Abstract
The studies on the Dutch East India Company's trade activities on Taiwan (Formosa) have pointed out that the Tayouan factory play a role as a rendezvous in the Company's intra-Asiatic trade networks. However, what kinds of cargos had been circulated and involved in the activities in such an entrepôts? Through a vast and regular shipping network, the Company transported her personnel and supplies; besides, ”the written cargoes” in the form of letters, which delivered information in between local factories, is needed to be valued. This article aims to elucidate the Company's inner-Asian trade, shipping and information networks, and to focus on their practice in Taiwan from a perspective of structural network. Taking activities at Port Tayouan in the southern monsoon season of the year 1637 as an example, the author argues that the Company had enacted a pattern of regional connection in shipping, merchandise, and capital which shaped the function of the factory in Taiwan. Moreover, information especially formulated this regional connection.