Abstract

Taiwan is now an overwhelmingly Chinese society in which indigenous Austronesian peoples comprise only 2 percent of the population, but 400 years ago, the island was inhabited by about 100,000 indigenous people and a relatively small number of Chinese sojourners who came to fish for mullet or to trade. The bellicose aboriginal warriors prohibited the Chinese who resided across the Taiwan Strait about 100 miles away from farming or hunting. To pursue business with China, the Dutch East India Company, or the VOC (De Vereenigde Oost-Indische Compagnie), subjugated the indigenous Taiwanese, turning Taiwan into an entrepôt from 1624 to 1662. Because the island’s natives were engaged largely in hunting and small-scale farming, the Dutch enlisted more skillful and diligent Chinese migrants to cultivate Taiwan’s abundance of fertile land, given the impracticality of importing Dutch farmers. Unlike the contemporary Africans who became forced laborers in the South American plantations, many Chinese farmers were eager to settle in Taiwan to escape China’s famines and floods, as well as the conflicts that climaxed in 1644 when the Manchu crossed the Great Wall to end the Ming Dynasty and claim the Mandate of Heaven for the Qing Dynasty.