Boundaries of Formosa – The Dutch, Qing, and Japanese Eras

Wei, Te-Wen SMC Publishing Inc. with Liao, Yen-fan National Chengchi University

TELDAP 2013 - ECAI Workshop Cultural Atlas Consortium Special Panel Session: Focus on Austronesia and Mapping

Friday 15th March 15:50-16:10

During Taiwan’s 400 years of history, the island has been ruled by a succession of different powers, with boundaries, always shifting and being redefining, that are revealed to us today in rare and ancient maps. This talk will demonstrate boundary making in Taiwan and the extent of colonial rule under the Dutch, Spanish, Qing and Japanese, illustrated with rare maps dating back to the 17th century.

While indigenous peoples have been living in Taiwan for more than 6,500 years, it was during the Dutch era (1624-1662) that the island of Formosa appeared on the map for the first time as a single land mass. The Spanish (1626-1642), too, had outposts in northern Taiwan, but by 1684, the island was passed into the possession of the . In 1698, Sino-Russian border disputes necessitated the making of more maps, and Western missionaries spent 1709-1721 mapping previously unknown or incompletely known geographical areas, including Formosa.

More than an academic matter, these boundaries had a geopolitical and diplomatic importance, as illustrated by the Mudan Incident, in which Sino-Japanese ties were strained when it was determined that an assault on shipwrecked Japanese sailors took place in an area of Formosa not controlled by the Qing dynasty. This enmity, in part, led to the first Sino-Japanese war, which ended with the that ceded Taiwan to Japan in 1895. The question is, how could the Qing court legally cede land it did not control to another power as spoils of war? During their 50 years of colonial rule, the Japanese empire extended, for the first time, unified control over the whole of Taiwan.

These are just some of the fascinating stories that can be told through the maps of Formosa, up to and including the Japanese colonial era and the more detailed maps and boundaries delineated by the colonial government.

Keywords: Formosa, rare maps, colonial rule, boundary making, indigenous peoples, Dutch, Qing dynasty, Japanese, 17th to 20th centuries