The island of Taiwan, also commonly known as Formosa, was partly under colonial rule by the Dutch Republic from 1624 to 1662 and from 1664 to 1668. In the context of the Age of Discovery, the Dutch East India Company established its presence on Formosa to trade with the Ming Empire in neighbouring China and Tokugawa shogunate in Japan, and also to interdict Portuguese and Spanish trade and colonial activities in East Asia.
The Dutch were not universally welcomed, and uprisings by both aborigines and recent Han arrivals were quelled by the Dutch military on more than one occasion. With the rise of the Qing dynasty in the early 17th century, the Dutch East India Company cut ties with the Ming dynasty and allied with the Qing instead, in exchange for the right to unfettered access to their trade and shipping routes. 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.
History
Background
As late comers in sailing the seas of the world, the Netherlands and England came, at the beginning of the 17th century, inevitably in conflict with the forces of Spain and Portugal. In ideological terms, the conflict was expressed in the Iberian powers being Catholic, while during the commercial development of England and the Netherlands, both had separated their religious institutions from Papal Rome.
The Dutch first attempted to trade with China in 1601 but were rebuffed by the Chinese authorities, who were already engaged in trade with the Portuguese at Macau from 1535.
In a 1604 expedition from Batavia (the central base of the Dutch in Asia), Admiral Wybrand van Warwijk set out to attack Macau, but his force was waylaid by a typhoon, driving them to the Pescadores (Penghu), a group of islands west of Formosa (Taiwan). Once there, the admiral attempted to negotiate trade terms with the Chinese on the mainland, but was asked to pay an exorbitant fee for the privilege of an interview. Surrounded by a vastly superior Chinese fleet, he left without achieving any of his aims.
The Dutch East India Company tried to use military force to make China open up a port in Fujian to trade and demanded that China expel the Portuguese, whom the Dutch were fighting in the Dutch–Portuguese War, from Macau. The Dutch raided Chinese shipping after 1618 and took junks hostage in an unsuccessful attempt to get China to meet their demands.
In 1622, after another unsuccessful Dutch attack on Macau (trade post of Portugal from 1557) and the failure to set up a trading post in Fat Tong O (present day Hong Kong), the fleet sailed to the Pescadores, this time intentionally, and proceeded to set up a base there at Makung. They built a fort with forced labour recruited from the local Chinese population. Their oversight was reportedly so severe and rations so short that 1,300 of the 1,500 Chinese enslaved died in the process of construction.
The Dutch demanded that China open up ports in Fujian to Dutch trade. China refused, warning the Dutch that the Pescadores were Chinese territory. The Chinese governor of Fujian (Fukien), Shang Zhouzuo (Shang Chou-tso), demanded that the Dutch withdraw from the Pescadores to Formosa, where the Chinese would permit them to engage in trade. This led to a war between the Dutch and China between 1622 and 1624 which ended with the Chinese being successful in making the Dutch abandon the Pescadores and withdraw to Formosa. The Dutch threatened that China would face Dutch raids on Chinese ports and shipping unless the Chinese allowed trading on the Pescadores and that China not trade with Manila but only with the Dutch in Batavia and Siam and Cambodia. However, the Dutch found out that, unlike tiny Southeast Asian kingdoms, China could not be bullied or intimidated by them. After Shang ordered them to withdraw to Formosa on 19 September 1622, the Dutch raided Amoy in October and November. The Dutch intended to "induce the Chinese to trade by force or from fear." by raiding Fujian and Chinese shipping from the Pescadores. Long artillery batteries were erected at Amoy in March 1622 by Colonel Li-kung-hwa as a defence against the Dutch.