Dutch Formosa

Taiwan, 1624–1662. Draft, not yet reviewed

The island of Taiwan, also commonly known as Formosa, was partly under colonial rule by the Dutch Republic from 1624 to 1662. The Dutch East India Company established its presence on Formosa to trade with neighboring Ming China and Tokugawa Japan, and to interdict Portuguese and Spanish trade and colonial activities in East Asia. The Dutch were not universally welcomed, and uprisings by both Taiwanese indigenous peoples and recent Han arrivals were quelled by the Dutch military on more than one occasion. The colonial period was brought to an end after the 1662 siege of Fort Zeelandia by Koxinga's army who promptly dismantled the Dutch colony, expelled the Dutch and established the Ming loyalist, anti-Qing Kingdom of Tungning.

Seat of power: Fort Zeelandia

Rulers

Culture

• During the seventeenth century, when Europeans from many countries sailed to Asia to develop trade, Formosa became one of East Asia's most important transit sites, and Fort Zeelandia an international business center.
• Some Dutch missionaries were killed by Taiwanese indigenous peoples whom they had tried to convert.
• Multiple indigenous villages rebelled against the Dutch in the 1650s because of oppression.

Picture

Fort Zeelandia was a fortress built from 1624 to 1634 by the Dutch East India Company (VOC) in the town of Anping, now Anping District of Tainan.

Image: Unknown author, CC BY-SA 4.0, file

Sources

• Dutch Formosa (Wikipedia)
• Dutch Formosa (Wikidata)
• About the picture (Wikipedia)

Text adapted from the Wikipedia articles listed as sources, CC BY-SA 4.0.