netherlands were. However, Witsens book is not based on any clear systematic and rational concept. One of the peculiarities of North and East Tartary is the chaotic compilation of information about all kinds of details, which hampers reading.
Figure 2. Map of Eastern Tartary according to Witsen in the 1785 edition of North and East Tartary. This map shows the Southern Kuril Islands: Kunashir as a part of Hokkaido, Etorofu as Staten Eylant (State Island) and Urup as Compagnies Lant (Company Land). These last names are related to the government of the Netherlands and the United East-Indian Company (VOC) and were given to the islands after their discovery by the expedition led by Maarten Gerritszoon de Vries in 1643. Urup is supposed to be an island or a peninsula, maybe part of America.
Witsens text on Niuche: Manchuria and neighbouring territories
The first part of North and East Tartary (pages 1 157) describes the remotest areas of Eastern Asia, which Latimore has called "the dead end of the great migration ground of Eurasia"[2]. Here, not only the civilizations of Russia, China, Korea and Japan influenced each other, but for many centuries this was also the territory of many other ethnic groups, such as Mongolian, Tungusic and Manchu. Witsen devoted a special chapter (pages 128-157) to Eso (Jesso), the northern border areas of Japan where in his days, the main inhabitants were the Ainu and the Nivkh - which form the topic of this article. But in other chapters, for instance on Niuche (Manchuria, pages 1-42)[3] or Dauria (the Amur region, pages 63-128) Witsen also refers to the border areas corresponding to present-day Hokkaido, Sakhalin and the Kuril Islands and to their inhabitants.
Figure 3. Map of Niuche (Manchuria) in the 1785 edition of Witsens North and East Tartary
In the following sections, we reproduce text fragments with the related page numbers in the original North and East Tartary book at the beginning of each quotation. We have chosen text fragments concerning the border areas of Russia with Japan and China, and also related to the peoples living there.
On pages 8 and 11 we find the first text fragments about the Nivkh and other peoples in the Amur region and on neigbouring islands:
[8] The inhabitants of Niuche, and those who live near the mouth of the Amur River, report the presence of various small islands near the coast, the inhabitants of which resemble the Japanese in their appearance. With them, one finds cauldrons, clothes and other examples of Chinese and Japanese manufacture, offering solid proof of their trade with the Chinese and the Japanese peoples.
[11] At the north side of the river Amur, it freezes very heavily in the sea near the coast; however not in deep water. Standing on a rock, near the exit of the Amur, one can see an island in the sea, where the people wear similar clothes to the Japanese. These people are said to be a tribe called Chilanes and they live not far from the river Amur.
The last text fragment mentions the Paleo-asiatic people of the Nivkh (here they are called Chilanes), who nowadays inhabit the North of Sakhalin and the Amur delta area with a total number of about 4000 people. In Witsen's days, they were probably more numerous and lived in a larger territory. Since then, their language and culture have become heavily influenced by Russian. On Witsen's map of East Tartary we find Zemle Giletskaja and west of it Giliaki indicating their territory. Later, Witsen reports what he heard about the Nivkh from a Chinese-Dutch interpreter:
[22] Because they live in a very harsh climate, they have to hide from the cold in closed tents during the winter; but in the summer they move north over the high mountains, where they find good pastures for their cattle and enjoy a pleasant, moderate air. This population tells us that from the top of these mountains, far over the sea to the East, they can see several lands, probably Japan, Eso or the land of America.
In the first pages of North and East Tartary we find a first mention of the geographic term Eso (also Jesso, Yeso, Esso). This is a general term for the territories north of Japan, in those days not very well known and indicated with uncertain borders on the maps available. Hokkaido, Sakhalin and the Kuril Islands form part of it, as will be specified later on. In those days it was assumed that in the East, Eso had a common border with America. As such, the island Urup (Company Land) has been drawn as a possible part of America's West Coast. About the inhabitants Witsen writes:
[41] ....there is a large country full of savage people, close to the North of Japan. The inhabitants wear clothes from fishskin, are shaggy and have big moustaches. They are not impartial to wine, but also warlike and feared by the Japanese, under whom they are at present subjects if not entirely, then at least in part.
Here we find a first description of the Ainu and their relation to the Japanese. At the end of the 16th century, Japan started to colonize further parts of Hokkaido and there they obtained a monopoly position in commercial contacts with the Ainu people. This happened with a certain resistance on the part of the Ainu, who started a revolution in 1669, which was suppressed by the Japanese. Witsen describes this as follows:
[62] The northern neighbours are the Jesoёn of the island Jesogasima [4], who have been made subjects of the emperor Jori-Tomo, in the Japanese empire. The regions of Jeso called Matsumai en Inabu were governed from the large regions Nanbu en Osiu in the North of Japan. When they recently tried to get rid of their proud rulers, a large army of soldiers and three hundred horsemen were sent to them and the rebellion was suppressed [5].
After the description of the island of Hokkaido, Witsen takes us further to the North, to present-day Sakhalin (on the map still linked to the North of Hokkaido), an area in the South of which also Ainu lived, and Nivkh in the North.
[63] Behind this island, to the North, lies the mainland of Oku Jeso, which is Upper or High Jeso. The Japanese are unsure about precise conditions in this land and about its size and shape. A certain sailor, who landed there a few years ago, reports to have seen among those uncivilised people some individuals dressed in fine Chinese silk, on the basis of which he concluded there must be a peninsula or at least an area in close and comfortable proximity to Daats that is Tartary. In the year 1684 a ship was sent there to explore this unknown land, but after a period of three months had elapsed the ship returned with not much more news than what has already been said here. Another Imperial junk was then sent to the same destination from the east coast of Japan: a junk which ultimately - after roaming the sea long and fruitlessly drifted off between forty and and fifty degrees to land that was held to be America. There, the ship and its crew spent the winter in a cove they had discovered. The junks crew was unable to shed light on the line of the shore towards the North West, after which it was decided in Japan not to explore the foreign and distant lands.
Thus, according to Witsen, the Japanese decided not to explore these territories any further, whereas the Russians had not yet reached these eastern parts of Asia. As early as 1643 the Dutch had reconnoitred the area. At a time when they started to play an important role in Japan an expedition of two ships led by Maarten Gerritszoon Vries was sent to these unknown parts of the Pacific Ocean. The Dutch hoped to find islands rich in gold and silver north and East of Japan, or the mysterious empire of Cathay, close to America. Neither the Japanese nor the Russians, but these Dutchmen discovered and drew the first map of the Southern Kuril Islands. In this respect, they played a primary role in the history of this part of the world [6].
About the Japanese maps of these territories Witsen writes the following:
[63] The Japanese maps, which can be found in large manors, and also in Symmi or other temples in these regions, show Jeso bordering on Daats[7] , and show its eastern shores lying more than fifteen degrees further east than Japan. They also show, between this land and America, a sea strait (Fretum Anian or Strait de Vries)², but - as is the case with all other maps - this was done carelessly and without the mention of degrees. Thus, these maps cannot be relied on: especially those in which the names have been written only on the basis of their sound and in Canna, based on the alphabet, and drawn up in such a way that the entire work reflects only oral descriptions.
Here, we find critical comments on the way these regions were represented on Japanese maps. Later, Witsen mentions the Strait of De Vries (in Russian Proliv Friza), which was discovered by Maarten Gerritsz. de Vries as the strait between the Kuril Islands of Etorofu (called Staten Eylant by De Vries) and Urup (Compagnies Lant). The latter was identified as an island or peninsula on the west coast of America.
Further down, we again find a description of the Nivkh population and their way of life near the Amur estuary:
[87] Along the great river Amur, very high mountains stretch out and also areas of dark wilderness and forests. The river Amur flows into the Great Ocean in one single estuary. Opposite this river mouth lies a very large island in the sea. This island is i