Dutch Formosa

Taiwan, officially the Republic of China (ROC), is a country in East Asia. The main island of Taiwan, also known as Formosa, lies between the East and South China Seas in the northwestern Pacific Ocean, with the People's Republic of China (PRC) to the northwest, Japan to the northeast, and the Philippines to the south. It has an area of 35,808 square kilometres (13,826 square miles), with mountain ranges dominating the eastern two-thirds and plains in the western third, where its highly urbanized population is concentrated. The combined territories under ROC control consist of 168 islands in total covering 36,193 square kilometres (13,974 square miles). The largest metropolitan area is formed by Taipei (the capital), New Taipei City, and Keelung. With around 23.9 million inhabitants, Taiwan is among the most densely populated countries.

Taiwan has been settled for at least 25,000 years. Ancestors of Taiwanese indigenous peoples settled the island around 6,000 years ago. In the 17th century, large-scale Han Chinese immigration began under Dutch colonial rule and continued under the Kingdom of Tungning, the first predominantly Han Chinese state in Taiwanese history. The island was annexed in 1683 by the Qing dynasty and ceded to the Empire of Japan in 1895. The Republic of China, which had overthrown the Qing in 1912 under the leadership of Sun Yat-sen, assumed control following the surrender of Japan in World War II. But with the loss of mainland China to the Communists in the Chinese Civil War, the government moved to Taiwan in 1949 under the Kuomintang (KMT).

The history of the island of Taiwan dates back tens of thousands of years to the earliest known evidence of human habitation. The sudden appearance of a culture based on agriculture around 3000 BC is believed to reflect the arrival of the ancestors of today's Taiwanese indigenous peoples. People from China gradually came into contact with Taiwan by the time of the Yuan dynasty (1271–1368) and Han Chinese people started settling there by the early 17th century. The island became known by the West when Portuguese explorers discovered it in the 16th century and named it Formosa. Between 1624 and 1662, the south of the island was colonized by the Dutch headquartered in Zeelandia in present-day Anping, Tainan whilst the Spanish built an outpost in the north, which lasted until 1642 when the Spanish fortress in Keelung was seized by the Dutch. These European settlements were followed by an influx of Hoklo and Hakka immigrants from Fujian and Guangdong.

In 1662, Koxinga defeated the Dutch and established a base of operations on the island. His descendants were defeated by the Qing dynasty in 1683 and their territory in Taiwan was annexed by the Qing dynasty. Over two centuries of Qing rule, Taiwan's population increased by over two million and became majority Han Chinese due to illegal cross-strait migrations from mainland China and encroachment on Taiwanese indigenous territory. Due to the continued expansion of Chinese settlements, Qing-governed territory eventually encompassed the entire western plains and the northeast. This process accelerated in the later stages of Qing rule when settler colonization of Taiwan was actively encouraged. The Qing ceded Taiwan and Penghu to Japan after losing the First Sino-Japanese War in 1895. Taiwan experienced industrial growth and became a productive rice- and sugar-exporting Japanese colony. During the Second Sino-Japanese War it served as a base for invasions of China, and later Southeast Asia and the Pacific during World War II.

New Taipei City is a special municipality located in northern Taiwan. The city is home to an estimated population of 4,004,367 as of January 2023, making it the most populous city in Taiwan, and also the second largest special municipality by area, behind Kaohsiung. The top-level administrative divisions bordering New Taipei City are Keelung to the northeast, Yilan County to the southeast, and Taoyuan to the southwest, and it completely encloses the capital city of Taipei. Banqiao District is its municipal seat and biggest commercial area.

Before the establishment of Spanish and Dutch outposts in Tamsui in 1626, the area of present-day New Taipei City was mostly inhabited by Taiwanese indigenous peoples, mainly the Ketagalan people. From the late Qing era, the port of Tamsui was opened up to foreign traders as one of the treaty ports after the Qing dynasty of China signed the Treaty of Tientsin in June 1858. By the 1890s, the port of Tamsui accounted for 63 percent of the overall trade for entire Taiwan, port towns in the middle course of Tamsui River had also developed into bustling business and transportation centers. During the Japanese rule of Taiwan, the entire area of New Taipei City was organized as part of the Taihoku Prefecture. After the Republic of China took control of Taiwan in 1945, the present-day New Taipei City was designated on 7 January 1946 as Taipei County in Taiwan Province, which was constituted from the former Taihoku Prefecture, but not including present-day divisions of Taipei City, Keelung and Yilan County, the latter of which became detached from Taipei County on 10 October 1950. Its county status remained until 25 December 2010 when it was promoted to special municipal status and renamed as "New Taipei City".

Taiwanese indigenous peoples, formerly called Taiwanese aborigines, are the indigenous peoples of Taiwan, with the nationally recognized subgroups numbering about 600,303 or 3% of the island's population. This total is increased to more than 800,000 if the indigenous peoples of the plains in Taiwan are included, pending future official recognition. When including those of mixed ancestry, such a number is possibly more than a million. Academic research suggests that their ancestors have been living on Taiwan for approximately 15,000 years. A wide body of evidence suggests that the Taiwanese indigenous peoples had maintained regular trade networks with numerous regional cultures of Southeast Asia before Han Chinese settled on the island from the 17th century, at the behest of the Dutch colonial administration and later by successive governments towards the 20th century.

Taiwanese indigenous peoples are Austronesians, with linguistic, genetic and cultural ties to other Austronesian peoples. Taiwan is the origin and linguistic homeland of the oceanic Austronesian expansion, whose descendant groups today include the majority of the ethnic groups throughout many parts of East and Southeast Asia as well as Oceania and even Africa which includes Brunei, East Timor, Indonesia, Malaysia, Madagascar, Philippines, Micronesia, Island Melanesia and Polynesia.

The Kingdom of Tungning, also known as Tywan, was a dynastic maritime state that ruled part of southwestern Taiwan and the Penghu islands between 1661 and 1683. It is the first predominantly ethnic Han state in Taiwanese history. At its zenith, the kingdom's maritime power dominated varying extents of coastal regions in southeastern China and controlled the major sea lanes across both China Seas, and its vast trade network stretched from Japan to Southeast Asia.

The kingdom was founded by Koxinga (Zheng Chenggong) after seizing control of Taiwan from Dutch rule. Zheng hoped to restore the Ming dynasty in Mainland China, when the Ming remnants' rump state in southern China was progressively conquered by the Manchu-led Qing dynasty. The Zheng dynasty used the island of Taiwan as a military base for their Ming loyalist movement which aimed to reclaim China proper from the Qing dynasty. Under Zheng rule, Taiwan underwent a process of Sinicization in an effort to consolidate the last stronghold of Han Chinese resistance against the invading Manchus. Until its annexation by the Qing dynasty in 1683, the kingdom was ruled by Koxinga's heirs, the House of Koxinga, and the period of rule is sometimes referred to as the Koxinga dynasty or the Zheng dynasty.

The population of Taiwan is approximately 23.36 million as of April 2025.

Immigration of Han Chinese to the Penghu Islands started as early as the 13th century. The main island was inhabited by a diversity of Taiwanese indigenous peoples speaking Austronesian languages until Han settlement began in the early 17th century, around the time of the Ming–Qing transition, when workers were mainly imported from Minnan region to the colony of Dutch Formosa in the southwest of Taiwan. According to governmental statistics, in the early 21st century, 95% to 97% of Taiwan's population are Han Taiwanese, while about 2.3% are Taiwanese of Austronesian ethnicity. Half the population are followers of one or a mixture of 25 recognized religions.

Zheng Chenggong (Chinese: 鄭成功; pinyin: Zhèng Chénggōng; Pe̍h-ōe-jī: Tēⁿ Sêng-kong; 27 August 1624 – 23 June 1662), born Zheng Sen (鄭森) and better known internationally by his honorific title Koxinga (國姓爺), was a Southern Ming general who resisted the Qing conquest of China in the 17th century and expelled the Dutch from Taiwan, founding the Kingdom of Tungning.

Born in Japan to a Chinese father and a Japanese mother, Zheng rose through the Ming court via the imperial examinations and was serving as a Guozijian scholar in Nanjing when Beijing fell to rebels in 1644. He swore allegiance to Longwu Emperor, who favored and granted him the royal surname Zhu in 1645, a name he proudly used instead of his native Zheng surname for the rest of his life, hence popularizing his aforementioned honorific name. He was made the Prince of Yanping (延平王) by the Yongli Emperor in 1655 for his stern loyalty and numerous anti-Qing campaigns. He was best known for defeating the Dutch East India Company's colonial state on Taiwan, who had been harassing and raiding his maritime supply lines, at the Siege of Fort Zeelandia in 1662 and established a dynastic state on the island that continued to exist until 1683. After defeating the Dutch, he died suddenly in 1662 while planning to invade Luzon in retaliation for the Fourth Sangley Massacre committed by Spanish colonists in the Philippines.

Plains indigenous peoples, also known as Pingpu people (Chinese: 平埔族群; pinyin: Píngpu zúqún; Pe̍h-ōe-jī: Pêⁿ-po͘-cho̍k-kûn) and previously as plain aborigines, are Taiwanese indigenous peoples originally residing in lowland regions, as opposed to Highland indigenous peoples. Plains indigenous peoples consist of anywhere from eight to twelve individual groups, or tribes, rather than being a single ethnic group. They are part of the Austronesian family. Beginning in the 17th century, plains indigenous peoples have been heavily influenced by external forces from Dutch, Spanish, and Han Chinese colonization of Taiwan. This ethnic group has since been extensively assimilated with Han Chinese language and culture; they have lost their cultural identity, and it is almost impossible without careful inspection to distinguish plains indigenous peoples from Taiwanese Han people.

Plains indigenous peoples are recognized by the Taiwan government as "Pingpu Indigenous People". However, only the Kavalan sub-group has been given full rights and privileges. It was not until the mid-1980s that Plains indigenous peoples started gaining interest from historians and anthropologists, leading to increased public attention to this group. These indigenous groups are currently continuing to fight for their identity, rights, and recognition as Taiwanese indigenous peoples. In 2016, the Tsai Ing-wen administration promised to grant official recognition to the Plains indigenous peoples, and a draft bill is being reviewed by the Legislative Yuan as of June 2018.

Tainan (/ˈtaɪˈnɑːn/), officially Tainan City, is a special municipality in southern Taiwan, facing the Taiwan Strait on its western coast. Tainan is the oldest city on the island and commonly called the "prefectural capital" for its over 260-year history as the capital of Taiwan under Dutch rule, the Kingdom of Tungning and later Qing dynasty rule until 1887. Tainan's complex history of comebacks, redefinitions and renewals inspired its popular nickname "the Phoenix City". Tainan was classified as a "Sufficiency"-level global city by the Globalization and World Cities Research Network in 2020, but no longer be classfied in 2022, 2024.

As Taiwan's oldest urban area with over 400 years of history, Tainan was initially established by the Dutch East India Company (VOC) as a ruling and trading base called Fort Zeelandia during the Dutch colonial rule on the island. After Koxinga seized the Dutch fort in 1662, Tainan remained as the capital of the Tungning Kingdom ruled by House of Koxinga until 1683 and afterwards the capital of Taiwan Prefecture under the Qing dynasty until 1887, when the new provincial capital was first moved to present-day Taichung, and then to Taipei eventually. Following the cession of Taiwan, Tainan became the second capital of the short-lived Republic of Formosa from June to October in 1895 until the Capitulation of Tainan by the invading forces of Japanese empire. Under Japanese rule, the city was the seat of Tainan Prefecture. After the surrender of Japan in World War II, the Republic of China took control of Taiwan in 1945 and reorganized the city as a provincial city in Taiwan Province; a role that would remain in place until 2010 when the city was merged with nearby Tainan County into a new special municipality.

The Sangley Massacre was a colonial ethnic cleansing in the Philippines in June 1662, when the Spanish governor of the Captaincy General of the Philippines ordered the killing of any Sangley (Chinese Filipinos) who had not submitted to the assembly area.

Anti-Chinese sentiment had been prevalent in the Spanish Philippines since the early 17th century, resulting in the First (1603), Second (1609) and the Third Sangley Rebellion (1639). In early 1662, the Southern Ming warlord Koxinga (Zheng Chenggong) defeated the Dutch colonial outpost in Taiwan at the Siege of Fort Zeelandia and established the Kingdom of Tungning with himself as the ruler. On April 24, 1662, weeks after becoming the ruler of the Kingdom of Tungning, Koxinga demanded that the Spanish authorities of Manila pay tribute, or else he would send a fleet to demand it. The message arrived on May 5. The Spanish authorities took the threat very seriously and withdrew their forces from the Moluccas and Mindanao to reinforce Manila (modern-day Intramuros) in preparation for an attack. The Chinese residents and native Filipino subjects were forced to gather food supplies and contribute labor to improving the city walls. Some argued for killing all non-Christian Chinese residents. Upon hearing rumor of that, Chinese residents began to flee even while the Spanish tried to reassure them and keep things quiet.

Chiayi (/ˈdʒjɑːˈiː/,), officially known as Chiayi City, is a city located in Chianan Plain in southwestern Taiwan, surrounded by Chiayi County with a population of 263,188 inhabitants as of January 2023.

The Hoanya people inhabited present-day Chiayi under its historical name of Tirosen prior to the arrival of Han Chinese in Taiwan and was ruled by the Dutch and the Kingdom of Tungning under various names. During the Qing dynasty, Tirosen was governed as part of Taiwan Prefecture in Fujian under Zhuluo County and the city was renamed Kagee in 1787. The city was renamed Kagi during the Japanese era but an earthquake in 1906 destroyed much of the town. Kagi was administered as part of Tainan Prefecture from 1920 onwards. Following the surrender of Japan in 1945, the Republic of China, who deposed the Qing in 1911, took control of the city (renamed Chiayi City) and administered it as a provincial city of Taiwan Province before being integrated into Chiayi County in 1950 as a county-administered city. The city was restored to its status as a provincial city in 1982. In 1998, Taiwan Province was streamlined and Chiayi City has been governed directly since then by the Executive Yuan.

Traditionally, the Taiwanese indigenous peoples are usually classified into two groups by their places of residence. Languages and cultures of aboriginal tribes were recorded by the government of Dutch Formosa, Spanish Formosa and the Qing Empire.

Research on ethnic groups of Taiwanese indigenous peoples started in late 19th century, when Taiwan was under Japanese rule. The Government of Taiwan (臺灣總督府, Taiwan Sōtokufu) conducted large amount of research and further distinguished the ethnic groups of Taiwanese indigenous peoples by linguistics (see Formosan languages). After the research, the household registration records remarks of "mountains/plains indigenous peoples". The governmental statistics also listed 9 recognized subgroups under mountains indigenous peoples. However, after World War II, the government refused to recognize the plains indigenous peoples.