History of Taiwan
''This article discusses the history of
Taiwan (including the
Pescadores). For history of the polity which Taiwan is currently part of, see
history of the Republic of China.
Taiwan (including the
Pescadores) was first populated by
Austronesian peoples. It was colonised by the
Spanish and later by the
Dutch in the
17th century, when influx of
Han people from the continent across the
Taiwan Strait took place. In 1662, it became a base for
Koxinga, a
Ming loyalist. It was annexed by the
Qing (Ch'ing) dynasty of
China in 1683, ceded to
Japan in 1895, and occupied by the
Republic of China (ROC) in 1945. In 1949, after losing the
Chinese mainland as a result of the
Chinese civil war, the ROC government under the
Kuomintang (KMT) relocated to
Taipei, which has been the seat of the government of the ROC ever since.
Main article: Taiwanese aborigines
:Main article:
Taiwan under Dutch rule
Portuguese sailors, passing Taiwan in 1544, first jotted in a ship's log the name of the island "Ilha Formosa", meaning Beautiful Island''. In 1582 the survivors of a Portuguese shipwreck spent ten weeks battling
malaria and aborigines before returning to
Macau on a raft.
Dutch traders, in search of an Asian base first arrived on the island at the request of the Ming court in
1624 to use the island as a base for Dutch commerce with
Japan and the coastal areas of
China. Two years later, the
Spanish established a settlement at Santissima Trinidad, building
Fort Santo Domingo on the northwest coast of Taiwan near
Keelung, which they occupied until
1642 when they were driven out by a joint Dutch-Aborigine invasion force.
 |
The Island Formosa and the Pescadores/ Johannes Vingboons/ ca.1640/ Nationaal Archief, Den Haag |
The
Dutch East India Company (VOC) administered the island and its predominantly aboriginal population until
1662, setting up a tax system, schools to teach romanized script of aboriginal languages and evangelizing. Although its control was mainly limited to the western plain of the island, the Dutch systems were adopted by succeeding occupiers. The first influx of migrants from coastal Fujian came during the Dutch period, in which merchants and traders from the Chinese coast sought to purchase hunting licenses from the Dutch or hide out in aboriginal villages to escape the Ching authorities. Most of the immigrants were young single males who were discouraged from staying on the island often referred to by Han as "The Gate of Hell" for its reputation in taking the lives of sailors and explorers.
The Dutch originally sought to use their castle
Zeelandia at Tayowan as a trading base between Japan and China, but soon realized the potential of the huge deer populations that roamed in herds of thousands along the alluvial plains of Taiwan's western regions. Deer were in high demand by the Japanese who were willing to pay top dollar for use of the hides in samurai armor. Other parts of the deer were sold to Han traders for meat and medical use. The Dutch paid aborigines for the deer brought to them and tried to manage the deer stocks to keep up with demand. The Dutch also employed Han to farm sugarcane and rice for export, some of these rice and sugarcane reached as far as the markets of Persia. Unfortunately the deer the aborigines had relied on for their livelihoods began to disappear forcing the aborigines to adopt new means of survival. The Dutch built a second administrative castle on the main island of Taiwan in 1633 and set out to earnestly turn Taiwan into a Dutch colony.
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Fort Zeelandia built in Tainan. |
The first order of business was to punish villages that had violently opposed the Dutch and unite the aborigines in allegiance with the VOC. The first punitive expedition was against the villages of Baccloan and Mattauw, north of Saccam near Tayowan. The Mattauw campaign had been easier than expected and the tribe submitted after having their village razed by fire. The campaign also served as a threat to other villages from Tirossen (Chia Yi) to Lonkjiaow (Heng Chun). The 1636 punitive attack on Lamay Island (Hsiao Liu Chiu) in response to the killing of the shipwrecked crew of the Beverwijck and the Golden Lion ended ten years later with the entire aboriginal population of 1100 removed from the island including 327 Lamayans killed in a cave, having been trapped there by the Dutch and suffocated in the fumes and smoke pumped into the cave by the Dutch and their allied aborigines from Saccam, Soulang and Pangsoya. The men were forced into slavery in Batavia (Java) and the women and children became servants and wives for the Dutch officers. The events on Lamay changed the course of Dutch rule to work closer with allied aborigines, though there remained plans to depopulate the outlying islands.
Main article: Kingdom of Tungning
In
1661, a naval fleet led by the Ming loyalist
Koxinga, arrived in Taiwan to oust the Dutch from
Zeelandia. Koxinga, born in 1624 in Japan to Japanese mother and a Chinese father, Iquan, in a family made wealthy from shipping and piracy, inherited his father's trade networks, which stretched from
Nagasaki to Macao. Following the Manchu advance on
Fujian, Koxinga retreated from his stronghold in Amoy (
Xiamen) and besieged
Taiwan in the hope of establishing a strategic base to marshal his troops to retake his base at Amoy. In 1662, following a nine month siege, Koxinga captured the Dutch fortress
Zeelandia and
Taiwan became his base (see
Kingdom of Tungning). Concurrently the last Ming pretender had been captured and killed by General Wu San Gui, extinguishing any hope Koxinga may have had of re-establishing the Ming Empire. He died four months thereafter in a fit of madness after learning of the cruel killings of his father and brother at the hands of the Manchus. Other accounts are more simple, chalking up Koxinga's passing to a case of
malaria.
In
1683, following a naval engagement with Admiral Shi Lang, one of Koxinga's father's trusted friends, 's grandson submitted to
Manchu (
Qing Dynasty) control. Koxinga's followers were forced to depart from Taiwan to the more unpleasant parts of Qing controlled land. By 1682 there were only 7000 Han left on Taiwan as they had intermarried with aboriginal women and had property in Taiwan. The Koxinga reign had continued the tax systems of the Dutch, established schools and religious temples.
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1896 map of Formosa, revised by Rev. William Campbell |
From
1683, the
Qing Dynasty ruled
Taiwan as a
prefecture and in
1875 divided the island into two prefectures, north and south. In
1887 the island was made into a separate
Chinese province.
The Manchu authorities tried to limit immigration to Taiwan and barred families from travelling to Taiwan to ensure the immigrants would return to their families and ancestral graves. Illegal immigration continued, but many of the men had few prospects in war weary Fujian and thus married locally, resulting in the idiom "mainland grandfather no mainland grandmother" (有"山公無"山媽). The Qing tried to protect aboriginal land claims, but also sought to turn them into tax paying subjects. Han and tax paying aborigines were barred from entering the wilderness which covered most of the island for the fear of raising the ire of the non taxpaying, highland aborigines and inciting rebellion. A border was constructed along the western plain, built using pits and mounds of earth, called "earth cows", to discourage illegal
land reclamation. Following a shipwreck of an
Okinawan vessel on the southern tip of Taiwan in
1871, in which the heads of 54 crew members were taken by the Mu Dan (
Paiwan) people, the
Japanese sought to test the Manchu commitment to Taiwan. After being refused compensation on account of part of Taiwan being outside of Qing jurisdiction, the Japanese launched a pacification campaign with an expedition force of 3,600-soldiers in
1874. The number of casualties for the Paiwan was about 30, and that for the Japanese was 543 (12 Japanese soldiers were killed in battle and 531 by disease). The Okinawan affair was more of a trial balloon sent up by the Japanese to test the situation on Taiwan for a possible colonization campaign of their own. This caused the Qing to re-think the importance of Taiwan in their maritime defense strategy and greater importance was placed on gaining control over the wilderness regions. The second test of Qing commitment came during the French blockade of Keelung harbor during the
Sino-French War of
1884-
1885. The result was a brief bombardment of Qing positions and a French amphibious operation, before both parties arrived at an agreement. The Qing finally made Taiwan a province and assigned Liu Ming-chuan as the first governor of Taiwan to initiate Taiwan development in
1887. In the waning years of Qing control over Taiwan, Governor
Liu Ming-chuan initiated a series of modernizing reforms and infrastructure projects, including 60 km of railroad track laid between Keelung and
Hsinchu. This segment of railroad became too old in the Japanese eye, and was demolished for modernization later under Japanese rule.
On the eve of the
Sino-Japanese War about 45 percent of the island was administered under standard Chinese administration while the remaining lightly populated regions of the interior were under
Aboriginal control. As part of the settlement for losing the
Sino-Japanese War, China ceded the island of Taiwan and the
Pescadores to
Japan in
1895. Though the terms dictated by Japan were harsh, Qing's leading statesman,
Li Hongzhang sought infamously to assuage
Empress Dowager Cixi with: "birds do not sing and flowers are not fragrant on the Taiwan island. The men and women are inofficious and are not passionate either." The loss of Taiwan would become a rallying point for the Chinese nationalist movement in the years that followed.
Main article: Taiwan under Japanese rule.
 |
A 1912 map of Japan with Taiwan, which was part of the Empire of Japan from 1895 to 1945. |
After receiving sovereignty of Taiwan, the Japanese feared military resistance from both Taiwanese and Aborigines who followed the establishment by the local elite of the short-lived
Republic of Formosa. Taiwan's elite hoped that by declaring themselves a republic the world would not stand by and allow a sovereign state to be invaded by the Japanese, thereby allying with the Qing. The plan quickly turned to chaos as standard Green troops and ethnic Yue soldiers took to looting and pillage. Given the choice between chaos at the hands of Chinese or submission to the Japanese, the Taipei elite sent Ku Hsien-rong to Keelung to invite the advancing Japanese forces to proceed to Taipei and restore order.
The Taiwanese resistance was sporadic, yet at times fierce, but was largely crushed by
1902, although relatively minor rebellions occurred in subsequent years, including the
Ta-pa-ni incident of 1915 in Tainan county. The rebellions were often caused by a combination of the effects of colonial policies on local elites and extant millenarian beliefs of the local Taiwanese, rather than nationalism or patriotism. Aboriginal resistance to the heavy-handed Japanese policies of acculturation and pacification lasted up until the early
1930s. The last major Aboriginal rebellion, the
Wushe Uprising in late
1930 by the
Atayal people angry over their treatment while laboring in the burdensome job of camphor extraction, launched the last headhunting party in which over 150 Japanese officials were killed and beheaded during the opening ceremonies of a school. The uprising, led by
Mona Rudao, was crushed by 2,000-3,000 Japanese troops and Aboriginal auxiliaries with the help of poison gas.
Japanese colonization of the island fell under three stages. It began with an oppressive period of crackdown and paternalistic rule, then a
dōka (同化) period of aims to treat all people (races) alike proclaimed by Taiwanese Nationalists who were enlightened by the
Self-Determination of Nations (民族自決) proposed by
Woodrow Wilson after
World War I, and finally, during World War II, a period of
kōminka (皇民化), a policy which aimed to turn Taiwanese into loyal subjects of the Japanese emperor.
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Bank of Taiwan established in 1897 headquartered in Taipei. |
Initial infrastructural development took place quickly. The
Bank of Taiwan was established in
1899 to encourage Japanese
private sectors, including
Mitsubishi and the
Mitsui Group, to invest in Taiwan. In
1900, the third Taiwan Governor-General passed a budget which initiated the building of Taiwan's railroad system from Keelung to Takao (
Kaohsiung). By
1905 the island had electric power supplied by water power in
Sun-Moon Lake, and in subsequent years Taiwan was considered the second-most developed region of East Asia (after Japan). By
1905, Taiwan was financially self-sufficient and had been weaned off of subsidies from Japan's central government.
Under the governor
Shinpei Goto's rule, many major public works projects were completed. The
Taiwan rail system connecting the south and the north and the modernizations of
Keelung and
Kaohsiung ports were completed to facilitate transport and shipping of raw material and agricultural products. Exports increased by four-fold. 55% of agricultural land was covered by dam-supported irrigation systems. Food production had increased four-fold and sugar cane production had increased 15-fold between
1895 to
1925 and Taiwan became a major foodbasket serving Japan's industrial economy. The health care system was widely established and infectious diseases were almost completely eradicated. The average lifespan for a Taiwanese resident would become 60 years by
1945.
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Kagi Jinja, one of many Shinto shrines built in Taiwan. |
In October
1935, the Governor-General of Taiwan held an "Exposition to Commemorate the 40th Anniversary of the Beginning of Administration in Taiwan," which served as a showcase for the achievements of Taiwan's modernization process under Japanese rule. This attracted worldwide attention, including the Republic of China's KMT regime which sent the Japanese-educated
Chen Yi to attend the affair. He expressed his admiration about the efficiency of Japanese government in developing Taiwan, and commented on how lucky the Taiwanese were to live under such effective administration. Somewhat ironically, Chen Yi would later become the ROC's first Chief Executive of Taiwan, who would be infamous for the corruption that occurred under his watch.
The later period of Japanese rule saw a local elite educated and organized. During the
1930s several home rule groups were created at a time when others around the world sought to end colonialism. In
1935, the Taiwanese elected their first group of local legislators. By March
1945, the Japanese legislative branch hastily modified election laws to allow Taiwanese representation in the
Japanese Diet.
See also:
Political divisions of Taiwan (1895-1945),
List of Governor-General of Taiwan,
Structure of the Taiwan Army of JapanAs Japan embarked on full-scale war in China in 1937, it expanded Taiwan's industrial capacity to manufacture war material. By
1939, industrial production had exceeded agricultural production in Taiwan. At the same time, the "kominka" imperialization project was put under way to instill the "Japanese Spirit" in Taiwanese residents, and ensure the Taiwanese would remain loyal subjects of the Japanese Emperor ready to make sacrifices during wartime. Measures including Japanese-language education, the option of adopting Japanese names, and the worship of Japanese religion were instituted. In
1943, 94% of the children received 6-year compulsory education. From 1937 to 1945, 126,750 Taiwanese joined and served in the military of the Japanese Empire, while a further 80,433 were conscripted between 1942 to 1945. Of the sum total, 30,304, or 15%, died in Japan's war in Asia.
In 1942, after the
United States entered in war against Japan and on the side of China, the Chinese government under the
KMT renounced all treaties signed with Japan before that date and made Taiwan's return to China (as with
Manchuria) one of the wartime objectives. In the
Cairo Conference of
1943, the
Allied Powers declared the return of
Taiwan to China as one of several Allied demands. In 1945, Japan unconditionally surrendered and ended its rule in Taiwan.
Main article: History of the Republic of China on Taiwan
Chinese Nationalist Party (
Kuomintang) rule of Taiwan began in October 1945 after the end of
World War II. During the immediate postwar period, the Kuomintang (KMT) administration on Taiwan was repressive and extremely corrupt compared with the previous Japanese rule, leading to local discontent. Anti-mainlander violence flared on
February 28,
1947, prompted by an incident in which a cigarette seller was injured and a passerby was accidentally shot dead by Nationalist authorities.
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Tensions between local Taiwanese and Chinese mainlanders resulted in an uprising known as the 228 Incident where 30,000 civilians were killed by the ROC military. |
For several weeks after the
February 28 Incident the rebels held control of much of the island. Feigning negotiation, the Nationalists assembled a large military force (carried on
United States naval vessels) that attacked Taiwan, massacring nearly 30,000 Taiwanese and imprisoning thousands of others.
The killings were both random and premeditated as local elites or educated Taiwanese were sought out and disposed of. Many of the Taiwanese who had formed home rule groups under the Japanese were the victims of 2-28. This was followed by the "
White Terror" in which many thousands of Taiwanese were imprisoned or executed for their real or perceived opposition to the Kuomintang military regime, leaving many native Taiwanese with a deep-seated bitterness to the mainlanders. Until 1995, the KMT authorities suppressed accounts of this episode in Taiwan history. In 1995 a monument was dedicated to the victims of the "2-28 Incident", and for the first time the ROC President
Lee Teng-hui publicly apologized for the Nationalists' brutality.
From the 1930s onward a civil war was underway in China between
Chiang Kai-shek's ROC government and the
Communist Party of China led by
Mao Zedong. When the civil war ended in 1949, 2 million refugees, predominantly from the Nationalist government, military, and business community, fled to Taiwan. In October 1949 the
People's Republic of China (P.R.C.) was founded on the mainland by the victorious communists; several months before, Chiang Kai-shek had established a "provisional" ROC capital in
Taipei and moved his government there from
Nanjing. Under Nationalist rule, the mainlanders dominated the government and civil service forcing 37,000 Taiwanese out of the government sector.
Economic developments
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Corruption by the ROC led to severe inflation. Currency was issued in denominations of 1 million Taiwan Dollars. |
In the immediate aftermath of World War II, post-war economic conditions compounded with the then-ongoing
Chinese Civil War caused severe
inflation across China and in Taiwan, made worse by corruption. This gave way to the reconstruction process and reforms.
The KMT took control of Taiwan's monopolies and property that had been government property under the Japanese passed into possession of the KMT party-state. Approximately 17% of Taiwan's
GNP was nationalized. Also, Taiwanese investors lost their claim to the Japanese bond certificates they possessed. These real estate holdings as well as the large amount gold reserves brought from the Chinese mainland helped KMT become one the wealthiest political parties in the world but also helped to ensure Taiwan recover quickly from war.
With the help of the
China Aid Act of 1948 and the
Chinese-American Joint Commission on Rural Reconstruction, the KMT authorities implemented a far-reaching and seemingly highly successful land reform program on Taiwan during the
1950s. They redistributed land among small farmers and compensated large landowners with commodities certificates and stock in state-owned industries. Although this left some large landowners impoverished, others turned their compensation into capital and started commercial and industrial enterprises. These entrepreneurs were to become Taiwan's first industrial capitalists. Together with businessmen who fled from the mainland, they once again revived Taiwan's prosperity previously ceased along with Japanese withdraw and managed Taiwan's transition from an agricultural to a commercial, industrial economy.
Taiwan has developed steadily into a major international trading power with more than $218 billion in two-way trade. Tremendous prosperity on the island was accompanied by economic and social stability.
Taiwan's phenomenal economic development earned it a spot as one of the
East Asian Tigers.
Democratic reforms
Until the early 1970s, the
Republic of China was recognized as the sole legitimate government of China by the United Nations and most Western nations, both of which refused to recognize the
People's Republic of China on account of the Cold War. The KMT ruled Taiwan under
martial law until the late 1980s, with the stated goal of being vigilent against Communist infiltration and preparing to retake the mainland. Therefore, political dissent was not tolerated.
The late
1970s and early
1980s were a turbulent time for Taiwanese as many of the people who had originally been oppressed and left behind by economic changes became members of the Taiwan's new middle class. Free enterprise had allowed native Taiwanese to gain a powerful bargaining chip in their demands for respect for their basic human rights. The
Kaohsiung Incident would be a major turning point for democracy in Taiwan.
Taiwan also faced setbacks in the international sphere. In 1971, the ROC government walked out of the United Nations shortly before it recognized the PRC government in
Beijing as the legitimate holder of China's seat in the United Nations. The ROC had been offered dual representation, but Chiang Kai-shek demanded to retain a seat on the UN Security Council, which was not acceptable to the PRC. Chiang expressed his decision in his famous "the sky is not big enough for two suns" speech. In October 1971,
Resolution 2758 was passed by the UN General Assembly and "the representatives of Chiang Kai-shek" (and thus the ROC) was expelled from the UN and replaced as "China" by the PRC. In
1979, the United States switched recognition from Taipei to Beijing.
Chiang Kai-shek's eventual successor, his son
Chiang Ching-kuo, began to liberalize Taiwan's political system. The events of 1979 highlighted the need for change and groups like Amnesty International were mobilizing a campaign against the government and President
Chiang Ching-kuo. Finally, in 1986, the Democratic Progressive Party was formed illegally and inaugurated as the first opposition party in Taiwan to counter the KMT. A year later Chiang Ching-kuo lifted martial law. Chiang selected
Lee Teng-hui, a native Taiwanese technocrat to be his Vice President. The move followed other reforms giving more power to the native Taiwanese and calmed anti-KMT sentiments during a period in which many other Asian autocracies were being shaken by People Power movements.
After the 1988 death of Chiang Ching-Kuo, his successor as President Lee Teng-hui continued to hand more government authority over to the native Taiwanese and democratize the government. Under Lee, Taiwan underwent a process of
localization in which local culture and history was promoted over a pan-China viewpoint. Lee's reforms included printing banknotes from the Central Bank rather than the Provincial Bank of Taiwan, and disbanding the
Taiwan Provincial Government. Under Lee, the original members of the
Legislative Yuan and
National Assembly, elected in 1947 to represent mainland constituencies, were forced to resign in 1991. Restrictions on the use of
Taiwanese languages in the broadcast media and in schools were lifted as well.
However, Lee failed to crack down on the massive corruption that developed under authoritarian KMT party rule. Many KMT loyalists feel Lee betrayed the R.O.C. by taking reforms too far, while other Taiwanese feel he did not take reforms far enough.
Lee ran as the incumbent in Taiwan's first direct
presidential election in 1996 against DPP candidate and former dissident, Peng Min-ming. This election prompted the PRC to conduct a series of missile tests in the
Taiwan Strait to intimidate the Taiwanese electorate so that electorates would vote for other pro-unification candidates,
Chen Li-an and
Lin Yang-kang. The aggressive tactic prompted U.S. President
Clinton to invoke the
Taiwan Relations Act and dispatch two aircraft carrier battle groups into the region off Taiwan's southern coast to monitor the situation, and PRC's missile tests were forced to end earlier than planned. This incident is known as
the 1996 Taiwan Straits Crisis.
One of Lee's final acts as president was to declare on German radio that the ROC and the PRC have a special state to state relationship. Lee's statement was met with the PRC's People's Army conducting military drills in Fujian and a frightening island-wide blackout in Taiwan, causing many to fear an attack. Lee's assertion that the ROC is a sovereign and independent nation separate from the mainland was popular among Taiwanese. However, many suspected that his two nation theory was intended to ultimately create a
Republic of Taiwan, which was not popular among the electorate.
In the
2000 presidential election marked the end to KMT rule. Opposition
DPP candidate
Chen Shui-bian won a three way race that saw the pro-reunification vote split by independent
James Soong and KMT candidate
Lien Chan. Chen garnered 39% of the vote.
 |
Japanese Foreign Minister Mamoru Shigemitsu signs the Instrument of Surrender on behalf of the Japanese government. |
According to both the
People's Republic of China and the
Republic of China (Taiwan), Japan's unconditional surrender and signing of the
Instrument of Surrender in 1945 is the basis for the return of Taiwan to China, though there is the contention by a number of
Taiwan independence advocates that Japan did not return Taiwan to either entity.
The position of the People's Republic of China is that the Republic of China ceased to be a legitimate government in
1949 and as the successor government of China, it has the right to rule Taiwan under the
succession of states theory as supported by the United Nations Vienna Conference on Succession of States in 1978, which advocates states rights to
territorial integrity. It is noticeable that the Treaty of Vienna Convention on Succession of States in respect of Treaties never entered into force[
1]. The official position of the Republic of China is that it is a legitimate government with a general mandate over the people of Taiwan.
A number of advocates of
Taiwan independence argue that the Instrument of Surrender of Japan was merely an
armistice, a
modus vivendi in nature, which served as a temporary or provisional agreement and always would be replaced with a peace treaty afterwards. Thus the Instrument of Surrender of Japan did not transfer title of Taiwan. Only after Japan renounced signed the
Treaty of San Francisco in 1951 did sovereignty of Taiwan return to its people, a resolution based on the principle of
self-determination provided by the
UN Charter. Some people believe, however, this Treaty made an
undetermined cession of Taiwan that entrusted Taiwan sovereignty to the principal occupying power under the peace treaty, hence Taiwan is actually an overseas territory of the USA. The ambiguity of the Treaty makes interpretation of
Taiwan's political status especially complicated.
Although these interpretations of international law challenged the legitimacy of the Republic of China before the 1990s, the introduction of popular elections in Taiwan means that except for the most extreme Taiwan independence supporters, supporters of the popular sovereignty theory no longer see a conflict between this theory of sovereignty and the ROC's position that it is the current sovereign government of Taiwan,
Kinmen, the Pescadores and the
Matsu Islands. In fact,
Chen Shui-bian has often promoted the popular sovereignty theory by emphasizing it in his speeches.
*
Timeline of Republic of China history*
Timeline of Chinese history*
History of China*
Dutch Empire*
Japanese expansionism*
Politics of the Republic of China*
Political status of Taiwan*
Legal status of Taiwan*
Chinese reunification*
Taiwan independence*
Taiwan's 400 years of history, from "Taiwan, Ilha Formosa"
*
Reed Institute's Formosa Digital Library*
History of Taiwan from FAPA
*
Timeline of Taiwanese history
