the rise and fall of dutch taiwan, 1624-1662: cooperative colonization and the statist model of...

7/31/2019 The Rise and Fall of Dutch Taiwan, 1624-1662: Cooperative Colonization and the Statist Model of European Expan

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The Rise and Fall of Dutch Taiwan,16241662: Cooperative Colonizationand the Statist Model of

European Expansion*

tonio andrade

Emory University

How did the states of Europe establish colonies throughoutthe world starting in the 1500s? It is one of the most importantquestions of global history, but our attempts to answer it keep comingup short. Two phenomena distort our explanations: the spectacular

European conquests in the New World, whose societies were particu-larly vulnerable to the guns, germs, and steel of invading Europeans;and the imperialism of the nineteenth century and beyond, when in-dustrialization opened a technological gap between Europeans andmost other peoples of the world. To free themselves from these distort-ing influences, historians have begun paying more attention to colo-nialism in Asia during the early modern period (15001750). Herewe have a sporting chance of identifying the key factors behind Euro-pean expansion.

Journal of World History, Vol. 17, No. 46 2006 by University of Hawaii Press

42 9

* Many people and organizations helped with this project, which grew out of my up-coming book, How Taiwan Became Chinese: Dutch, Spanish, and Han Colonization in theSeventeenth Century, electronic book (New York: Columbia University Press, in press[2006]). Most important are Leonard Blusse, Geoffrey Parker, Jonathan Spence, John Wills

Jr., and the late Robin Winks. I wish also to thank students in my class European Colo-nialism in Asian Perspective at Emory University for discussions on colonialism. Fundingfor this study was provided by the Fulbright Scholar Program, the Andrew W. MellonFoundation, the Smith Richardson Foundation, the Harry Frank Guggenheim Foundation,

the Yale Council for International and Area Studies, and the Yale Council for SoutheastAsian Studies.


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have flourished without farmers, artisans, laborers, and entrepreneursfrom China, people who invested the blood, sweat, and money neces-sary to found a commercial agricultural colony. Thanks to Dutch pro-

tection and encouragement, these migrants prospered, and so did theDutch East India Company. As one Dutch official put it, The Chi-nese are the only bees on Formosa that give honey.5

Yet bees can sting. In the 1650s, a Chinese warlord named ZhengChenggong, head of an extensive maritime trade network with opera-tives in Taiwan, decided to intervene in Chinas civil war on behalfof the beleaguered Ming loyalists. To that end he and his followerscreated a state in southern China, aiming to extend its rule over theentire empire and restore the Ming dynasty. The state was an anomaly

in modern history: a Chinese government oriented to maritime trade.After a decade of conflict, however, Zheng suffered a crushing defeatin China. Realizing that he must either surrender or flee, he beganlooking for a new base near China. In 1662 the Zheng state succeededin ousting the Dutch from Taiwan. Thus, Taiwan, unlike most otherEuropean colonies, did not complete the trajectory to European domi-nance. Its fall is instructive because it offers strong support to the Willsmodel, suggesting that state support is a key variable in overseas colo-nialism during the early modern period. So long as the Dutch faced

no Chinese state that was interested in maritime conquest, they couldthrive in the Far East. Zhengs state led directly to the end of theDutch colony of Taiwan.

States and Overseas Colonialism: The Background

Taiwan, not one hundred miles from the maritime province of Fujian,was in many ways a natural frontier for Chinese immigration. Its lands

were fertile and well watered, ideal for growing rice and sugar, andit was within reach of small junks from Fujian.6 Yet it presented an

5 Letter from Governor Nicolaes Verburch to Batavia, VOC 1172: 466491, fo. 472,cited in Leonard Blusse, Nathalie Everts, W. E. Milde, and Tsao Yung-ho, eds., DeDagregisters van het Kasteel Zeelandia, Taiwan, 16291662 [The Journals of ZeelandiaCastle, Taiwan, 16291662], 4 vols. (The Hague: Instituut voor Nederlandse Geschiede-nis, 19862001), 3: 9697. Henceforth I will refer to these four volumes as ZeelandiaDagregisters.

6 This is not to say that the crossing was easy, as early Chinese accounts thereof attest(Laurence G. Thompson, The Junk Passage Across the Taiwan Strait: Two Early ChineseAccounts, Harvard Journal of Asiatic Studies, 28 [1968]: 170194). Still, as many astwo hundred (some years more) fishing boats crossed each December to fish for mullet.See Tsao Yung-ho , Mingdai Taiwan yuye zhilue and MingdaiTaiwan yuye zhilue bushuo in Taiwan zaoqi lishi yanjiu

Andrade: The Rise and Fall of Dutch Taiwan, 16241662 431


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obstacle to settlement: headhunters. Taiwanese Austronesian societies,although diverse, all practiced ritual headhunting. Boys had to capturea head before they could advance to full adult status. Usually they

raided rival aboriginal villages, but they also attacked Chinese visitors.Such institutionalized violence was a barrier to colonization. Adven-turers who hoped to establish large-scale settlements on Taiwan wouldneed military strength and the organizational cohesion to project it.By providing that strength and cohesion, the Dutch catalyzed Chinesecolonization.

This colonial conjuncture happened only because the Dutch bene-fited from a vacuum of power: the governments of East Asias greatpowers were not interested in opening overseas colonies. That is not

to say that they were adverse to expansion. On the contrary, Chinasterritory grew at the beginning of the Ming dynasty (13681644) andagain even more dramatically under the Qing (16441912). Indeed, ifone compares the amount of colonized land China still retains to thatretained today by the most successful European empires, China comesout ahead: its area today is only slightly smaller than it was at theheight of the Qing empire. Yet unlike the expansion of the westernEuropeans, Chinas expansion was land based. It established no over-seas colonies. Its neighbor Japan did show tendencies toward overseas

expansion during the early modern period, but ended up curtailingthem and thus leaving the seas open to the Europeans.The Ming dynastys Maritime Prohibition () has been much

discussed. It did not, as many have argued, completely eliminate allprivate foreign trade. Several Chinese ports, of which Canton(Guangzhou) was the most important, allowed private foreign trade,apparently with imperial consent.7 Yet it remains true that the Minggenerally stayed faithful to the ideals that their founding emperor

(Taipei: Lianjing , 1979), pp. 157254. See also Takashi Nakamura ,Helan shidai Taiwan nanbu zhi ziyuye , in Helan shidai Taiwanshi yanjiu shang juan (Taipei: Daoxiang , 1997), pp. 121142; and Takashi Nakamura, Taiwan nanbu ziyuye zai lun , in Naka-mura, Helan shidai Taiwan shi yanjiu shang juan, pp. 143164.

7 Zhang Dechang (Chang Te-chang), Maritime Trade at Canton during the MingDynasty, Chinese Social and Political Science Review (Beijing) 19 (1933): 264282. BodoWiethoff, Die chinesische Seeverbotspolitik und der private Uberseehandel von 1368 bis 1567(Hamburg: Gesellshaft fur Natur- und Volkerkunde Ostasiens, 1963). John Lee, Tradeand Economy in Preindustrial East Asia, c. 1500c. 1800: East Asia in the Age of GlobalIntegration, Journal of Asian Studies 58, no. 1 (1999): 226. See also Timothy Brook, TheConfusions of Pleasure: Commerce and Culture in Ming China(Berkeley: University of Cali-fornia Press, 1998), pp. 119121. It seems that this private trade was gradually subjected togreater restriction in the late fifteenth and early sixteenth centuries, as officials attitudesagainst trade hardened. This ad hoc system of private trade collapsed by the mid 1500s,the precise period during which the tribute system itself was contracting.

jo ur nal of wor ld hi st or y, de cem be r 200 6432


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expressed in his Ancestral Injunction: Overseas foreign countries . . .are separated from us by mountains and seas and far away in a corner.Their lands would not produce enough for us to maintain them; their

people would not usefully serve us if incorporated.8

As opposed to theSong and Yuan dynasties that preceded it, the Ming discouraged mar-itime exploits.

To be sure, the Ming did sponsor the famous voyages of Zheng Hein the early fifteenth century. These huge expeditionssome of themhad twenty-eight thousand participantsbrought Chinese explorersfrom China across the Indian Ocean to the Persian Gulf and the east-ern coast of Africa.9 Yet these expeditions were the work of oneemperor and died with him.10 Thereafter, overseas adventures were

actively discouraged. In 1524, the Ming Ministry of Justice began pun-ishing people who engaged in foreign trade, seizing and destroyingtwo-masted ships, and, later, even trying to limit the voyages of fishingvessels. These measures did not stop overseas trade, which actually in-creased during the sixteenth century, a golden age of global trade.Problems with smuggling and piracy led Beijing to enact a partial le-galization of overseas commerce in 1567, but those who traded abroadwere still treated with suspicion. Indeed, in 1603, when the Spanishmassacred nearly twenty thousand Chinese sojourners in Manila, they

feared reprisals from the Ming government, but officials in Beijing feltthat those who abandoned their homes and sailed abroad did notdeserve the emperors favor.

Like China, Japan also ended up restricting overseas commerce,but during the 1500s it appeared to be following a different course. Inthe sixteenth century Japan was divided into scores of small states,whose lords, known as daimyo () raised their own taxes, adminis-tered justice, and maintained their own armies. Between 1467 and1573, they became embroiled in a series of wars, a period which be-

came known as the Warring States period()

. Desperate forrevenues, many daimyo turned to foreign trade, and Japanese com-munities began to spring up in Manila, Vietnam, Cambodia, Siam,and other ports of Southeast Asia. After the Warring States period

8 Quoted in Chang Pin-tsun, Chinese Maritime Trade: The Case of Sixteenth-Century Fu-chien (PhD diss., Princeton University, 1983), p. 14.

9 One writer even claims that Zheng He went to America, although his evidence isunconvincing. Gavin Menzies, 1421: The Year China Discovered America (New York: Wil-liam Morrow & Co, 2003).

10 One expedition was carried out after his death, but after 1434 there was a backlashagainst the Zheng He legacy. A 1477 proposal to resume the voyages resulted in anotherbacklash and the destruction of Zheng Hes records, a sad, sad event from the perspectiveof maritime historians.



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ended, the new central rulers of Japan began to regulate foreign trade.At first they issued sailing licenses known as red seals (), whichprovided not just permission to trade, but also protection. In 1615,

however, they began to limit foreign contacts. In 1616, European mer-chants were confined to two ports in southern Japan. Five years later,the shogun rejected an overture from China offering direct trade in ex-change for help suppressing pirates. Since only a decade earlier theshogunate had sought direct commerce with China, this rejection re-flects a new antipathy to foreign trade. As for Japanese who wished tosail abroad, at first the shogunate made few changes, looking the otherway while some daimyo traded without red seals. In the 1630s, how-ever, it began limiting Japanese foreign trade.

But in 1635 it issued an edict that was of vital significance to thehistory of East Asia and, indeed, the world: it forbade Japanese citizensfrom sailing abroad. Before this, Japan had exhibited strong tendenciestoward maritime expansion. Impelled by daimyo rivalries, Japanesetraders had built routes throughout East and Southeast Asia. Afterunification, there were even indications that traders might be backedby central state military power, a tendency most striking under theunifier of Japan, Toyotomi Hideoyoshi, who planned to conquer theknown world. After Toyotomis disastrous invasion of Korea (1592

1598), Japan drew back from such exercises, but expansionist tenden-cies remained. In 1609 one daimyo (the daimyo of Satsuma) launchedan invasion of the Ryukyu kingdom. Thanks to shogunal consent, hewas able to add it to his (and Japans) territory. In 1616, a Japanesemerchant-adventurer named Murayama Toan sent an expedition tosubjugate Taiwan.11 After one of his vessels was ambushed by head-hunters, the others decided to abandon the mission and instead plun-dered ships along the Chinese coast. During the first part of the seven-teenth century, Japanese merchants threatened Dutch sovereignty in

Taiwan. The edict of 1635 removed the Japanese threat, allowing theDutch East India Company to expand both on Taiwan and elsewherein East and Southeast Asia.12 If Japanese merchants had received gov-ernmental support, they might have mounted a successful invasion ofTaiwan. Instead, like the Ming in China, the Japanese governmentreined in ocean traders.

11 Iwao Seiichi, Shiqi shiji Riben ren zhi Taiwan qinlue xing dong, Japanese Invasion Activities Regarding Taiwan in the Seventeenth Century.Taiwan yanjiu congkan Collection of Research on Taiwan 71 (1959): 123.

12 The Dutch themselves appear to have recognized the opportunity afforded by the1635 edict, for they appear to have made a conscious plan to begin moving more aggres-sively into Southeast Asian markets abandoned by the Japanese after 1635. This is a topicworthy of further study.



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European traders, on the other hand, could rely upon their states toprovide military, financial, and legal support for overseas colonization.The Dutch East India Company was, in the early seventeenth century,

the newest arrival on the scene, and benefited from exceptional statesupport. It was in name a private company, but in actuality it was anofficial arm of the Dutch state, designed to carry out both trade andwarfare, especially directed against the Netherlands enemies and erst-while overlords, the Iberians. It had the right to sign treaties, subjugatepeoples, and establish colonies, all in the name of the Estates Generalof the United Provinces, which provided it with materiel and person-nel, both military and civil.

Thus, East Asias two great powers left a vacuum into which Euro-

peans could expand. Otherwise, the Dutch would have had a difficulttime colonizing Taiwan and Southeast Asia. Wills argues that Euro-peans success in Asia arose from the organization, cohesion and stay-ing power of [Europeans] state and corporate organizations.13 ButEuropeans also benefited from the fact that there were in Asia few sta-tist organizations with an interest in sponsoring overseas colonialism.The Dutch would not have been able to colonize Taiwan if Japaneseor Chinese governments had shown interest in it. Equally important,since would-be Chinese colonists lacked a state to support their migra-

tion and open up overseas lands, they were willing to cooperate withthe Dutch, who, for their part, lacked colonists.

The Birth of the Sino-Dutch Hybrid Colony of Taiwan

The Dutch built their Taiwanese headquarters on a long narrow pen-insula that formed a bay called Tayouan ( or), near present-day Tainan. Chinese traders and fishermen had already established

themselves there, and some left the safety of the bay and went inlandto trade with aborigines. According to a Chinese official named ChenDi (), who visited Taiwan in 1603, such trade began in the latesixteenth century, when merchants from Fujian province began bring-ing porcelain, cloth, salt, and iron to exchange for deer products.14

The aborigines deer products were hot commodities: hides were soldin Japan for tremendous profits, and venison fetched high prices inChina, as did horns and genitals sold as medicine.

13 Wills, Maritime Asia, p. 86.14 The account of Chen Di is called the Dong Fan Ji. An excellent English trans-

lation exists: Laurence G. Thompson, The Earliest Chinese Eyewitness Accounts of theFormosan Aborigines, Monumenta Serica: Journal of Oriental Studies 23 (1964): 163204.



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As the intensity of the trade increased, Formosan Austronesian so-cieties began to adapt to it, leading Chen Di to muse that their puresimplicity is becoming more and more corrupted.15 Indeed, Spanish

sources suggest that one group of northern aborigines abandoned agri-culture altogether and made their living entirely through trade andhandicrafts.16 This did not happen near the Bay of Tayouan, butan early Dutch visitor to a southern village called Soulang (probablypresent-day Jiali , in the Tainan district) did find a society accus-tomed to trade with China: There is scarcely a house in this town . . .that does not have one or two or three, or even five or six Chineseliving there.17 The Chinese in Soulang spoke the aboriginal lan-guage, but many villagers also spoke Chinese. Indeed, according to

this visitor, who, it must be noted, had no knowledge of the local lan-guage, the inhabitants of the village spoke a tongue that containedmany Chinese words, such that it . . . is a mixed and broken lan-guage.18 Although later sources show that the Soulangers languagewas alive and well, this account indicates that Chinese influence wasstrong before the Europeans arrived.

These early Chinese pioneers were independent coureurs de bois,like the French fur traders who paddled the rivers and lakes ofthe New World; they were not farmers and did not establish concen-

trated settlements. A few Chinese settlers had gardens near the Bay ofTayouan, for an early Dutch source reports that the Chinese hadplanted some of their crops, such as large Chinese apples, oranges,bananas, watermelons, but such gardens appear to have been rare.19

15 Thompsons translation (Thompson, Earliest Chinese Accounts, pp. 172178).16 These are the Taparri and Quimaurri people of northern Taiwan. For a description

of them, see the important Spanish source Memoria de las cosas pertenecientes al estadode la Isla Hermosa by the Dominican Father Jacinto Esquivel, August 1633, APSR, Uni-

versity of Santo Tomas, Philippines, Libros, Tomo 49, fos. 306316v. This source has beentranscribed, translated, and published by Eugenio Mateo Borao: The Spaniards in TaiwanVol I (Taipei: SMC Materials, 2001). There is little doubt that before the late 1500s mostChinese traders went not to southern Taiwan but to the north.

17 J. A. Van der Chijs, H. T. Colenbrander, and J. de Hullu, eds., Dagh-Register Ge-houden int Casteel Batavia vant Passerende daer ter Plaetse als over Geheel Nederlandts-India(Batavia/The Hague: Landsdrukkerij/Martinus Nijhoff, 18871903), 16241629, pp. 2324. Henceforth I refer to this source as Batavia Dagregisters.

18 Batavia Dagregisters, 16241629, p. 24.19 Quote is from Letter from Pieter Jansz. Muijser to Pieter de Carpentier, 4 November

1624, VOC 1083: 508. On early Chinese agriculture during and before Dutch Taiwan, seeJohn Shepherd, Statecraft and Political Economy on the Taiwan Frontier 16001800 (Stan-

ford, Calif.: Stanford University Press, 1993), p. 85, and Nakamura Takashi (),Helan shidai zhi Taiwan nongye ji qi jiangli in Nakamura,Helan shidai Taiwan shi yanjiu shang juan, 4380.



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These were probably on the seaward arm of the Bay of Tayouan,where land, although safe from aboriginal attack, was scarce andpoor. An agricultural Chinese colony would have to make use of

mainland Taiwan itself.Shortly after they arrived the Dutch constructed a little house witha corral for livestock in a place called Saccam, which was locatedacross the bay from the main Dutch fortress.20 They intended to growcrops there but were hindered by aboriginal attacks. In 1629 inhabi-tants of a village called Mattau attacked Saccam, destroying the houseand killing the companys cows, geese, and horses.21 The companyrebuilt the house, stationed forces in Saccam, and, as an experiment,encouraged Chinese immigrants to plant sugarcane in Saccam, pro-

viding them, to this end, small sums of money and company cattle toplow the land.22 The experiment was a success. In 1634 the Dutchgovernor wrote, The sugar here will be just as white as that of China,and perhaps better.23

Around the same time, officials in China may also have encour-aged farmers to migrate to Taiwan. Chinese sources indicate that dur-ing a major drought in Fujian Province, pirate-turned-official ZhengZhilong () proposed relocating tens of thousands of drought vic-tims to Taiwan and providing for each person three taels [of silver]

and for each three people one ox.24

The timing of the drought is in

20 Saccam () became the heart of todays Tainan city.21 Letter from Missionary Georgius Candidius to Governor-General Jan Pietersz.

Coen, 16 September 1629, VOC 1100, fo. 5. Mattau is present-day Matou (), in theTainan district.

22 Letter from Governor Hans Putmans to Governor-General at Batavia, 20 February1635, VOC 1116: 311323: 319v. When precisely the policy was begun remains in doubt,but in a letter of 1634 one can read about a trial harvest from the previous year (1633),which indicates that the policy was up and running by late 1632. Letter from Governor

Hans Putmans to Heren 17 in Amsterdam, 28 October 1634, VOC 1114: 114: 11v. Na-kamura shows how Chinese merchants contributed to this process. See Nakamura,Taiwan nongye ji qi jiangli, pp. 5758.

23 Letter from Governor Hans Putmans to Heren 17 in Amsterdam, 28 October 1634,VOC 1114: 114: 11v.

24 Huang Zongxi , Ci xing shi mo , quoted in Fang Hao ,Chongzhen chu Zheng Zhilong yimin ru Taiwan shi , TaiwanWenxian, 12(1): 3738. Fang Haos article surveys the most important primary sourcesand is still the most effective introduction to the episode, but see also Guo Shuitan ,Heren ju tai shiqi de Zhongguo yimin , Taiwan Wenxian, 10, no. 4[1959]: 1145; John E. Wills Jr., Maritime China from Wang Chih to Shih Lang: Themesin Peripheral History, in From Ming to Ching: Conquest, Region, and Continuity in

Seventeenth-Century China, ed. John E. Wills Jr. and Jonathan D. Spence (New Haven,Conn.: Yale University Press, 1979), pp. 201238 (esp. p. 215); and John Shepherd, State-craft and Political Economy on the Taiwan Frontier 16001800 (Stanford, Calif.: Stanford



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question (possibly in 1628), and it is doubtful that the plan was evercarried out, for the Dutch would likely have noticed such activity. Yetthe episode is important because it shows that the movement of colo-

nists was not just the work of the Dutch alone and that impetus mayhave come from Chinese officials as well. Still, Chinese officials wereunwilling to commit troops to protect colonists, and, in Taiwan, pro-tection was a key to colonization.

Chinese immigrants complained repeatedly that aboriginal attacksjeopardized their farms. In 1634, the ruling body of the Dutch colony,the Council of Formosa, resolved to issue passes allowing Chinese toconduct their business without hindrance, and containing a clause inChinese to the effect that should [the aborigines] molest the Chinese

any more, they must expect bitter consequences.25

The measure musthave helped, for by early 1635 entrepreneurs were planting largerplantations. As harvest time approached, the sugarcane stood high inthe fields and entrepreneurs estimated that the plantations would yield125,000187,500 kg of processed sugar. In the meantime the companycontinued its subsidies, lending money and oxen for plowing. It alsoencouraged Chinese farmers to experiment with new crops, such ashemp, cotton, indigo, and tobacco. Officials mused that Taiwan wouldsoon become the breadbasket of the Indies.26

Yet the governor of Formosa was worried that aborigines mightthreaten the nascent sugar industry: If it should happen (which wefear, since there have already seen incidents . . . in which they havecut and stolen sugarcane and harassed Chinese) that these people ofMattau become jealous and set the fields on fire, these poor [Chinese]would be greatly hurt and would become so afraid that they wouldnot dare to try planting anything again in the future.27 It was vital,he concluded, that the aborigines in the region around the Dutchfortress be pacified for once and for all. He asked for support from

his superiors in Batavia, who decided to send reinforcements. The

University Press, 1993), pp. 466467, n. 214. The tael was a weight and currency unit usedfor silver, around 37.5 grams.

25 Unfortunately, this resolution, of 9 November 1634, no longer exists, but is referredto in Zeelandia Dagregisters, V. 1, G: 233.

26 The pharse breadbasket [spijskamer] of the Indies recurs repeatedly in letters andother documents from 1634 to 1636. See, for example, Letter from Governor Hans Put-mans to the Governor-General in Batavia, 20 February 1635, VOC 1116: 311323, fo.

321v.27 Letter from Governor Hans Putmans to Batavia, 20 February 1635, VOC 1116:

311323: 320.



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newly arrived troops allowed the governor to march against Mattauand other offending villages during the winter of 16351636. The ex-peditions were so successful that dozens of peace offers arrivednot

just from the target villages, but also from villages far afield who hopedthat the company would protect them from their enemies. By spring of1636 the company controlled a large swathe of territory around theBay of Tayouan.

What better way to profit from this new pax Hollandica than toinvite more Chinese settlers to Taiwan? The Council of Formosa de-cided to put up signs calling all Chinese who are so inclined to cometo us here from China and settle in Saccam to plant rice, with thepromise that they will pay no tolls or residence taxes for the first four

years and, in addition, that they will be paid a guaranteed price of 40pieces of eight for every last of rice produced.28 This four-year graceperiod was not just for those who planted riceit would apply toother products as well: sugar, hemp, cotton, ginger, indigo, and Chi-nese radish. The governor was not concerned that the Chinese settlerswould leave once the four years had passed, since a Chinese whosenses profits will not leave.29 Encouraged by these policies, Chineseentrepreneurs built houses and farms near Saccam and brought la-borers from mainland China.

Taiwan had never known such intensive agriculture, and entrepre-neurs had to invest in infrastructure before they realized profits. Amerchant named Hambuan, one of the companys main suppliers ofsilk from China, told the governor about tremendous outlays he hadmade to build a sugar plantation.30 He had spent eight hundred reals(a significant sum) on labor to prepare the land, on oxen to pull theplows, and on capital expenses: mills, pans, pots, and buildings inwhich to bleach the sugar. Yet after two years he had yet to see a re-turn on these investments. The governor used his example to persuade

their superiors in Batavia to continue the subsidies: Establishing agri-culture is difficult even for this man, who has resources enough.[Consider] how difficult it must be for those poor farmers just arrived

28 Letter from Governor Johan van der Burch to Batavia, 5 October 1636, VOC 1120:288323: 307. A last was a unit of measurement used for rice equivalent to 20 piculs (oraround 1250 kilograms).

29 Letter from Governor Johan van der Burch to Batavia, 5 October 1636, VOC 1120:288323: 308v.

30 It is likely that Hambuan was . See Ang Kaim , Shiqi shiji de fulao hai-shang, in Zhongguo haiyang fazhan shi lunwenji di qi ji, ed. Tang Xiyong (Taipei: Academia Sinica, 1999).



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from China, who have little in the world!31 Without the generouspolicies that he and the Council of Formosa had initiated, he wrote,the company could not hope to establish a profitable agricultural col-

ony on Formosa.The investments began to pay off. In 1637, Saccams fields pro-duced 3,000 piculs (180,000 kg) of sugar. Not all was processed intowhite sugar for sale, because there was a shortage of rice. Farmers soldunprocessed sugarcane to the hungry, since the poor man can hardlyfind any other food.32 At the same time, the Council of Formosa pro-hibited farmers in the future from selling or eating raw sugarcane sothat it would instead be refined into sugar.33 In the following years, asthe area under cultivation increased and as rice harvests provided

alternate sources of food, more and more sugarcane was milled,bleached, and exported.There were, to be sure, other hurdles. For example, Chinese entre-

preneurs had trouble buying equipment to bleach the sugar becauseof the vexations of the Mandarins in China, who, according tothe Chinese farmers, refused to allow sugar refinement equipment tobe exported to Taiwan.34 Accordingly, in 1640, only 1,500 piculs(90,000 kg) of white sugar were produced, and it was of a quality lowerthan that obtained from China. The production of white sugar did not

rise above 1,500 piculs per year until after 1642, when the Chinesepopulation had begun growing more rapidly and more land cameunder cultivation. By the mid 1640s, the colony of Taiwan was self-sufficient in agriculture and was exporting rice and sugar to Chinaand elsewhere for profit. The Chinese population had risen to aroundfifteen thousand and was yielding profits to the company.

As the Chinese colony grew, the company began collecting reve-nue. Not counting receipts from the silk-for-silver trade, the Dutchdrew income from the following sources. First were profits from goods

that the company bought on Taiwan and sold abroad. It had the rightto buy all deerskins and most of the sugar produced on the island,commodities that commanded high prices in Asia. Indeed, when sugar

31 Letter from Governor Hans Putmans to Batavia, 7 October 1636, VOC 1120:252282: 264.

32 Resolution of the Council of Formosa, 16 May 1639, 1131.743748: 743. See alsoLetter from Governor Johann van der Burch to Batavia, 4 November 1639, VOC 1131:424547.

33 Resolution of the Council of Formosa, 16 May 1639, VOC 1131: 743748.34 Letter from Vice-Governor Paulus Traudenius to Batavia, 20 March 1640, VOC

1133: 147162: 153.



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prices were high in Europe, Taiwanese sugar was sold even in Amster-dam. The second category of income was a series of taxes, which thecompany implemented gradually starting in the 1630s. The most im-

portant was a tax of 10 percent of rice harvests, but there were others,such as taxes on livestock slaughtering, on weighing and measuring,and on the export of venison. The right to collect these taxes wassold in annual auctions, usually to Chinese. The third and most im-portant category was a series of licenses that the Dutch sold to Chi-nese colonists. The deer hunting license is one example, but therewere also fishing passes, residency permits, and, most important, li-censes that conferred monopoly trading privileges in aboriginal vil-lages. These became extremely popular, as evidenced by the high

prices that Chinese entrepreneurs paid for them in the annual auc-tions. This list of revenues demonstrates that nearly all of the compa-nys profits came through Chinese intermediaries. Little revenue camedirectly from aborigines or Dutch colonists, which prompted a gover-nor of Taiwan to write the revealing line: The Chinese are the onlybees on Formosa that give honey.35

The companys growing dependence upon Chinese colonists isreflected in peace treaties the company reached with aboriginal vil-lages. If Chinese were mentioned at all in the earliest treaties, it was

to require villagers to help control the Chinese. A treaty of February1630, for example, contained two clauses that mentioned the Chinese.One prohibited the villagers from harboring pirates. The other statedthat the villagers must agree, without any dispute, that all Chineseliving in their villages or their adjoining lands will come every threemonths to obtain a new residency permit.36

Beginning in 1635, however, when hybrid colonization was gettingunderway, treaties began to stipulate that aborigines guarantee thesafety of Chinese. The first such treaty (18 December 1635), stated

that the Chinese . . . who buy deerskins in the hinterland shallnot be harmed but shall be allowed to pass freely [through villagelands].37 Subsequent treaties had similar but more general clauses,

35 Letter from Governor Nicolaes Verburch to Batavia, VOC 1172: 466491, fo. 472(cited in Zeelandia Dagregisters, V. 3, pp. 9697).

36 Zeelandia Dagregisters, V. 1, A: 397. In a resolution of 1626 these licenses were man-dated, although they were to be provided free of charge. It is hard to believe that the prac-tice was effectively enforced, however, for the company had only limited control of the

areas around the Bay of Tayouan (Resolution of the Council of Formosa, 10 July 1626,VOC 1093: 371371v).

37 See Zeelandia Dagregisters, V. 1, p. 234.



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such as a 1636 treaty stating simply That they must not harm theChinese.38 Company officials admonished villagers to abide by theseagreements, as for example when a Dutch missionary visited a village

called Soulang. He addressed the villagers: We . . . referred to theirhaving formerly insulted, beaten, and robbed the Chinese who dweltamong them, and whom the Governor had sent to live in their village.We warned them that they must not repeat such acts of violence, andthat if they did, punishment would surely follow.39 The company de-voted itself to protecting Chinese colonists because they providedmost of its revenues.

Chinese colonists, for their part, benefited from the pax Hollandica.Instead of buying deer products from aborigines, settlers could, if they

bought Dutch licenses, hunt for themselves. This was a particularlydangerous occupation, because it required trespassing on the aborigi-nes hunting fields, but thanks to Dutch protection, hunters collectedmore hides for less money than they would have had to pay to buythem from aborigines.40 Poor peasants received free land to plant riceand several years of freedom from taxation. A richer class of Chinesebenefited most. Chinese entrepreneurs who had access to capital re-ceived the largest tracts of land, the oxen and equipment, and thelargest financial subventions, all to encourage them to invest their

own money in sugar plantations. They were the ones who gained themost when the plantations began turning a profit. They also usuallyhad a hand in trade with China, from which more and more junkscame yearly, carrying supplies for the growing colony. They made prof-its on everything from roof tiles to tea. With money from their newenterprises they bought from the company tax farming rights and mo-nopoly trading licenses. This class of colonial entrepreneurs had muchin common with Dutch officials and usually cooperated closely withthe company.

38 Unfortunately, the treaty itself appears to have been lost; its wording may havebeen more precise than what was recorded by missionary Junius. Letter from Robertus

Junius to the Kamer Amsterdam, 5 September 1636, VOC 1121: 13081356, fo. 1328v.Also found in William M. Campbell, Formosa under the Dutch: Described from ContemporarySources (London: Kegan Paul, Trench, Trubner & Co., 1903), p. 129.

39 Letter from Robertus Junius to the Kamer Amsterdam, 5 September 1636, VOC1121: 13081356, fo. 1333. Campbells translation (Campbell, Formosa under the Dutch,p. 132).

40 For more on the deer hunt, see Tonio Andrade, Pirates, Pelts, and Promises: TheSino-Dutch Colony of Seventeenth-Century Taiwan and the Aboriginal Village of Favor-olang, Journal of Asian Studies, 64, no. 2 (2005): 295320.



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Tensions in the Pax Hollandica

There were, however, other Chinese settlers with whom relations were

less smooth. Some Chinese organizations flouted Dutch rules andengaged in smuggling and piracy, sometimes with operatives workingundercover within the Dutch administration. Take, for example, oneof the companys first Chinese translators, a Macao-born mestizonamed Salvador Diaz. He had the misfortune to be aboard a ship cap-tured by the Dutch in 1622. Since he was a Catholic and could speakand write both Portuguese and Chinese, the Dutch used him to trans-late correspondence with Chinese officials. When the Dutch set uptheir Taiwan colony in 1624, they paid him wages and began treating

him as an employee rather than a prisoner. Indeed, one Dutch gover-nor came to trust Diaz so much that he revealed to him a reliquary andpapal dispensation he usually kept hidden in his desk, for he was a se-cret Catholic. Diaz, too, had secrets. In April 1626, he and some Chi-nese companions escaped from Taiwan on a fishing junk. Not longthereafter the Dutch discovered that he had been in league with pi-rates, telling them where junks leaving Taiwan might best be cap-tured. He had even sold protection: one prominent Chinese merchantclaimed to have paid him 2,000 taels to protect his junks.41

Perhaps the most ominous difficulty was that pirates and smugglersformed alliances with the aborigines. In the 1630s, after the companyhad begun issuing hunting licenses, Chinese hunters strayed fartherfrom Dutch strongholds and began suffering attacks by inhabitants ofan aboriginal village called Favorolang, located north of Mattau.42

Company officials sent a military expedition, which succeeded in en-tering the village and setting fire to houses and grain stores. Whenthe triumphant forces returned to Fort Zeelandia, they were welcomedby cannonades and musket salvoes as a sign that they have achieved

41 For more on Chinese pirates and their interactions with Dutch officials, see TonioAndrade, The Companys Chinese Pirates: How the Dutch East India Company Tried toLead a Coalition of Pirates to War against China, 16211662, Journal of World History 15(2004): 415444. Diazs story is told in Dutch and Portuguese documents, of which themost important is his Relacao da fortalesa poder e trato com os Chinas, que os Olandesestem na Ilha Fermosa dada por Salvador Diaz, natural de Macao, que la esteve cativo e fugioem hua soma em Abril do Anno de 1626, Biblioteca Nacional de Espana, MSS 3015, fos.5562v, fo. 56. Relevant Dutch documents include a Resolution of the Council of Formosafrom 15 August 1624 (VOC 1083: 75) and a letter from Gerritt de Witt to Governor-

General Pieter de Carpentier (15 November 1626, VOC 1090: 196206, fo. 204v). Sincea tael was around 37.5 grams of silver, 2,000 taels was a great sum of money.

42 Favorolong was located near present-day Huwei ().



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victory for the Chinese.43 The governor and his council stated explic-itly that the expedition would benefit Chinese settlers: This expedi-tion stands to result not only in profits for the company . . . but also, it

appears, has already obtained a door and entrance, so that the Chinesehere and further those under our authority [living] along the fields ofMattau, as well as those of Favorolang, may pursue the deer hunt with-out fear.44

Because the expedition would benefit Chinese colonists, the com-pany decided to ask for contributions from them, since the companyshould not have to be responsible for [the expenditures].45 The well-being of Chinese hunters was clearly in the companys interest, be-cause, as the governor of Taiwan wrote in a letter to Batavia, peace

with Favorolang would help the company obtain more deerskins.46

Yet the people of Favorolang continued killing and harassingChinese hunters. It took Dutch officials yearsand several militaryexpeditionsto get to the bottom of the troubles in Favorolang.47

Eventually they found that the violence was the work of Chinesesmugglers and their aboriginal trading partners. The revelation thatChinese were at the heart of the violence caused Dutch officials to re-vise their attitudes toward the Chinese settlers who lived in remote re-gions such as Favorolang. Ultimately they passed a law decreeing that

No Chinese, no matter who he might be, shall be permitted . . . tohave his domicile to the north of Mattau.48

Thus, whereas at first the company had sought to protect Chinesefrom the evil-hearted northern natives, it ended up conceiving of it-self as the protector of the northern aborigines from the brutal Chi-nese. Later, however, after the Dutch had destroyed the smugglingband, it once again opened Favorolang to Chinese business, for therewas money to be made. Chinese traders paid the company for the rightto trade there. Indeed, the monopoly-trading license for Favorolang

43 Zeelandia Dagregisters, V. 1, K: 434, my italics.44 Resolution of the Council of Formosa, 23 November 1637, VOC 1128: 515. The

translation is awkward at least partly because the original was awkward.45 Letter from Governor Jan van der Burch to Batavia, 14 November 1637, VOC

1123: 936. See also Resolution, 23 November 1637, VOC 1128: 514.46 Letter from Governor Johann van den Burch to Batavia, 12 December 1637, VOC

1123: 913921: 913v. Zeelandia Dagregisters, V. 1, K: 448 (15 December 1637).47 Andrade, Pirates, Pelts, and Promises.48 This was actually a direct decree from Batavia (1642), demanding that the governor

and Council of Formosa stop trying to use sweet words and instead enact hard-line poli-

cies against the Chinese and aborigines (see Letter from Batavia to Vice-Governor Traude-nius, 28 June 1642, VOC 866: 332351; and Letter from Vice-Governor Traudenius toBatavia, 26 December 1642, VOC 1146: 687691).



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soon became one of the colonys most lucrative, bringing enormous re-ceipts for the companys coffers in the annual auctions. Favorolanghad been tamed. The companys troubles with rival Chinese organiza-

tions, however, were just beginning.

Rebels and Sealords

In the summer of 1652, a Chinese farmer named Guo Huaiyi ()organized a force of five thousand Chinese peasants against Dutch rule.Armed with harvest knives and homemade bamboo spears, they at-tacked the companys house in Saccam, crying Kill, Kill the Dutch

dogs!49

Company soldiers and six hundred aboriginal allies routedthe rebels, killing around four thousand of them. (Indeed, it was anaborigine who killed Guo Huaiyi and delivered his head to the Dutch.It was displayed on a stake to frighten the Chinese and as a sign ofvictory over those dastardly traitors.50) The rebellion thus failed,but, with at least five thousand adherents, it had been large and wellorganized, involving perhaps 30 percent of all Chinese living in Tai-wan. Was it a sign that Sino-Dutch cooperation was weakening?

Guo Huaiyi and other rebel leaders were significant landowners in

the lands around Saccam; their followers were agricultural laborerswho worked these lands. By 1652, agriculturists were less invested inDutch rule than they had been during the early periods, when theywere few and vulnerable. By then the company had done away withthe tax breaks, subsidies, and other subventions that they had offeredto entice immigrants. The tax on harvests, at 10 percent, was notextreme, but another tax aroused antipathy: the hooftgeldt, or headtax, which each Chinese resident of Taiwan was required to paymonthly as a condition of residency. The tax was in itself a burden.

Its enforcement, however, which was entrusted to Dutch soldiers,aroused serious discontent. Dutch records show that prior to 1652Chinese farmers complained repeatedly about soldiers abusesespecially night searches and extortionbut that the company didlittle to remedy the situation. The Chinese agriculturists thus had

49 W. Ph. Coolhaas, ed., Generale Missiven van Gouverneurs-Generaal en Raden aanHeren XVII der Verenigde Oostindische Compagnie (The Hague: Martinus Nijhof, 19601985), 16331655, Reniers, Maetsuyker, Hartzinck, Cunaeus, Caesar, and Steur VII, 24

December 1652, p. 610. Henceforth I will refer to this work as Generale Missiven.50 Letter from Governor Nicolaes Verburgh to Batavia, 30 October 1652, VOC 1194:

121127, Johannes Hubers translation (Huber, Chinese Settlers, p. 296).



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much to gain and, they probably felt, little to lose by rebelling.51 Onthe other hand, many Chinese inhabitants of Taiwan stayed loyal tothe Dutch, perhaps because they were more invested in the Sino-

Dutch system. Indeed, some Chinese entrepreneurs warned the gover-nor of Taiwan before the attack occurred, allowing the Dutch to pre-pare their defense.

What alternative to Dutch rule did the rebels intend to provide?Some captured rebels told the Dutch that they had expected helpfrom China, in the figure of Zheng Chenggong (). Chenggonghad established a base across the Taiwan Strait, from which he wasleading a spirited resistance to the Manchu invaders of China, whohad moved into Beijing in 1644. The rebels said that Zheng was

meant to provide three thousand junks and thirty thousand men tohelp them capture all of Formosa from the Dutch.52 Most Dutch offi-cials did not believe Zheng would really have intervened, but it is tell-ing that around the time of the revolt, a Jesuit priest named MartinusMartini, captured aboard a Portuguese junk, told Dutch officials thatZheng was considering using Taiwan as a new base of operations incase the Manchus should drive him from China.53

For the moment Zhengs position in China was secure. Based inXiamen, which in 1654 he renamed the Ming Memorial Prefecture

(), he began preparing for a glorious assault to capture Nanjingand restore the Ming dynasty. But when his expedition finally reached

Nanjing in 1659, it was defeated by a fast moving Manchu army.Zheng and his remaining soldiers retreated to Xiamen. Beset on allsides by Manchus, he decided to invade Taiwan. On 30 April 1661,he began landing his troops to the north of Saccam, helped by thou-sands of Chinese settlers. Company officials later learned from a formerChinese translator that We Chinese inhabitants of this land had al-ready promised . . . our loyalty and allegiance to [Zheng] before his ar-

rival.

54

Once his soldiers had landed, there was little the Dutch could

51 There are tantalizing clues that some might have found their motivation to rebelfrom other factors. Han Jiabao suggests that three rebel leaders might have organized therebellion because they were in heavy debt to the company. See Han Jiabao (a.k.a.Pol Heyns), Helan shidai Taiwan de jingji tudi yu zhuiwu (Taipei: Appleseed Press , 2002), pp. 170172.

52 Generale Missiven, 16331655, Reyniersz, Maetsuyker, Hartzinck, Cunaeus, Caesar,and Steur VII, 24 December 1652, p. 610.

53 See Letter from Governor General Carel Reyniersz to Governor Nikolaas Verburg,25 July 1652, VOC 876: 457482, fo. 465.

54 Zeelandia Dagregisters, V. 4, D: 555.



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do. A few skirmishes showed the futility of the Dutch position, andthe companys fortresses on Taiwan fell quickly. The main fortress, lo-cated on the seaward peninsula of the Bay of Tayouan, could be re-

lieved by sea and managed to hold out for nine months, but ultimatelyit, too, surrendered. Thus it was that Sino-Dutch colonization on Tai-wan came to an end.

Conclusion: States and Colonialism

Taiwan thus did not complete the trajectory toward European domi-nance. In fact, however, this exception demonstrates the rule. The

Wills model holds that European dominance was established thanksto the cohesion and staying power of Europes states and statist orga-nizations. So long as the Dutch had the largest, most cohesive such or-ganization that was active in Taiwan, their colony was safe. But therise of a maritime Ming loyalist state changed the balance. Zheng hadlittle trouble ousting the Dutch from their profitable colony, especiallysince he could count on the help of thousands of Chinese colonists.

But why was Zhengs regime such an anomaly in Asia? Why wereAsian states uninterested in colonization, leaving the seas open to

Europeans? The historian M. N. Pearson offers an answer in his impor-tant study of the role of state support in overseas colonialism in Eura-sia.55 It is difficult to do justice to his nuanced argument, but it hingeson one hypothesis: states that raise their revenues from trade behavedifferently from those that raise their revenues from agriculture.Pearson argues that during the early modern period, Asian statesespecially the largest onestended to gain nearly all of their revenuefrom agriculture and were thus indifferent to maritime trade. Severalwestern European states, on the other hand, collected a significant

percentage of their revenue from trade and therefore focused on mari-time affairs.56 Because it is such an important articleand because ithas not received the attention it is dueit is worth discussing at morelength.

55 M. N. Pearson, Merchants and States, in The Political Economy of Merchant Em-pires, ed. James D. Tracy (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1991), pp. 41116.

56 Pearsons argument is not so reductionistic as my analysis might make it appear. Hebelieves that other variables also mattered: the size of states, their geopolitical environ-

ment, etc. Because European states were smaller and in constant competition with eachother, they were more likely to concede rights for revenue than were the Asian em-pires (Pearson, Merchants and States, p. 48).



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Pearson is a historian of India and supports his argument with datafrom the Indian Ocean region. For him, the most important questionis why in the sixteenth century India did not prevent the Portuguese

from controlling Indian Ocean trade routes. He argues that Indianstates were funded by agricultural rather than commercial revenuesand were therefore indifferent to maritime trade. Surprisingly, thiswas true even of Gujarat, the most maritime oriented of these states.Gujarati traders dominated Indian Ocean sea routes, but a king of Gu-jarat purportedly said, Wars by sea are merchants affairs and of noconcern to the prestige of kings.57 Only 6 percent of Gujarats reve-nues were drawn from sea trade, which is why, according to Pearson, itdid not busy itself with maritime affairs.58 Toward the end of the

1500s, the Mughals established an Indian empire a hundred timeslarger and richer than the largest western European states, but, likeGujarat and other pre-Mughal states, it gleaned its revenues from agri-culture and therefore presented little competition to the Portugueseand other Europeans in the Indian Ocean. This antimaritime bias isreflected in Mughal adages: for example, Merchants who travel bysea are like silly worms clinging to logs.59 Indeed, it appears thatbefore the arrival of the Portuguese, the Indian Ocean region, inthe absence of interstate rivalries expressed at sea, was a place of rela-

tively peaceful trade, especially compared to the Mediterranean. ThePortuguese disturbed the calm. Backed by state support, they rapidlybrought the seas under their control, in effect imposing Atlantic-Mediterranean maritime naval practices upon the Indian Ocean.

There were, of course, some Asian responses to Portuguese incur-sions. In the early 1500s, for example, Gujarat allied itself with Egyptto try to regain its trade networks from the Portuguese. They were,however, defeated by Portugal at the battle of Diu in 1509. The oddthing is that such responses were so infrequent. To a modern, trade-

oriented mind, it is surprising that Asian powers did not react morevigorously. Yet perhaps there were more such reactions about whichwe are ignorant. New research details a fascinating sixteenth-centuryOttoman attempt to drive the Portuguese out of the Indian Ocean

57 Cited in Pearson, Merchants and States, p. 97.58 George Winius, The Estado da Indiaon the Subcontinent: Portuguese Players on a

South Asian Stage, in Portugal the Pathfinder, ed. George Winius (Madison, Wisc.: His-

panic Seminary of Medieval Studies, 1995), p. 200. Thanks to my student Andrew Mutzfor this citation.

59 Cited in Pearson, Merchants and States, pp. 9697.



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by means of alliances with various local states, such as those of EastAfrica.60 The attempt was, however, desultory and half-hearted, forthey were far more concerned with their land empire and with the

Mediterranean. A more successfuland little-studiedresponse toPortuguese sea power occurred during the seventeenth century, whenOman ousted the Portuguese from Muscat and a few other coastal en-claves.61 Oman was a small state. Its success shows that when Asianstates had a will to check European sea power, they could mount effec-tive responses. Indeed, a major Asian power could probably havedriven the Portuguese out of the Indian Ocean altogether. But no ma-jor Asian state ever made a serious attempt.

Pearsons hypothesis appears reasonable: Asian states do appear to

have been less likely than European states to foster overseas aggressionfor commercial purposes, leaving Asian seas open to European control.But many questions remain. For example, there were plenty of Asianstates that did emphasize overseas trade. Perhaps the most importantwere the maritime states of Southeast Asia, such as Macassar andAceh. These were dependent upon revenues from overseas trade andwere also at times effective in challenging Portuguese and Dutchexpansion. Yet they did not engage in overseas colonialism like thewestern European states, so there must be other factors at play. We

must study these states, and the others throughout the world thatmight similarly serve as counterexamples.In any case, Taiwan clearly supports the statist expansion model.

The Dutch were able to colonize the island only because the mostpowerful states in the regionChina and Japanactively discouragedoverseas commerce. Forty years later, the Dutch colony itself fell to anunusual, sea-oriented Asian state. Zheng Chenggongs governmentwas founded by maritime merchants, and, having a relatively smallagricultural tax base, made almost two-thirds of its revenues from

trade.

62

It was thus an anomaly in the history of modern China, whose

60 See Giancarlo Casale, The Ottoman Discovery of the Indian Ocean in theSixteenth Century: The Age of Exploration from an Islamic Perspective (paper presentedat the Seascapes, Littoral Cultures, and Trans-Oceanic Exchanges Conference, Wash-ington, D.C., 1215 February 2003). Available online as of March 2005 at http://www.historycooperative.org/proceedings/seascapes.

61 Abdul Ali, Struggle between the Portuguese and the Arabs of Oman for Suprem-acy in the Persian Gulf and the Indian Ocean, Hamdard Islamicus 9, no. 4 (1986): 7580.

62 Between 1650 and 1662, seaborne trade provided to Zheng Chenggongs govern-

ment some 2,500,000 silver liang, which one scholar estimates accounted for 62 percent ofhis military and governmental expenditures. See Yang Yanjie , Heju shidai Taiwan shi (Taipei: Lianjing Press, 2000), p. 263.



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governments tended to receive almost all of their revenue from agri-culture. The Zheng regimes emphasis on maritime trade put it intodirect competition with the Dutch East India Company, and when

Zheng decided he needed a new base from which to continue fightingin China, he invaded Taiwan.Yet much remains to be done. Global historians are beginning to

turn their attention to non-European colonialism, which is likely tobecome an important subfield.63 Only when we know more aboutnon-European colonialismespecially Asian colonialismswill wetruly be able to understand European colonialism. The statist modelmay not provide a permanent answer, but it will, I expect, help usframe the questions.

63 The Asia Research Institute at the National University of Singapore is organizing aprescient workshop on this theme: Asian Expansions: The Historical Processes of PolityExpansion in Asia, Singapore, 1213 May 2006.


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