In the dim and distant past, Dutch and Spanish
adventurers conquered the island. Now only a
handful of buildings encapsulate what is left
of Taiwan's incarnation as a colonial outpost.
"Long, long ago in a galaxy far, far away..." Well, not quite perhaps--but for many Taiwanese, the unruly period of Dutch-Spanish occupation might almost be a fable involving another planet. The reason is not far to seek. "Taiwan's history over the past three hundred years has been so tumultuous that few traces of its ancient fortifications have survived," says Lee Chian-lang, associate professor of the history of architecture at Chinese Culture University.
Hung Mao Cheng, "Redheads' Fort," in Tamsui, is undoubtedly one of those survivors--so much so that even on a dull wet day, typical fall weather for northern Taiwan, it attracts tourists. "I read about Hung Mao Cheng a long time ago in my history textbook, and I wanted to see it because I thought it would give me a better understanding of Taiwan's history," says first-time visitor and university student Lin Shu-ping. "It makes me feel sad, thinking about Taiwan's unlucky past--being colonized by the Western maritime powers, and so on." She is enjoying her tour, but wishes the site administrators could have provided more explanatory materials to help her know how the structure came to be built and what it was designed to do.
Fortunately, help is at hand. Sung Hung-yi, a lecturer at the St. John's and St. Mary's Institute of Technology, a college in Tamsui, has conducted extensive research on the town's historic sites, and for the past ten years has also conducted regular lecture tours there. He and Lee Chian-lang probably know as much as anyone alive about the fort's history and functions. The two men are happy to stroll around the site, explaining its significance.
"In its time-weathered walls we can read the story of Taiwan's early settlers and their pioneering deeds," Sung says. "The fort dates back over 300 years, during which it was rebuilt and restored in turn by the Spanish, the Dutch, the Ming loyalists under warrior-hero Cheng Cheng-kung and his descendants, the Ching authorities, and the British."
"Its architecture has considerable historical, cultural, and artistic value, and also illustrates many of the technical features of Western construction methods in the seventeenth century," Lee adds. "Today, ancient fortifications of this type are few and far between, anywhere in the world. It's vital that they should be cared for and preserved."
The first thing to notice about this fort is its commanding position, overlooking the mouth of the Tamsui River a few miles from present-day Taipei. In 1629, a Spanish expeditionary force based in Keelung chose this hill on the north bank as an ideal site for a fort, which they built over the remains of a former stronghold constructed either by local indigenous peoples or by Chinese settlers. They named it Fort Santo Domingo, for the founder of the Dominican Order. (It was a common Spanish practice to name fortresses after saints.)
Sung has studied contemporary records, which show that the original materials used by the Spanish included bamboo, clay, reeds, and wood. It was a square, fairly crude construction. In 1636, a force of aborigines attacked the fort under cover of darkness as a protest against extortionate taxes imposed by the local governor. They killed some Spaniards and razed the fort to the ground. The garrison commander commenced restoration work the following year, using stronger materials such as stone and lime in place of clay and wood. The walls were raised to a height of over twenty feet.
Once they had reinforced the citadel, the Spanish continued their exploration of the hinterland, where they discovered numerous settlements in the Taipei plain. They constructed a road to their base at Keelung along the river of the same name, after which the entire Taipei region quickly came under their control.
All was not smooth sailing, however. This rapid expansion of Spanish influence was a source of concern to the Dutch, who held the upper hand in southern Taiwan, and the two colonial powers prepared to face off over their rival claims to Taiwan's rich natural resources. There was also religious friction, the Dutch being Protestant and the Spanish Roman Catholic. Sung notes that the Dutch were no doubt particularly sensitive to Spanish expansion, as the Netherlands itself had only broken free of Spanish domination in 1581.
In 1642 the Dutch started to move north, and armed confrontation with the Spanish looked likely. The invaders first attacked Keelung, where the outnumbered Spanish garrison quickly surrendered. Then, as fate would have it, three-quarters of the Spanish troops on the island were recalled to the Philippines to crush a native rebellion, opening the way for Dutch forces to take over Fort Santo Domingo. The local Chinese referred to the Dutchmen as hung mao, or "redheads," and the fort soon acquired the nickname Hung Mao Cheng.
The Dutch, well aware of the site's strategic importance, decided to rebuild it. They shipped more than 1,500 sacks of lime and other building materials, employing a work force that consisted mainly of Chinese artisans with some help from the local indigenous peoples. By late December 1644, Sung says, the records show that the walls had reached a height of eight feet, and the first vault was begun. By the end of the following year the work was still unfinished, partly due to heavy rains. A reasonable estimate for the final completion of the building would be some time in 1646.
Lee Chian-lang, author of several books about Taiwan's historic sites, has studied the site's history in some detail. The main fortress consists of a square tower with an outer wall of red brick, topped by a parapet with embrasures, and two corner watchtowers equipped with firing slits. Its interior ceilings take the form of domed vaults, a feature that differentiates it from most Chinese buildings.
The inner sections of the walls were likewise constructed of brick in order to create vaulting, whereas the outer sections are mostly stone with a small percentage of brick. According to Lee, the bricks were shipped in from the Dutch colony of Batavia in Indonesia, while the stone was obtained locally. The massive walls' exterior is faced with vermilion-painted plaster.
Lee also draws attention to the fort's foundations, which are very deep and consist of layers of brick. Above them rose the stone walls, over six feet thick, which in former times would have been able to withstand bombardment. Deep ditches on the east and north sides were dug to prevent an enemy from approaching. The fort stands about thirteen meters high, and has only two floors. The ground floor consists of two parallel vaults running east-west, with access at both ends. The first floor similarly consists of two parallel vaults, but aligned on a north-south axis. "Few of Taiwan's historic buildings have had such a checkered career, involving so many changes of ownership, and yet ended up in a proper state of preservation," Lee Chian-lang comments.
In 1681, several years after the Dutch had been driven out by the Ming loyalist Cheng Cheng-kung, better known in the West as Koxinga, the fort was rebuilt and garrisoned. Two years later, Ching forces took over Taiwan, after which the fort was again restored by the magistrate of Tamsui. It remained in Ching hands until 1867, when the British leased the buildings and renovated them, constructing the present brick portico and lookout post and painting the main structure red.
The British withdrew from their consulate in 1972, after which it was occupied first by Australia and later by the United States. The fort finally reverted to the Republic of China in June 1980. In 1983, following a preliminary assessment by the Council for Cultural Affairs, Fort Santo Domingo was designated a Grade One historic site, thus earning the highest degree of protection at the national level, and a panel of experts was commissioned to devise a restoration plan. The work was completed at the end of 1984.
Anping Fort is another of the survivors, although it has not weathered the passage of time quite so well. It was originally part of a major city built by the Dutch in 1624, at which time it was known as Fort Zeelandia. Like Fort Santo Domingo, the remains of this structure, in the city of Tainan on Taiwan's southwest coast, have been listed by the Ministry of the Interior as one of the island's twenty-four Grade One historic sites.
According to Ho Pei-fu, professor of history at National Cheng Kung University, "Anping Fort reflects a long history of growth and development dating back to the early years of Taiwan's civilization, but its real significance was as a forum for east-west contacts--commercial, missionary, and cultural. Although the structure has lost its original features, and there are only a few ruins left, it remains central to an understanding of Taiwan's historical development and the history of maritime navigation."
What was the background to the fort's construction? At the start of the seventeenth century, several Western maritime powers --Portugal, Spain, and Holland--dispatched fleets to the Far East in search of commercial opportunities. The Portuguese were the first Europeans to reach Taiwan, and it was they who gave the island its enduring nickname of Ilha Formosa, or "Beautiful Island," but they left soon after establishing a settlement in the north.
The next Europeans to arrive were the Spanish and the Dutch, who showed greater staying power. In 1622, the Dutch East India Company established a military base in the Pescadores, an island group to the west of Taiwan now known as Penghu. When they were driven out of it by the Chinese the following year, they moved to the larger island, and the consequent meeting of early Chinese settlers and Western trading fleets in what is now Tainan marked the start of Taiwan's modern history.
"In order to consolidate their power, and with permanent occupation in mind, they quickly set about constructing massive forts and other defensive works," Ho says. During the 1620s the Dutch and Spanish established bases in south and north Taiwan respectively, and thereafter the inhabitants--fishing communities, early Chinese settlers, and the plains aborigines--were all subject to foreign rule.
The resulting dual colonial administration was good for the island in many ways. It spawned important international commerce, with Western silver and Indian spices traded for silk and sugar by Chinese and Japanese merchants. But the Taiwan Strait, crucial to the success of this business, was the haunt of pirates.
The Dutch therefore decided to build their first local stronghold, Fort Zeelandia, in Tayuan, just outside Tainan. According to Ho Pei-fu, the original structure was thirty meters high and had walls four meters thick. The inner part of the fort was square in design, while the outer ramparts formed a rectangle. "This was a good strategic move for the Dutch," he says. "They wanted a base close to the Chinese mainland that would make it easier for Dutch East India ships to trade porcelain, silk, and tea with the rest of the world."
Chinese Culture University's Lee Chian-lang points out that Holland is a low-lying country bordering the sea, which meant that over the years the Dutch had been obliged to develop excellent dike-building techniques in addition to their vaunted navigation skills. They were also good builders, specializing in the use of bricks, stone, and a bizarre-sounding mortar made of glutinous rice, sugar, and oyster shells.
They thus felt confident enough to build Fort Zeelandia on a large scale, complete with houses, churches, military camps, and even an execution ground within the city, an arsenal underneath it, and an outer fortress projecting out from the northwest corner with space for fifteen cannons and four watchtowers. It took the Dutch more than eight years to complete the fort, and was thereafter used by them as their administrative base during their thirty-eight-year colonial occupation. In 1625, seeing the need for a commercial center, they bartered goods for a piece of land in nearby Chihkan that was owned by indigenous people, where they built Fort Provintia, now known as Chihkan Tower.
What gave these structures their unique style? "Seventeenth-century Dutch and Spanish forts were often built to a square design, with projections jutting out from each of the four corners," Lee says. "These served as weapons platforms and were equipped with large cannon. You find a lot of domed vaults, very different from the wooden pillars commonly used in traditional Chinese architecture." Numerous fortifications built by the Dutch in Indonesia and by the Spanish in the Philippines incorporate this overall design.
The Dutch used incentives to attract increasing numbers of ethnic Chinese settlers to Taiwan, seeing this as a way to open the island up to agriculture. They also imposed a tax on exports, which in those days consisted mainly of deer hides and sugar. Taiwan proved to be one of the most profitable branches of the Dutch East India Company in the Far East, contributing 26 percent of the company's global profits in 1649.
While the Dutch were busy in the south, Spanish forces based in the Philippines sailed up the east coast of Taiwan in 1626 and occupied Keelung at the island's northern tip. There they built a stone fort, which they called San Salvador, following it up with Fort Santo Domingo in Tamsui. "In their day, these Western-style fortifications were strongholds of colonial rule, garrisoned by formidable military forces," Lee Chian-lang says, adding that old documents and plans show it was built to the usual square design with gun platforms.
Nowadays, there is no longer any trace of Fort San Salvador. In 1661 the Dutch garrison abandoned it, knowing that Koxinga was already laying siege to Fort Provintia in the south, and before leaving they blew it up. A few ruins remained during the Japanese occupation of Taiwan (1895-1945), but now even they have disappeared.
A number of smaller fortified outposts were built by the Dutch and the Spanish in the first half of the seventeenth century. These could usually be found in the vicinity of more important garrisoned forts and were used to defend them. They include Fort Victoria at Keelung, Fort Utrecht near Fort Zeelandia, and Fort Baxemboy near Fort Provintia. The necessary materials were for the most part shipped from other colonies in Southeast Asia, with stone probably the only material obtained locally. Both sets of occupiers also built several churches, but they disappeared from the scene long ago.
The Manchus established the Ching dynasty in 1644, and for the next three hundred years China more or less closed its doors to outsiders. The early days of the dynasty were significant for the future of Taiwan, however, because there the Manchus encountered resistance led by Koxinga. This legendary Chinese general, a son of the pirate Cheng Chih-lung and his Japanese mistress, made Taiwan his base in his efforts to restore the Ming dynasty. He led thousands of Ming troops from the mainland to Taiwan in 1661, and from there launched his campaign against the Dutch.
Cheng landed his troops at Luerh-men, on the outskirts of Tainan, attacked Fort Provintia, and laid siege to Fort Zeelandia for nine months. The Dutch capitulated the following year and withdrew from Taiwan, leaving garrisons in the northern strongholds of Keelung and Tamsui which did not finally withdraw until 1668. Taiwan was formally incorporated into the territory of the Ching dynasty in 1684, when administratively it became part of Fujian Province.
National Cheng Kung University's Ho Pei-fu notes that the Ching royal court did not seem much impressed by the strategic advantages of Fort Zeelandia, even though the island's political center had shifted to Tainan. High tides, heavy rains, and strong winds had their inevitable effect on the fort, which fell into disrepair and ended up being used mainly as an arsenal. By the end of the Ching dynasty, it was a ruin. In 1897, the Japanese occupying force flattened the inner part of the site and built a Western-style dormitory for customs officers. Nowadays, only a few sections of the outer walls remain.
Nearby Fort Provintia suffered a similar fate, ravaged by the elements. But in 1874 the imperial Inspector-General, Shen Pao-chen, came to Taiwan to oversee consolidation of the island's defenses. All went well, so Shen built a temple on the site of the fort and dedicated it to Matsu, the Goddess of the Sea, for helping him accomplish his mission.
Later on, other Chinese-style buildings including an academy, a hall, a pavilion, and a shrine were constructed on the site by the local county chief. Only the temple and the hall remain. Chihkan Tower, formerly Fort Provintia, has played several different roles, being an arsenal, private school, military ward, and teachers' school at different times. Like Anping Fort, it has been designated a Grade One historic site and has undergone renovation.
"Long, long ago in a galaxy far away..." Nowadays it is hard to imagine the cannon's roar, or the cries of clashing armies fighting at close quarters with sabers and pistols. Compared with the battlegrounds of Europe and even North America, Taiwan has little to show in the way of commemorative historical memorabilia. All the more important, then, that the ones which remain should enjoy protection from wind, rain, and those who would neglect the island's precious cultural heritage.