Fwd: Seeking collaborators / source leads: Taiwan’s Islamicate maritime layer

Forwarded below, please see a research project:

I am developing a research paper tentatively titled “The Lost Islamicate Strait: Quanzhou, Hui Lineages, and the Muslim-Adjacent Maritime Substrate of Early-Modern Taiwan.” The paper does not argue that Taiwan was literally founded by Muslims. Instead, it reconstructs a buried maritime layer linking Quanzhou/Zayton, Hui and Muslim-descended Fujianese lineages, Arab–Persian port traces, Southeast Asian Islamicate trade, Zheng/Tungning Taiwan, and Qing frontier recoding.

I am especially seeking source leads, collaborators, or critical feedback from scholars working on Taiwan history, maritime Asia, Hui/Muslim history in China, Indigenous Formosan histories, Qing frontier governance, religious assimilation, genealogy, port networks, or Southeast Asian maritime trade.

The current working hypothesis is that seventeenth-century Taiwan should be read not only through the China/Taiwan binary, but also through an erased-network approach: port systems, surname memory, lineages, food taboos, burial practice, trade routes, military migration, and administrative reclassification.

Interested scholars may contact Joshua W.J. Brown directly at joshuabrownagain@gmail.com.