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Hello and welcome to the history of China.

Hello and welcome to the history of China.

Episode 260, Taiwan Incognita.

Elia Ripon, a Swiss Army Captain with the Dutch East India Fleet, made his living, and eventually

his fame, in the South and East China seas, as only a classic swashbuckler really could.

Hailing from the poor French-speaking Swiss Canton of Greer, yes of cheesy fame,

he, like so many brash young men of the 17th century, longed for more than what his

impoverished landlocked homeland could really offer him.

As such, as of 1617, he decided to answer the call of the sea and signed on with a merchant vessel.

After an ill-suited attempt at wailing off of Greenland, what followed was several years of high adventure around the Cape of Good Hope and then to Batavia, which is modern Jakarta, Indonesia, where he was immediately embroiled in an ongoing siege by a combined British and a Javanese force against the Dutch fort that had been set up there.

Thanks to the timely arrival of the Dutch allies, or probably more accurately, the Javanese enemies the Molokas both Rippon and the

Dutch Batavian fortress would survive the assault.

As a result of his valorous conduct he'd be swiftly promoted up the ranks of the East India Company,

and then sent to the islands east of Bali.

And then, by 1622, northwest to the Great Island off the coast of Fujian province Ming China, Formosa.

Or as you may be more familiar with it today, Taiwan.

Yes, it is the island of Taiwan that will be the focus of today's episode and at least the next

episode to come, depending on how it all breaks down.

We're going to be looking into the early history of it and its eventual 17th century colonization by not just

China but even before that the Dutch and the Portuguese and before before that even, the Japanese, Chinese pirates, and the Austronesian indigenous population

that existed since time immemorial.

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