At the beginning of the 1600s, Taiwan was a sylvan backwater,
sparsely inhabited by headhunters and visited mainly by pirates and
fishermen. By the end of the century it was home to more than a
hundred thousand Chinese colonists, who grew rice and sugar for
export on world markets. This book examines this remarkable
transformation. Drawing primarily on Dutch, Spanish, and Chinese
sources, it argues that, paradoxically, it was Europeans who
started the large scale Chinese colonization of the island: the
Spanish, who had a base on northern Taiwan from 1626 to 1642, and,
more importantly, the Dutch, who had a colony from 1623 to 1662.
The latter enticed people from the coastal province of Fujian to
Taiwan with offers of free land, freedom from taxes, and economic
subventions, creating a Chinese colony under European rule. Taiwan
was thus the site of a colonial conjuncture, a system that the
author calls co-colonization. The Dutch relied closely on Chinese
colonists for food, entrepreneurship, translation, labor, and
administrative help. Chinese colonists relied upon the Dutch for
protection from the headhunting aborigines and, sometimes, from
other Chinese groups, such as the pirates who ranged the China
Seas. In its analysis the book sheds light on one of the most
important questions of global history: how do we understand the
great colonial movements that have shaped our modern world? By
examining Dutch, Spanish, and Han colonization in one island, it
offers a compelling answer: Europeans managed to establish colonies
throughout the globe not primarily because of technological
superiority but because their states sponsored overseas colonialism
whereas Asian states, in general, did not. Indeed, when Asian
states did, European colonies were vulnerable, and the book ends
with the capture of Taiwan by a Chinese army, led by a Chinese
warlord named Zheng Chenggong.
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