Ep. 313 | The History of Taiwan (Part 4)
The China History Podcast
Laszlo Montgomery
4.8 • 1.2K Ratings
🗓️ 13 November 2022
⏱️ 38 minutes
🧾️ Download transcript
Summary
The history of Taiwan continues during the difficult decades of the Qing Dynasty. With Shi Lang's defeat of the Dongning Kingdom in 1683, Taiwan finally became part of China. But times were anything but peaceful on the island. The outcome of the Opium Wars had opened up treaty ports on Taiwan. Foreign trade ramped up quickly bringing with it all the positive and negative influences it had on the host country. The Manchu Qing authorities tried like crazy to establish control over the island. But with the indigenous people and the inaccessible mountainous parts of the island, they were never able to assert their authority beyond the west coast cities. A number of bloody incidents go down when foreign ships find themselves shipwrecked off the Taiwan coast. Finally, a hero arises who is able to begin to institute reforms. Liu Mingchuan first fought the French in the Sino-French War and then became the first governor of Taiwan...but not for long. We'll close with the Treaty of Shimonoseki which leads to a sharp turn of events on the Ilha Formosa.
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Transcript
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| 0:00.0 | Welcome back everyone, Los Lomont-Gummery here. This is the China History Podcast. Hope you boarded the right flight. |
| 0:07.2 | More Taiwan history, believe it or not, part four today. |
| 0:12.0 | Last episode we saw how since the annexation of Taiwan into the Qing Empire in 1684, |
| 0:19.8 | things had not gone all too smoothly. |
| 0:22.7 | Emperors Kangxi, Yongcheng and Qianlong, |
| 0:26.5 | and Taiwan wasn't their top priority. Where Taiwan policy was concerned, |
| 0:32.0 | the Qing rulers starting with Kangxi only had three red lines. They didn't want any foreigners |
| 0:38.4 | doing anything on Taiwan except dropping off or picking up cargo. No building forts or settlements |
| 0:45.3 | of any kind. They also didn't want any Qing separatists using Taiwan as a base for any |
| 0:50.9 | anti-Ching operations, a la Zhengcheng Gong in the 1660s. And worst of all, |
| 0:58.5 | they didn't want anyone using Taiwan as a base from which to plan anything that rhymed with |
| 1:04.8 | or sounded like restoring the Ming. Everything else beyond those three red lines, |
| 1:11.6 | they left up to the provincial and local authorities to decide. And as we saw last episode, |
| 1:16.9 | many of these officials on Taiwan viewed the waves of Chinese settlers from the mainland |
| 1:23.1 | as ready meat to be exploited through heavy taxation, land confiscation, arbitrary fees and licenses. |
| 1:31.7 | Some officials were worse than others. The number of rebellions and uprisings that broke out |
| 1:36.7 | during the Qing rule of Taiwan, a test to their misrule. When the poor old Zhao Qing emperor finally |
| 1:45.2 | got to begin his reign following the death of his father, the Qianlong emperor in 1799, |
| 1:51.8 | the population of Taiwan was hovering around two million people, with most of that number comprised |
| 1:58.8 | of settlers who had arrived since the time of the Zheng's Dongning Kingdom. Following the opium |
| 2:07.4 | four ports opened up on Taiwan at Anping, present day Tai Nan, Gao Xiong, Ji Long, and Danshui. |
| 2:15.4 | And all those Chinese who left the mainland to farm or start a business on Taiwan, |
... |
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