Taiwan
- Other Names: 高砂 (Takasago), Formosa
- Chinese/Japanese: 台湾 (Táiwān / Taiwan)
Taiwan is an island located off the east coast of China. Home to numerous aboriginal groups, Taiwan became a base of operations for pirates and smugglers in the 15th-16th centuries, the Portuguese in the 16th century, and the Dutch East India Company and Ming loyalist rebels in the 17th century, before being conquered by the Qing Dynasty towards the end of that century. The island was annexed by Japan in 1895, and regained its independence in 1945. Since 1949 it has constituted the territory of the Republic of China.
History
Medieval to 19th century
(Wako)
(Portuguese)
In the beginning years of the Edo period, several daimyô launched missions to attempt to establish trade relations with the island. These included a mission led by Arima Harunobu in 1609, and one led by the Ômura clan in 1616. However, all were unsuccessful, in large part because the indigenous peoples had no unified, centralized, or complexly structured government with whom the samurai could negotiate; on some of these missions, the samurai were attacked by the aborigines and suffered casualties.
(Dutch)
(Ming loyalists)
Qing forces finally subdued the last of the Ming loyalists in 1684, claiming the island for Chinese territory. Though Qing authority gradually spread across the island, as late as the 1870s, there were still significant areas where the aboriginal peoples were dominant and Qing officials had no effective power or control.
In 1871, a number of Miyako Islanders became shipwrecked on Taiwan, where they encountered and were killed by a group of Taiwanese aborigines. The Meiji government responded with a punitive military expedition, led by Saigô Tsugumichi and launched to punish the aborigines for the murder of Japanese subjects. This spurred considerable tensions, however, between Japan and China, with China rejecting Japan's claims that the Miyako Islanders were Japanese subjects, and asserting its own claims over Taiwan while denying responsibility for the aborigines' actions. A treaty was signed in October of that year in which China admitted less than total sovereign control over certain areas of southern Taiwan (i.e. areas dominated by aboriginal groups), recognized the Ryukyuan peoples as Japanese subjects, and agreed to pay an indemnity to Japan. The tensions still simmered, however, and very nearly came to all-out war before the decade was up, in order to decide more definitively Chinese and Japanese claims to both Taiwan and the Ryûkyû Islands. In the end, in 1879, Japan unilaterally annexed the Ryukyus over Beijing's objections, but negotiations between the two sides, facilitated in part by Ulysses S. Grant, prevented the outbreak of further violent conflict.[1]
Japanese Colony (1895-1945)
The colonization of Taiwan has been described by historian Mark Peattie as "an imperial accessory, a laboratory where the 'new boy' among the colonial powers could show off his modernizing skills, not the heart of Japan's strategic concerns."[2] Those concerns lay chiefly in Korea.
The Japanese authorities in Taiwan were headed by a Governor-General, with Kabayama Sukenori being the first to hold the post, assisted by a Chief of Home Affairs.