Article #1
The Dutch
Period of Control and the Era of Zheng Family Rule, 1624-1683
The Dutch
Period of Control, 1624-1661
One could observe European powers beginning to exert
a presence when in 1557 sailors on a Portuguese ship passed by the island and
produced a journal that included a reference to Ilha Formosa (“Beautiful Island”), the latter part of which would
endure into the 20th century as a Western appellation for
Taiwan. In the early 17th
century, seafaring representatives of the Netherlands began nosing around
Taiwanese coastal areas, tried to establish themselves on Penghu, were ousted
by the Ming naval captain Shen Yourong, but then resumed coastal explorations
in 1622 in a thrust that landed them on Taiwan to begin construction of Fort
Zeelandia at Anping, close to today’s city of Tainan, in 1624. In this latter year another European power
began an effort to occupy part of the island when officials sailing for Spain
arrived; by 1629 Spaniards had completed
construction of Fort San Domingo (near today’s Danshui). The Spaniards also built Fort San Salvador
close to today’s Jilong (Keelung) during their period of occupation of northern
Taiwan. But suffering from various
diseases, bloodied by battles with the Dutch, and deciding that the Philippines
offered them ideal bases for their Asian-Pacific activities, the representatives
of Spain gave up their claims on Taiwan in 1642, so that for 20 years Dutch
assertions of rule on the island went mostly uncontested by other outside
powers, although that rule did provoke rebellions by those living under the
Dutch yoke.
Taiwan became an important Dutch base of trading
operations, from which the colonial administration extracted sugarcane, for
trade mainly to Japan; rice, for which
China was the most important market,
and sulfur, for transport and sale in Cambodia and China. Through this carrying trade the Dutch also
procured porcelain, silks, and pottery for which the home country of the Netherlands
provided the greatest market. During the
Dutch tenure, an important figure by the name of Zheng Zhilong operated variously
as a freelance pirate, a ship captain hired to keep other pirates at bay by the
Ming court, and a merchant plugging into the carrying trade of the Dutch. Zheng Zhilong
secured a contract from the Dutch for providing such services, and for
bringing Han Chinese immigrants into Taiwan from Fujian Province, especially
those whose homes had been in the prefectures of Quanzhou and Zhangzhou. The Dutch encouraged this immigration, still
officially proscribed by the Ming, so as to establish more farmers on land
producing rice and sugarcane. These
lands during the Dutch period of control on Taiwan were known as the “King’s
Lands” (wangtian), rented to these
immigrant farmers under conditions of heavy taxation. The Dutch colonial regime used various
devices to extract as much wealth as possible from the island; these included a head tax, customs duties,
trade tax, fishing tax, hunting tax, sulfur extraction tax, and liquor brewing
tax. Many taxes in these latter
categories fell heavily on the aboriginal population. Aborigine discontent with the Dutch overlords
culminated in the Great Matou Resistance of 1635; Han Chinese unrest became manifest in the Guo
Huaiyi Rebellion (1652). But operating
with 2,000 troops out of Fort Zeelandia at Anping and Fort Provintia (located
in the present city of Tainan), the Dutch put these Taiwanese rebellions down
in bloody but decisive fashion.
The Dutch were supplanted as overlords of Taiwan not
by troops of an administration exerting imperial rule in China, but by forces
of Zheng Chenggong, the son of the pirate Zheng Zhilong and an important
commander of forces in his own right.
Zheng Family Period
of Rule, 1661-1683
Zheng Chenggong committed these forces to the
resistance against the Qing Dynasty that had supplanted the Ming in 1644. Zheng Chenggong’s heyday as an anti-Qing
rebel came during the years 1658-1660, during which armed forces under his
command captured Zhenjiang, the capital of Jiangsu Province, and for a time
threatened Nanjing. But by 1660, Zheng
Chenggong was in retreat and in need of a new base of operations. He looked across the Taiwan Strait and saw a
redoubt that had great appeal. He and a
crony by the name of He Bin organized coordinated attacks from Penghu and
through the Luermen Waterway respectively and after a protracted siege of Fort
Zeelandia (Fort Provintia had fallen quickly), took control of the Tainan area
by the waning months of 1661. Zheng
Chenggong died in June 1662, at which time leadership passed to his son, Zheng
Jing. Zheng Jing passed day to day rule
for much of his 1662-1681 tenure as leader to trusted official Chen Yonghua,
whose importance was especially magnified during the period 1673-1680 when Zheng Jing was often in southern China
resuming the anti-Qing activities of his father. On Taiwan, the Zheng regime ruled over what
were now dubbed “Official’s Lands” with extractive policies similar to those
that had prevailed during the Dutch period of rule. So, too, did recruitment of Han Chinese
immigrants from Fujian (especially from Quanzhou and Zhangzhou) and Guangdong
(especially Hakka people from the Chaozhou and Huizhou areas) continue; the Zheng regime put these recruits to work
not only as farmers but also as soldiers deployed in the military activities of
Zheng Jing.[i] By the end of the Zheng tenure on Taiwan in
1683, the Han Chinese population had risen to about 175,000, now rivaling the
aboriginal population of about 300,000.
This termination of Zheng family rule came with the third outside occupation of Taiwan, this by the Qing Dynasty.
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