Taiwan was known to the Chinese as early as the 3rd century AD, but settlement by the Chinese was not significant until the first quarter of the 17th century after recurrent famines in Fukien Province encouraged emigration of Fukienese from the mainland. Before then the island was a base of operations for Chinese and Japanese pirates. The Portuguese, who first visited the island in 1590 and named it Ilha Formosa (“Beautiful Island”), made several unsuccessful attempts at settlement. The Dutch and Spaniards established more lasting settlements, the Dutch at An-p’ing in southwestern Taiwan in 1624, the Spaniards in 1626 at Chi-lung in the north. Until 1646, when the Dutch seized the Spanish settlements, northern Taiwan was under Spanish domination, the south under Dutch control. The Dutch were expelled in 1661 by Cheng Ch’eng-kung, a man of mixed Chinese-Japanese parentage and a supporter of the defeated Ming emperors, who used the island as a centre of opposition to the Ch’ing (Manchu) regime.
In 1683, 20 years after Cheng Ch’eng-kung’s death, the island fell to the Ch’ing and became part of Fukien Province. Meanwhile, sizable migrations of refugees, Ming supporters, had increased the population to about 200,000. As migrants streamed in from southeastern China, large areas in the north were settled. T’ai-nan (then called T’ai-wan) was the capital. By 1842 the population was estimated at 2,500,000, and both rice and sugar had become important exports to mainland China. In 1858 the Treaty of T’ien-ching (Tientsin) designated two Taiwan ports as treaty ports, T’ai-nan and Tan-shui, the latter a river port, long used as a port of call under the Spanish and Dutch, and downstream from the growing city of Taipei. Tea became an important export crop, and the island’s trade centre shifted to the north, particularly to Tan-shui, where British trading companies established their headquarters.
Japan’s continued interest in the island was reflected in a Japanese punitive expedition of 1874 ostensibly to protect the lives of Ryukyu fishermen along the island’s coasts. The French blockaded the island during the undeclared Sino-French war of 1884–85 and occupied Chi-lung for a short period. In 1886 Taiwan became a separate province of China with a legal capital at T’ai-chung and a temporary capital at Taipei, which became the legal capital in 1894.
In 1895, as a result of the Treaty of Shimonoseki after the Sino-Japanese War, China ceded Taiwan and the Pescadores Islands to Japan, and the Japanese occupied Taipei in June of that year over the violent opposition of the Taiwanese population. For several months a Republic of Taiwan was in existence, but it was overcome by Japanese forces. The Japanese also faced the hostility of the aborigines, some of whom remained uncontrolled until the outbreak of the Pacific war. Taiwan was developed as a supplier of rice and sugar for Japan. Irrigation projects, agricultural extension services, and improvements in transportation and power supplies led to rapid increases in Taiwan’s gross domestic product. Japanese policy was oriented toward the Japanization of the Taiwanese; Japanese was the language of instruction in a widespread basic educational system, and even after the end of World War II Japanese remained a lingua franca among the various Chinese dialect groups. In the 1930s Japanese economic policy shifted toward the development of industries based on relatively cheap hydroelectric power. Nevertheless, rice and sugar remained the basis of Taiwan’s prewar export trade, almost all of which was directed toward Japan. Imports consisted largely of diverse manufactures from Japan. During World War II, Taiwan was a major staging area for Japan’s invasion of Southeast Asia.
Taiwan’s history after World War II falls roughly into two periods: one from 1945 to about 1970, when the Nationalist government’s position had considerable international support, especially from the United States; and one since 1970, when the major focus of international diplomatic attention shifted to the People’s Republic of China.
As a result of the Cairo agreement of 1943, Taiwan was turned over to the Chinese Nationalist government on Oct. 25, 1945, after the defeat of Japan. Many Taiwanese welcomed liberation from Japanese control, but much to their chagrin, the Nationalists’ objectives toward Taiwan were essentially to maintain Japanese colonial institutions—substituting mainlanders for Japanese—and to exploit the island for rebuilding the war-torn mainland. When in early 1947 the Taiwanese urban middle class protested, the mainlanders massacred thousands of them. Thirty years would pass before a new generation of Taiwanese political leaders emerged and mass Taiwanese resentment subsided.
In 1949–50, following the victories of the Chinese communists on the mainland, a stream of Nationalist troops, government officials, and other refugees poured onto the island. Final defeat for Chiang Kai-shek’s Nationalists seemed only a matter of time. Little outside assistance was forthcoming, and the United States, among others, appeared determined to allow the civil war to run its course toward the eventual destruction of the KMT and the incorporation of Taiwan into the People’s Republic. The People’s Liberation Army, however, placed priority on mopping up holdout Nationalist units on the mainland and on establishing authority in Tibet. And because Beijing (Peking) lacked substantial capability to land its forces on Taiwan or even on such lesser remaining Nationalist-held islands as Quemoy and Matsu close by the mainland, there was no immediate prospect of Chiang’s final defeat. He survived until the outbreak of the Korean War provided a decisive respite.
When North Korean troops invaded South Korea in June 1950, U.S. Pres. Harry S. Truman, assuming Beijing’s complicity in the action from the outset, interposed the U.S. 7th Fleet between Taiwan and the mainland; during the conflict the United States increased its economic and military aid to Taipei. In the first of several major crises over Quemoy and Matsu, following the Korean War, the United States incorporated the Republic of China into its Pacific defense system. A mutual defense treaty signed in December 1954 pledged the United States to the defense of Taiwan and the neighbouring Pescadores Islands.
After the Bandung Conference in April 1955, there was substantial hope that Beijing might limit its tactics to the “peaceful liberation” of Taiwan. During the initial stages of talks that began in August 1955 between the United States and China, it seemed that this hope might be formalized in a treaty mutually renouncing the use or threat of force in the Taiwan area. These talks broke down, however, and by 1958 Beijing had adopted a more militant approach. In August 1958 Beijing resumed an artillery bombardment of Quemoy and issued an ultimatum demanding the surrender of the island’s Nationalist garrison, an ultimatum broken by the interposition of U.S. naval power and the behind-the-scenes withdrawal of Soviet support.
U.S. support was important in the consolidation and rejuvenation of the KMT and its governmental organs. There was a dramatic increase in industrial and commercial construction on Taiwan and a significant improvement in communications and educational facilities. The KMT began incorporating members who were younger, better educated, more widely traveled, and much less likely to have been selected because of political connections alone.
In its first two decades on Taiwan, the KMT began to lose some of its original militancy. Memories of defeat provided the basis for much Nationalist solidarity during the 1950s and early ’60s, and most officials, at least publicly, believed that their presence on the island would be temporary. As younger mainlanders and Taiwanese rose to positions of authority, however, and as the pain of defeat faded, Taiwan itself became more the focus of attention.
Yet, the strongest voices associated with Chiang and his son and political heir, Chiang Ching-kuo, continued to insist on the inevitability of reconquest of the mainland. The approved scenario held that reconquest would originate in an uprising in China, followed by popular demand for a Nationalist return. The certainty of this view waned over the years, but in the mid-1960s the intensification of the Vietnam War and the upheaval on the mainland during the Cultural Revolution revived the hopes of many in the KMT. Thus, economic modernization, despite its success, was never considered as the main goal. Modernization would provide the necessary basis, it was argued, to build up power and international prestige and to assure support from allies—all required for the eventual counterattack.
The key to external support was the United States, the policy of which was indicated by its position toward the seating question at the United Nations. Until 1970 the United States was able to postpone consideration of resolutions to replace Taipei’s representatives with those of Beijing. U.S. firmness at the United Nations and other evidence of U.S. fidelity—as well as the reluctance of many independent countries in Africa and Asia to recognize Beijing—made Chiang’s government confident that its international position was reasonably secure.
During the 1960s this spirit of confidence and lessening of tension was reinforced by an increased American demand for Taiwanese goods, which transformed Taiwan from an aid client of the United States to a trading partner. The economic boom also aided the KMT: the growing Taiwanese interest in collective political demands—including a secret separatist movement that was actively suppressed by the KMT—was transformed into a pursuit of individual economic advancement. Chiang Kai-shek began to turn over the supervision of domestic affairs to his son, who became deputy premier in 1969 and premier in 1972; after his father’s death in April 1975 he became chairman of the KMT and in 1978 president of Taiwan.
Domestically, the transition in the 1970s from Chiang Kai-shek to Chiang Ching-kuo as president was accompanied by a gradual shift from a more autocratic to a more populist style of authoritarianism. Chiang Ching-kuo’s political associates recruited more Taiwanese into higher positions in the KMT and the military, and the President made frequent visits to all parts of Taiwan.
Between 1969 and 1971, U.S. restrictions on trade and travel by Americans to China were eased, and the United States began to explore alternatives to opposing Beijing’s representation in the United Nations. Meanwhile, a number of countries severed diplomatic relations with Taipei, and in 1971 Taiwan was ousted from the United Nations and the People’s Republic seated. U.S. Pres. Richard M. Nixon visited Beijing in 1972, and the following year the United States established quasi-diplomatic relations with the People’s Republic.
For Taipei, the new U.S.–China diplomacy came as a devastating setback. Nationalist officials began to prepare the island for greater international isolation, but a stalemate in U.S.–China relations during the mid-1970s provided a temporary reprieve for the island. That reprieve appeared to be over on Jan. 1, 1979, with U.S. establishment of formal diplomatic relations with the People’s Republic of China. In the normalization agreement the United States accepted an end to all official U.S. defense ties with Taiwan and acknowledged the position that there is but one China and that Taiwan is part of China. It thus precluded itself from any future support for an independent Taiwan. Subsequently, however, the U.S. Congress passed the Taiwan Relations Act, authorizing continued social and economic ties with Taiwan. The United States also unilaterally stated that it would continue to sell defensive arms to Taiwan, a move that complicated U.S.–China talks concerning greater defense cooperation.
In the early 1980s the KMT rejected overtures from the People’s Republic for negotiations toward eventual reunification. Domestically, financial scandals jolted the KMT, as evidence emerged that rich Taiwanese businessmen wielded influence over KMT officials and could neutralize government regulators. Chiang Ching-kuo opened communications with the Chinese communist mainland and with domestic political opposition in 1985. The opposition formed the Democratic Progressive Party (DPP) in 1986, and in 1987 the KMT lifted martial law, which had been in effect since 1949. The government began permitting visits to the Chinese mainland; scholars, journalists, businesspeople, tourists, and people visiting relatives traveled to the People’s Republic.
In January 1988 Chiang Ching-kuo died. His chosen successor, Vice Pres. Lee Teng-hui, became Taiwan’s first Taiwanese president. Despite the struggle between conservatives and progressives within the KMT, political democratization continued. Control of the KMT party organization began passing from central party career cadres to local Taiwanese politicians. The DPP suffered internal conflict between moderates aiming to win elections and radicals advocating Taiwanese independence. Nevertheless, a significant minority of the Taiwanese public supported the DPP. Taiwan’s legislative and local elections in December 1989 were the first in which parties other than the KMT were allowed to participate.
With the collapse of the Soviet Union and of communist governments in eastern Europe in the early 1990s and the resulting dramatic changes in world diplomacy and the balance of power, Taiwan’s relations with the United States improved to some extent. Taiwan asserted its de facto autonomy through a pragmatic diplomacy but also began normalizing relations with the People’s Republic of China by establishing organs for managing ongoing economic and social intercourse and for negotiating possible eventual reunification. The advent of political liberalization in Taiwan focused renewed attention on social problems and fostered a cultural renaissance.
Taiwan’s economic ties with mainland China grew dramatically after 1990, both in terms of the amount of investment money flowing from Taiwan to the mainland and in overall cross-straits trade; by 2005 the People’s Republic had become Taiwan’s most important trading partner. However, the rise of the DPP as a political force in Taiwan also led to strained relations with the mainland, which became more pronounced after DPP leader Chen Shui-bian (Ch’en Shui-pian) was elected president of Taiwan in 2000. The DPP also went on to win control of the Legislative Yuan the following year, the first time that the KMT had been fully ousted from power in the government. By 2004, though, the KMT and its allies had regained a majority of legislative seats, and in the 2008 parliamentary elections the party won convincingly over the DPP, garnering nearly three-fourths of the seats. Later that year, the KMT reclaimed full control of the government with the election of party leader Ma Ying-jeou to the presidency.