Background
Ts'ao was born in modern-day Taipei City's Shilin District in 1920.
曹永和
Ts'ao was born in modern-day Taipei City's Shilin District in 1920.
In 1939 he graduated from Taihoku Prefecture Second Junior High School, but failed his university entrance exams.
An autodidact and polyglot who failed his university entrance examinations, Ts'ao went on to become the preeminent Taiwanese expert on the Dutch and Spanish colonial eras in Taiwan. Undaunted, he sought out Professor Iwao Seiichi of Taihoku Imperial University, who had spent time in England and the Netherlands learning the languages. Iwao taught Ts'ao Dutch, which was essential for Ts'ao to read the archived material from the Dutch Formosa era.
Ts'ao obtained a job as a librarian at the university, which gave him access to a huge range of materials he would otherwise have been unable to see. Ts'ao studied a number of languages in pursuit of his understanding of early Taiwanese history, meaning he could make use of ten languages: Taiwanese, Japanese, English, German, Mandarin Chinese, French, Dutch, Spanish, Portuguese, and Latin. The long-running historical journal, the Taiwan Bank Periodical (Chinese: 台灣銀行季刊.
Pinyin: Táiwān Yínháng Jìkān) was masterminded by Ts'ao, while he was also heavily involved in the monumental series of Chinese source material on Taiwan and Fujian history, the Taiwan Documents Collection (Chinese: 台灣文獻叢刊. Pinyin: Táiwān Wénxiàn Cóngkān). Over the course of his life, Ts'ao assembled a 20,000 volume library, classed as one of the finest collections on the Dutch East India Company in the world.