The
Conquests of Taiwan (1624-1683)
Hi, and welcome to Strategy Stuff.
In the 17th Century, the East Asian island of Taiwan or Formosa
underwent a dramatic political transformation, as seen in the three conquests
of the island: the initial colonization by the Dutch, the takeover by the
independent army of Zheng Chenggong, and the final capture by China’s Qing
Dynasty. In examining these conquests, we will focus on the following
questions:
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Why was Taiwan worth conquering?
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What was behind the success of each conquest?
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and How did these answers evolve as Taiwan grew increasingly developed?
With these questions in mind,
let’s head to the maritime world of Early Modern East Asia.
Taiwan Before the Conquests
A glance at Taiwan will reveal
several characteristics that will be relevant to this video. First, the island
is separated from Mainland China’s Fujian Province by 200 kilometers of ocean,
known as the Taiwan Strait. Strong winds, high waves, and the May-to-October
typhoon season make navigating the Strait a challenge for inexperienced
sailors.
Taiwan itself can be divided into two
geographic zones. The northern and eastern parts are characterized by steep
mountain ridges, isolating them and restricting the amount of agricultural
land. By contrast, the flat, tropical plains of the southwest are perfect for
growing crops – assuming that somebody first puts in the money to develop them.
Last is the archipelago of Penghu,
50 kilometers off Southwest Taiwan and 150 kilometers off Mainland China. Its
position makes it a critical strategic point: defenders can use it to deny
shelter to invaders braving the Strait, while attackers can use it as a forward
base to blockade, raid or assault the entire Western coast.
During the early 17th
Century, Taiwan was inhabited almost exclusively by Austronesian Aborigines,
ancestors to a group of peoples ranging from Madagascar to Tahiti. Numbering
about 100 thousand in Taiwan itself, the Aborigines lived in small villages,
practiced slash-and-burn agriculture, and engaged in ritual warfare against
each other.
The island also served as a refuge
for pirates and traders – basically the same people – from China or Japan.
These settlements were small, temporary and unauthorized, as both governments
generally saw Taiwan as wild and unworthy of attention. But events would soon
bring the island to the forefront of East Asian politics.
The East Asian Maritime Trade
From a regional perspective,
Taiwan sits at the crossroads of the Western Pacific, overlooking the sea lanes
running between Japan, China, Southeast Asia, and the Americas. Maritime trade
had always been conducted along these routes, but its nature and extent changed
dramatically in the 16th Century.
The primary driver was the development
of China’s economy. 150 years of stability and development under the Ming
Dynasty had fostered a vibrant manufacturing and export sector, of which the silk
trade was most desirable to foreigners.
At the same time, the increasing
complexity of the economy had also created a huge domestic demand for silver
currency. As such, a global silver-for-silk trade was born. The silver mainly
came from two places: one was Japan, and the other was Spanish America, either
directly via Spain’s colony in the Philippines, or indirectly through the
Portuguese Empire and its outpost of Macau. The Ming would also trade for sugar
and spice, and those came from the ‘Spice Islands’ of the Indonesian
archipelago.
Taiwan initially contributed
little to this global economic flow, exporting a small amount of precious
metals, sulfur and deerskins. However, its geographic position made it a
natural place of exchange between traders, especially since the island was
beyond the jurisdiction of the Ming and its burdensome trade regulations.
Throughout the early modern
period, this maritime trade was mainly carried by Chinese and specifically
Fujian traders. They achieved this despite receiving little support from the
Ming, who saw their wealth and network as a potential threat. To protect
themselves, the traders self-organized into coalitions comprising of legal
merchants, illegal smugglers, overseas communities and government contacts. For
now, these coalitions were focused on protecting their own activities – aka
trade – and interfering with the activities of rivals – aka piracy. But perhaps
one day, they could be turned towards a political cause…
The other relevant group of
traders were the Iberians. Portugal had been in East Asia since the early 16th
Century, with a string of outposts stretching from Malacca to Macau to
Nagasaki. Spain would then join them from the opposite direction, establishing
Manila as their regional base. Having brought along their own silver, the Iberians
didn’t need to change existing trade patterns to get what they wanted. The
union of Spain and Portugal in 1580 further stabilized their duopoly on the
European segment of the trade.
Then came the Dutch. Despite being
banned from Iberian ports due to their war against Spain, independent Dutch
traders had arrived in East Asia by 1600. In order to better compete with the
established competition, the Dutch state quickly organized these traders into
the Dutch East India Company, a shareholder corporation with a monopoly on
Dutch trade within Asia. As a spearhead of Dutch imperial expansion, the
Company was granted considerable administrative, diplomatic and military powers
in the region. However, its primary goal always remained: to tap into the East
Asian trade to benefit shareholders back home.
There was a problem with that,
though: the Dutch had no silver or anything else to trade with East Asia. But
soon enough, the Company would come up with a solution, one that would carry
significant consequences: they would use military force to seize key producers
or exchanges within the trade, use those advantages to install their own
monopoly, and through that extract profits out of the existing inter-regional
trade. The stage was set for a new wave of disruption across maritime East
Asia.
Conquest 1: The Dutch (1624-42)
With their strategic goal set, the
Dutch launched a flurry of attacks against key components of the East Asian
trade, especially those controlled by the Iberians. They started by targeting
the Spanish silver convoys to the Philippines; at the same time, they began a
long-running campaign to wrest the Spice Islands from the Portuguese. Dutch
ships would pirate the seas off Manila and Macau, forcing the Southeast Asian
trade towards their own posts on Java.
With their forces scattered across
all of Asia, the Iberians found it impossible to coordinate a counter-attack
against the Dutch. Instead, they focused on fortifying their positions,
particularly Manila and Macau. The Dutch tried their best, but they simply
couldn’t conquer either of those posts, which shut them out of the lucrative China
segment of the trade.
After another failed attempt
against the two cities in 1622, the frustrated Dutch finally decided to set up
their own post in an inferior position, which was the island of Penghu.
Unfortunately for them, Fujian officials saw Penghu as Ming territory, and they
ordered the Dutch to leave. The Dutch tried to pressure the officials by
pirating the coast, only to have the provincial fleet sail over and besiege
their camp. Reluctantly, the Dutch agreed to move on.
But all was not lost for them.
Despite their victory, the Fujian officials recognized that these foreigners would
cause far less trouble if they could trade with China. Luckily for everybody,
there was an untamed island just off Penghu and beyond Ming jurisdiction, where
the Dutch could set up shop and trade unofficially with the Fujianese coalitions.
Accordingly, in the spring of 1624, the Dutch established Fort Zeelandia at
Tayouan Bay on the southwest coast of Taiwan.
The Dutch were right to see Taiwan
as the last resort – the area would need a lot of work before it could sustain
the trading and plantation economy the Dutch envisioned. Even worse, Company
Headquarters wanted to see stable political control first before granting funds
for such work, and this was no easy task given the size of the island and the
minuscule Dutch force.
The biggest challenge to political
control were Chinese and Japanese traders. Backed by powerful entities, neither
group accepted that the Dutch had the authority to control them, even when
inside Zeelandia. The Dutch, working from a European concept of sovereignty,
argued that the traders were in Dutch territory, and so had to submit to Dutch authority.
The traders replied by arguing that only their home governments possessed such authority
over them. In reality, all this was just political theater, because the traders
knew that, ultimately, the Dutch in Taiwan wouldn’t risk provoking the Chinese
or Japanese.
Nevertheless, the Dutch still
tried, and were quickly taught a lesson. The Japanese traders went back home to
complain, triggering a devastating official Japanese embargo on Dutch trade, as
well as a few war scares that almost made the Dutch evacuate Taiwan. The Dutch
were left with no choice but to exempt the Japanese and beg the Shogun for
forgiveness. In any case, the Tokugawa were getting tired of overseas
entanglements, and removed themselves as a factor by recalling all overseas
Japanese in 1635.
As for the Chinese, their strength
came not from the Ming state, but in their powerful trading coalitions that
could ruin Zeelandia’s trade with a single command. The Dutch ended up playing
a highly deceptive game with the trading coalitions, in particular against a
rising organization led by a certain Zheng clan. At times, the Dutch would help
the Zhengs against rival coalitions; at times the Dutch would fight them in the
name of ‘piracy suppression’. One year the Dutch would ink trading agreements
with the Zhengs; the next they would encourage subordinates to break away from
Zheng rule. The result was a compromise where Zeelandia would be guaranteed the
business of a set number of ships each year.
Compared with disputes over
sovereignty, the territorial challenges to Dutch control were much easier to
deal with. With their extensive experience in colonial diplomacy, the Dutch effectively
exploited Aboriginal village feuds for their own ends. Like other colonial
conquests, the Dutch allied with a weak village against the local hegemon, used
their military might to overthrow said hegemon, and then assumed its place to
obtain the submission of everybody else. Like all effective colonizers, the
Dutch also ruled via non-military means: they sent missionaries to convert the
Aborigines, and restructured village councils into village chieftaincies,
headed by handpicked loyalists who owed their power to the colonial hierarchy.
Spain also contested Dutch control
over Taiwan. After two failed attempts at attacking Zeelandia, in 1626 Spain
built a rival fort at Jilong or Kelang Island on the northern coast, claiming
all of Taiwan as its own. But the Spanish position was too isolated to threaten
the Dutch southwest, and they were soon bogged down with the same problems that
had plagued Zeelandia. In fact, the Spanish colony might have unintentionally extended
the Dutch presence, because fear of an Iberian-dominated Taiwan Strait was
probably what convinced the Dutch to hang on through the worst of the Japanese
war scares. Ultimately, with the Dutch still around and Jilong perennially
unprofitable, the Spanish abandoned their colony in 1642.
By 1635, Taiwan was finally deemed
secure enough for Company money to start coming in. The Dutch had already
established Fort Provintia in 1625 to prepare the Southwest plains for
agriculture; now, local development began in earnest. To lay the groundwork for
a plantation economy, the Dutch built infrastructure, drew up a legal code, and
introduced the relevant crops and livestock. Most significantly, they also brought
about 15 thousand Fujianese colonists to Taiwan. By 1650, Taiwan had become an
important place of exchange in East Asia, and a significant sugar producer to
boot. Most importantly, the Company – and its shareholders – were reaping great
profits from the island.
All in all, this first conquest of
Taiwan did not go too badly for the Dutch. They were not the first ones to be
interested in the island – both Spain and Japan had made vague claims in the
1590s – but they were the first to solve the many problems associated with a
Taiwanese conquest.
The Dutch succeeded because they
set realistic goals, were careful with Company resources, and could swallow
humiliating but favorable concessions. They chose Taiwan only when there was no
better option, began development only when the island was politically
stabilized, and compromised whenever their military power proved insufficient.
In doing so, their colony avoided draining scarce Company resources, and
resisted the premature disillusionment that had doomed the Spanish effort in
the north.
This strategic discipline probably
came from the corporate organization of the Dutch East India Company, which was
structured to ruthlessly focus on one specific metric and that was profit. This
devotion to money, which is also the basis of most forms of power, allowed the
Company to use its resources more efficiently than larger, more distracted
states, and may explain why the corporation has become a major form of human
organization today.
At the same time, the Dutch also
had a major blind spot in their conception of sovereignty. They believed that
they had exclusive authority over their territories, yet this concept clashed
with East Asian perceptions of legitimate authority. Despite their initial
experiences with Asian traders and warnings from Company Headquarters, the
Dutch still seemed remarkably relaxed about importing large numbers of
Fujianese into Taiwan, perhaps assuming that Chinese officials would no longer
intervene with these migrants. This mistake would soon cost them.
Conquest 2: Zheng Chenggong
(1660-62)
Even as the Dutch were altering
trade patterns in maritime East Asia, even more titanic shifts were occurring
on the continent. After decades of warfare and peasant unrest, the Ming Dynasty
collapsed in 1644, paving the way for China’s conquest by the Manchu Qing
Dynasty. By 1646, the Qing were in Fujian Province, forcing the Fujianese
trading coalitions to re-examine their political allegiances.
Chief among these coalitions was
the one led by the Zheng clan. Like many before him, its founder, Zheng
Zhilong, had built up his coalition through business success, personal
connections, backroom dealing, and violence. Unlike them, Zhilong had also
wisely extorted an official position from the embattled Ming court, who made
him an Admiral with a mandate to eliminate pirates. With it, Zhilong not only
had carte blanche to eliminate his rival coalitions, but also had the
legitimate authority to keep his followers firmly united and subordinate to
him. In this way, the Zhengs were able to dominate maritime trade from Japan to
Siam.
But now the Ming was gone, and with
it, the admiralship that lay at the heart of Zhilong’s coalition. Zhilong initially
funded a Ming court-in-exile in Fujian as a replacement, but soon decided that
a Qing position might serve him better. He therefore surrendered, but contrary
to his expectations, the Qing sent him into exile.
His son, the famous Zheng
Chenggong or Koxinga, had a different approach: he would rally the Zheng
coalition around a new purpose of Ming loyalism. By leading resistance to the
foreign Manchus, not only could Chenggong retain the loyalty of his Han Chinese
followers, he might also attract new ones who wanted a Ming restoration. With
this advantage, Chenggong seized control of the coalition, and commandeered its
considerable resources towards the Ming cause.
However, shared purpose was not
the same as legitimate authority, and Chenggong’s coalition saw themselves more
as partners than as subordinates. If they disagreed with Chenggong, they often
felt that they could argue with him, disobey his orders, and even break away
from his leadership. And there was plenty of room for disagreement when it came
to Ming loyalism.
From his base in Xiamen Island in
southern Fujian, Chenggong had the choice of three strategic directions. He
could directly help the last Ming court-in-exile by making a perilous journey
to southwest China. He could join with nearby loyalists to attack the rich
Yangtze Delta, in the hopes of triggering a general uprising. Or he could do
what most in his coalition probably wanted, which was to pay lip service to the
Ming while exploiting the chaos to extend Zheng trade and influence.
Throughout the 1650s, Chenggong
ended up veering between all three strategies. He first led an expedition to
the southwest, only to turn back when the Qing threatened Xiamen. He then spent
the next few years raiding the Fujian coast, acting as a mere local nuisance
even as the Manchus crushed the southwestern Court. Then in 1659, he suddenly
assaulted the Yangtze Delta, only to be swiftly repelled by Qing forces. With each
change of strategy, disagreeing or disillusioned groups would abandon
Chenggong’s coalition, and some even defected to the Qing.
By this time, Chenggong was in a
real bind. The Yangtze failure had cost his coalition much, but his trade
network could make up the losses. More worrisome was his recognition that
direct Ming loyalism wasn’t working: the southwestern Court had fled to Burma,
no loyalist revolt had greeted him in the Delta, and his forces stood no chance
against the Manchu cavalry.
He was now the only significant
loyalist force left, and the Qing were focusing entirely on him. Their navy was
too weak to even threaten the Zheng maritime trade, so the Manchus decided to
wall off the China market from Chenggong. First they banned all maritime activity,
then they forced the entire coastal population to move inland. Finally, with
the help of defectors, they broke the Zheng underground trading ring within
China itself.
As Chenggong saw it, staying in
Xiamen would only see the Zheng coalition wither and die, while Taiwan on the
other side of the Strait could provide the security and territory for a more
permanent existence. What’s more, the Dutch there had been weakened
economically and politically, with the Company levying unpopular taxes on the Fujianese
colonists to offset the collapsing profits from the China trade. They had also
started pirating the Zheng trade network again, and taking Taiwan would be a suitable
punishment.
Chenggong tried to justify his
plan by arguing that a Taiwan expedition was merely an extension of what the
coalition had previously done, namely paying lip service to Ming loyalism while
extending the Zheng network. But his coalition responded with stiff opposition.
A few die-hard loyalists claimed to prefer death on Ming soil rather than
suffer an inglorious exile. Most were less melodramatic: they simply had no
desire to be pioneers in what they considered an ‘uncivilized’ land, even if
the alternative meant living under the Qing. Ultimately, Chenggong was only
able to convince a small part of his coalition to join his Taiwan expedition,
with the rest of his followers grudgingly agreeing to supply them.
Chenggong had already been laying
the groundwork for such an expedition years ago. Like most Chinese officials of
his time, he believed that he had some legitimate authority over overseas
Chinese. Unlike other officials, the Zheng maritime network allowed him to
actually exercise that authority, particularly with the Fujianese in Taiwan.
Chenggong began ordering them to do his bidding: first by facilitating
diplomacy with the Dutch, then by collecting intelligence on the colony, and
finally, even demanding taxes from them and ordering them to return to Fujian.
Chenggong’s actions were met with
increasingly vigorous Dutch protests. Things came to a head in 1659, when the
Dutch cut contact with the Zhengs and prepared for war. Their defensive
strategy was simple: fortify Forts Zeelandia and Provintia, bring all edible
foodstuffs into their walls, and hold out until relief forces arrive.
There were two points of worry
with the Dutch plan. First, Penghu was controlled by the Zhengs, making it
impossible to stop any invasion or supply convoy from Xiamen. Second, the first
batch of Company reinforcements would not take the Zheng threat seriously.
Apart from their belief that the ‘weak’ Chinese could not possibly capture
modern Dutch forts, they also noted that Xiamen was currently being pressured
by a Qing army, so Chenggong surely wouldn’t try to cross the Strait. In
classic Company fashion, they decided that the Governor was wasting resources,
and decided to make better use of them by sailing away and attacking Macau
again.
The newcomers had utterly
misjudged the situation. The Zheng navy easily blocked the Qing army from
landing on Xiamen Island and eventually forced it to withdraw. Immediately
afterward, Chenggong took the 20 thousand men who would follow him and on April
1661, he invaded southwest Taiwan, where the Fujianese colonists helped him
land. The one-and-a-half thousand strong Dutch garrison locked themselves into
the forts, watching helplessly as the rest of the island, including the
Aborigine chieftains, surrendered.
But soon, it turned out that the
Zhengs had also utterly misjudged the situation. Based on the intelligence he
had gathered, Chenggong assumed that an April campaign would let his troops
live off the land and score a quick victory, so he had only brought 5 days’
worth of rations with him. This decision was highly imprudent - even before
reaching Taiwan, a storm had forced his army to shelter in Penghu, where they
had already consumed most of those rations.
Even worse, the Zhengs now
realized that Taiwan was not as bountiful as they thought, as most of the
colony was geared for sugar, not rice production. Even the capture of Fort
Provintia in May failed to yield more than a month’s worth of food, and with
hunger setting in amongst the army, Chenggong was forced into a long and bitter
siege of Zeelandia.
Realizing he was not prepared for
this, Chenggong launched various attempts to obtain Zeelandia by storm or
negotiations, all ending in failure. Inevitably, this led to another situation
that he had hoped to avoid - the arrival of a second batch of Dutch
reinforcements in September, bringing the garrison back to one-and-a-half
thousand, even as the Zheng army had shrunk to 15 thousand. But that wasn’t
even the worst news: the commanders in Xiamen now saw the expedition as an
utter fiasco, and began delaying supplies to Chenggong to force his recall. One
commander even defected to the Qing rather than reinforce Taiwan any further.
Chenggong was on the brink of
failure. But to his credit, he had at least kept his army together, and had
overwhelmed several attempts by the Dutch to break his siege lines. A chance defection
revealed a weak position in the Dutch defenses, which Chenggong’s intelligence had somehow
overlooked all this time. Summoning up their remaining strength, the Zhengs
took the position, and the Dutch meekly surrendered in February 1662.
Compared with Taiwan’s first
conquest by the Dutch, this second conquest by Zheng Chenggong was carried out
with less care. His strategy for a quick seizure of Taiwan was nearly defeated,
thanks to fundamental intelligence errors, especially regarding Taiwan’s food
wealth. These occurred despite the extensive Zheng network on the island.
Two problems may have contributed
to these mistakes. First, the nature of the Zheng coalition made it difficult
to plan and execute on good strategy. Fundamentally, Chenggong could not count
on the good faith or obedience of those followers who opposed the Taiwan
expedition. As a result, he might have crafted an overoptimistic Taiwan
strategy, hoping to convince skeptics and reassure himself that he would not be
away from Xiamen for long.
Second, the Zheng takeover also
reveals the limits of non-military forms of power. Despite his extensive
economic and political influence in Taiwan, Chenggong still had to use military
means to eject the Dutch. Furthermore, this influence still couldn’t prevent
the military mistakes and omissions that nearly defeated the expedition. We should
also note that Chenggong’s cultivation of non-military power proved just as
threatening to the Dutch as the military variant, causing them to prepare for
invasion two years before it actually occurred.
Zheng Chenggong would not long
outlive his victory, dying four months after the conquest. To the anger of his
Xiamen subordinates, once established in Taiwan he began shifting his tone on
Ming loyalism, de-emphasizing direct action on Mainland China in favor of
preserving Ming culture through protecting overseas Chinese. His stated target
on this front would have been the Spanish Philippines, whose Governor hastily
fortified Manila in response. But actually, his first real target would have
been his own commanders on Xiamen, whose disillusionment had by now turned into
open defiance.
Conquest 3: The Qing
(1681-1683)
Zheng Chenggong’s death did not
heal the breach within the coalition. In fact, it only intensified as news came
of the Ming court-in-exile’s destruction in late 1662. With direct Ming
loyalism truly dead, the Zheng coalition quickly fell into a spiral of coups,
counter-coups and defections. Seeing this, the Qing allied with the vengeful
Dutch, and within a year had captured all the coastal islands, including
Xiamen. The new head of the Zhengs, Chenggong’s son Zheng Jing, was left with
Taiwan, Penghu and less than 100 thousand subjects.
Fortunately, the Zhengs had the
Strait. Their sailors remained the only ones who could navigate its waters
safely, even within the Qing fleet, which was made up of Zheng defectors. The
Qing understandably wouldn’t trust this politically unreliable force, and so
decided not to try an invasion. Working alone, the Dutch briefly re-established
themselves at Jilong Island, but like the Spanish before them, got bogged down
and withdrew after four years. Zheng Jing now had some breathing space to
rebuild his shattered organization.
In a way, the loss of much of the
original Zheng coalition helped Jing, because what remained was now firmly
committed to a Taiwan strategy. He now developed on Chenggong’s final strategy,
and began laying the foundations for an independent existence. Ming loyalism
was de-emphasized and replaced with what would be called the ‘Kingdom of
Tungning’. The colonial infrastructure would be repurposed to grow foodstuffs
and other basic materials. The Zheng trading system was re-established across
the East Asian seas, and uniquely for a Chinese dynasty, the Tungning
government would take an active role managing overseas trade. Diplomatic
contact was established with the traditional friends of Japan and Siam, and
English traders were even invited in to counterbalance the Dutch.
The key state to deal with,
however, remained China’s Qing Dynasty. In 1667, Jing began negotiations with
them, seeking a ‘Korea solution’ where he would become a Qing tributary but
still enjoy complete autonomy over internal policy. This last point was vital
for a state whose elites still wished to preserve Ming culture.
The Qing, worried that Tungning
still aimed to restore the Ming on the Mainland, countered with an offer to
make it a ‘Feudatory’, where Jing would enjoy extensive military powers but
would otherwise submit to Qing internal policy. This offer was rejected, but in
reality the Qing was OK with Tungning’s de facto independence. They
recognized that Jing was uninterested in them, and so felt no need to assume
the risks and costs of invading Taiwan. Gradually, they disbanded their fleet, let
people back onto the coast, and focused their attention on continental affairs.
Freed of continental pressure,
Tungning was poised to pursue a genuinely maritime strategy, posing as the
protector of overseas Chinese while using their influence to capture, dominate
and profit off the East Asian maritime trade. This was pretty much the strategy
that had made the Dutch a major power in the region, and similarly, by 1674
Tungning was ready to start things off with an intervention against the Spanish
Philippines.
But just at this moment, the Three
Feudatories of southern continental China revolted against the Qing, and for a
moment seemed poised to drive the Manchus out of former Ming territory. Caught
up in the general euphoria, Zheng Jing decided to invade China and re-install
the Ming.
It was a disastrous decision. By
heading back to Mainland China, Tungning was not only fighting on
disadvantageous territory again, it also confirmed the Qing’s worst fears of it
being an unreformed bastion of Ming loyalism. For six years, Tungning
impoverished its treasury and trade to capture the ruined cities of Fujian,
only for the Manchu armies to arrive and clear out the southeastern coast,
triggering yet another round of defeats and defections. Zheng Jing himself died
in 1681, just long enough to see a decade’s worth of development go up in
smoke.
Once again, a weakened Tungning
faced Qing China across the Strait, but this time, the Qing were bent on
conquest. They had already re-banned maritime activity as an economic blockade
against the island, and redoubled their efforts to attract defectors. With the
end of war on the Mainland in 1681, they began assembling an expeditionary
fleet out of their existing forces and defectors, and in the process, two
strategies emerged to deal with Tungning.
The first camp, comprising of
Fujian bureaucrats under Governor-General Yao Qisheng, proposed an indirect
approach. Rather than risk the Qing fleet and its experienced sailors in a
naval battle with Tungning, Yao proposed to use the main Qing fleet to threaten
Penghu and pin down Tungning’s fleet there, while a smaller force would travel
north and land at Taiwan’s northern coast, possibly to secure the defection of
the regional commander. Yao expected that this would completely demoralize the
Tungning court and secure a surrender.
By contrast, the second camp,
comprised of ex-Zheng military men under Shi Lang, Admiral of the Fujian fleet,
proposed a very direct approach. Admiral Shi would take the entire fleet to
Penghu, destroy the Zheng fleet in a decisive battle, and obtain Tungning’s
surrender that way.
From the Qing viewpoint, both
strategies had their strengths and drawbacks. Yao’s plan assumed, likely
correctly, that the Qing fleet was not on par with the Zheng fleet, and so
offering battle would be an incredibly risky endeavor. Yet the solution of landing
in northern Taiwan had never produced a successful capture before, and instead
had often resulted in the attacker being bogged down trying to secure the area.
And with the Qing busy with Russia and the Dzunghars to the north, the last
thing they needed was a running sore in Taiwan.
Shi Lang’s plan offered one chance
for a quick and decisive solution, but its success essentially depended on luck
of weather and the Admiral’s skills. Ultimately, the Qing court decided to go
with the military man, giving Admiral Shi overall command of the enterprise in
November 1682.
What happened next showed that
Admiral Shi’s plan was a throw of the strategic dice. Bad winds kept the Qing
fleet in port until June 1683, when court pressure forced the Admiral, despite
his better judgment, to depart with 200 ships. He reached the outskirts of
heavily-fortified Penghu in July, where he met a Tungning fleet of equal size
and was initially defeated.
After a week perilously anchored
off a small islet, Shi Lang received reinforcements and tried again, this time
surrounding and destroying the Tungning fleet. Despite this victory, the Qing
fleet itself was so damaged that the Admiral refused to push on towards Taiwan.
He was right not to push his luck – had a storm struck the fleet at any point
in the campaign, the Qing would likely have been the ones utterly defeated.
To his credit, Shi Lang correctly
predicted the effects of his victory at the Battle of Penghu. Immediately,
regional commanders began defecting to the Qing, culminating in the King of
Tungning’s surrender in August 1683. The Qing considered abandoning Taiwan back
to the Aborigines, but ultimately accepted the Admiral’s recommendation to
garrison the island as a forward post. However, they rejected his other
recommendation to continue developing the island, and deported many Fujianese
and Zheng colonists back to the Mainland. Taiwan would fade from the
international stage for the next 150 years.
The third conquest of Taiwan by
the Qing was, as mentioned, a throw of the strategic dice. The Qing would have
preferred not to waste their resources on conquering the island, but Zheng
Jing’s unwise decision to re-engage in continental affairs made it impossible
to ignore Tungning. Even then, the Qing’s choice of strategy and post-victory
policy showed that they simply wanted Taiwan to disappear as a problem as
quickly as possible, so they could get back to more serious enemies on the
steppe frontier. Even as an enemy and despite its maritime potential, Taiwan
would only ever exist at the periphery of a continentally-focused China.
Conclusions
In examining the three conquests
of Taiwan in the 17th Century, we can draw out a few similarities.
Firstly, the island’s size, separation by the Strait, and interior geography
acted as large force multipliers, allowing its regimes to hold off much larger
enemies based on the Mainland. Even an amphibious landing was not necessarily
enough for victory, as the north and southwestern parts of the island formed
separate power centers that could survive without the other. Capturing Penghu,
however, exposed both centers to potential attack, encouraging demoralization
and the collapse of political will.
Secondly, Taiwan’s development
relative to coastal China determined how desirable it was as a conquest.
Despite its regional position at the crossroads of maritime trade, the island’s
low level of development throughout this period meant that potential conquerors
preferred owning points on coastal China, only seeing Taiwan as a ‘conquest of
last resort.’ After all, most southeastern Chinese ports or islands
more-or-less occupied the same regional position, and they could be made
productive with a much smaller military, political or monetary investment.
Lastly, Taiwan simply could not be
conquered or defended through non-military forms of power alone. Dutch attempts
to convert the Aborigines didn’t prevent the latter from submitting to the
Zhengs. Zheng Chenggong’s ties with the Fujianese colonists may have hindered
his effort against the Dutch. And defection alone wasn’t enough to hand
Tungning over to the Qing. One can argue that non-military power smoothed the
task of conquest, but in the last accounting, Taiwan’s conquest still required
assuming the costs and risks of battle.
The Dutch, facing limited military
opposition, had the freedom to carefully plan and execute an efficient strategy
to establish control. The Zheng coalition, pressured from within and without,
adopted a flawed strategy that only grim determination carried to victory. And
the Qing essentially made a successful bet that allowed them to quickly capture
the island. Semi-intentionally, these three conquerors would bring Taiwan under
Mainland Chinese influence and lay the groundwork for the state that exists
today.
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