“How Taiwan Became Chinese: Dutch, Spanish and Han Colonization in the Seventeenth Century” is a fascinating examination of Taiwan in the early modern world, and one that was obviously a labor of love for Tonio Andrade, an associate professor of history at U.S.-based Emory University.
Exhaustively researched and engagingly written, the book’s 11 chapters clearly explain how the Chinese came to dominate Taiwan ethnically, culturally and socially under non-Chinese leadership. Andrade covers a wide range of topics, from Taiwan on the eve of European colonization through to the departure of the Spanish and Dutch from the island.
This book is a rare historical study that focuses on the incorporation of Taiwan into the early modern European colonial trading networks, and the island’s subsequent incorporation into the Chinese empire. Although this topic is a relatively untapped vein of knowledge in Western academia, Andrade succeeds in touching on a vast number of important themes—political, social and cultural—that relate to the wider history of a unique land and its people.
The early chapters of “How Taiwan Became Chinese” paint an intriguing portrait of the island on the eve of colonization and set the table for a banquet of fast-paced writing that lies ahead. This section of the book provides Andrade with an opportunity to develop the discussion of individual and collective experiences of aboriginal, Chinese, Dutch and Spanish residents vis-a-vis intercultural interactions in East and Southeast Asia—an area of personal interest around which he has forged his reputation as a historian of note.
Andrade begins his tale with Capt. Ripon, a Dutch mercenary who was sent to Taiwan in 1623 to help construct a preliminary fortress on the island. Ripon’s revealing account of his brief stay on the island offers a wealth of data about Taiwan and the rest of the Dutch East Indies. In fact, his journal was only discovered in 1865 in a Swiss attic and to this day, no one knows why or for whom he wrote. Fortunately, Ripon was a talented writer and his words leap off the page and effortlessly guide the reader through a mysterious land of remarkable contrasts, many of which can still be glimpsed today when visiting the more remote parts of Taiwan.
Ripon’s account of his expedition to Taiwan tells of snow-topped mountains, swollen rivers, and lush grasslands and forests filled with a mind-boggling array of pheasants, boars, monkeys, goats, panthers and huge herds of deer. He also goes into great detail about the aboriginals his expedition came into frequent contact with.
While harvesting lumber in the jungle, Ripon and his 80 men managed to hold off 300 spear-wielding warriors using just six muskets. The Dutchman claims never to have got to the bottom of why the attack was staged, but surmised that it was due “to the incitement of the Chinese.” He later wrote that after the battle, “it has come to the point that (God help us) whenever we go to a place where Chinese are trading we must be on our guard.”
It is interesting to note that even in Ripon’s time, Chinese merchants from the mainland’s Fujian province were already visiting Taiwan in large numbers and held enormous sway over the island’s aboriginals. One early Dutch visitor discovered scores of Chinese living in an aboriginal settlement situated close to a trading center: “There is scarcely a house in this village ... that does not have one or two or three, or even five or six Chinese living there.”
He also noted that the villagers’ speech was so riddled with Chinese words “that it ... is a mixed and broken language.” Although later accounts cast doubt over this observation and showed that Taiwan’s aboriginal languages were alive and well, the record confirms the strong and growing Chinese presence on the island.
In telling the stories of the Dutch and Spanish colonizers and their relations with the Chinese and aboriginals, Andrade covers a lot of ground, frequenting areas of interest such as economics, trade, culture, religion, internal and external diplomacy, sovereignty and warfare. For those who relish reading tales of European colonialism in far-off lands, the mid-to-later half of the book is a must.
Andrade’s approach allows readers to track the development of the Dutch and Spanish colonies in the northern and southern parts of Taiwan. By laying out the achievements and setbacks of both colonies, several important themes come to light, some of which remain as salient today as in the 17th century. These include the importance of maintaining good relations with Taiwan’s indigenous population, the influence of mainland Chinese capital and labor in the local economy, the island’s suitability as a transhipment point in the regional and global trade network, and the dangers of becoming over-reliant on mainland Chinese trade.
The author’s use of archival material and first-hand research conducted in Taiwan brings tremendous texture to his portrait of the island in its infancy en route to becoming the prosperous and democratic nation of today. This is evident when Andrade writes of the Spanish capitulation to the Dutch in Keelung and the end of their days on “Isla Hermosa” (Beautiful Island). The reader can almost feel the pain of the soldiers, missionaries and settlers as they abandon a colony that was never self-sufficient through a combination of penny-pinching from Manila and a depression in the Spanish Empire.
Less tragic perhaps given the harshness of their profit-obsessed rule is the demise of the Dutch colony on Taiwan. Andrade is at his best in describing the daily challenges and frustrations faced by Dutch officials as they sought to manage the island’s Chinese settlers and stave off the threat posed by Zheng Cheng-gong, or Koxinga as he is better known in the West.
As 1658 drew to a close, Zheng tightened the noose around Taiwan through the use of a particularly effective sea embargo. The colony’s economy ground to a halt and the Dutch knew it was only a matter of time before he would seek to make himself master of the island. They did not have to wait long. On April 30, 1661, Zheng’s 400-strong fleet of junks was spotted heading under full sail toward Tainan.
After a series of engagements, the Dutch were beaten back to Fort Zeelandia where they held out until January 1662. Not long after, Keelung and Danshui’s Dutch garrisons also surrendered. “The Chinese colony that the Dutch had fostered now had a new master. For the first time, Formosa was ruled by a Chinese state.”
Andrade’s story of how Taiwan became ethnically, culturally and socially Chinese represents an interesting testing ground for evaluating the long-term effects of European colonization outside the Western hemisphere. Mindful of the current state of cross-strait relations, one is tempted to ask whether there is something essential to the debates that rage over Taiwan’s past, present and future. Regardless of whether Taiwan becomes an independent nation recognized by the United Nations, follows Hong Kong and Macau down the path toward becoming part of a unified China, or simply remains as it is, the island will forever be a product of its days as a Chinese-Dutch colony.
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