Status Updates From Maritime Taiwan

Somehow it doesn't surprise me that Morse wife who didn't like China and the Chinese fell in love with Taiwan's "external aspect". If it means the environment, yeah, that is pretty common. And Taiwan had a gold rush at Keelung? Never knew that.
And apparently angry Taiwanese attacked governor T'ang in 1895 in his taipei office.

the author states that John Dodd brought cliipings of oolong tea from Fukien to Taiwan in 1865, but from what I know the tea was present on the island since the late 18th century.

Looks like Le Gendre was effective in getting a deal with the aborigines of the south.

I wonder what the term "Natives" is supposed to mean here. The author stated that the high camphor profit margins frequently made the natives violate the government monopoly, but who is that?

How did the Japanese move against Korea in that time?

I wonder which other foreign nationals thought that Taiwan was not under effective chinese jurisdiction.

gosh, how many commercia, disputes and anti-christian riots where there in the 1860s and 1870s that the brits needed force?

If what he wrote is true about anti-christian sentiments, no wonder christianized natives felt calmer by the presence of monthly british warship patrols.

So the mandarins had only half-hearted attempts to punish anti-christian rioters. No wonder the british had to intervene.

so their success in curing fever-related and ophthalmic diseases by the missionaries was a factor in anti-christian riots.

what he says about this treaty of tientsin and who afterwards could conduct business with whom does not sound like this free for all so many claim today.

Oh, so among the chinese officials there was a constant back and forth as to what territory was under the jurisdiction when dealing with foreigners. rescuing/avenging ship-wrecked people, not their problem, mining and dealing with the aborigines directly, that is forbidden.

This dragon mountain belief statement by the governor general Liu sounds like an excuse to his british counterparts to me.

what he writes about anti-christian jealousy and prejudice in Taiwan, does remind me of the american claim of anti-chinese sentiment and I wonder how many of the plays about chinese aggression was caused by something like that.

500.000 chinese at the end of the 18th century to 2.000.000 by the mid-19th century. that is 4 times the number so how strong was the immigration push and pull?

Legend says that the offpsring of Tsai Ch'ien's pirates forged the nucleuous of a small coastal community called P'u-tai in Chiayi-County, where 85 percent of the population today bear the family name Tsai.

So between 1850 and 1869 about 150 foreign vessels were wrecked and lost on or near the Taiwan coast. Makes me wonder how many there were in total at this point.

I had to look up what a lorcha ship is and I wonder why the ones built for the Siamese government by european captains had such an advantage over chinese junks.

come to think of it: the Qing needing more sources of income after the conquest is rarely mentioned in my experience.

I am so not surprised that the Qing rulers found some loophole to allow this Portoguese envoy to present tribute to them: If he cannot anchor at the coast because of their policy, he can anchor at Macau and then simply come to them by land.

Were these chinese fleeing the empire from war, fleeing from the Ming-Qing conflict?

Was voicing their greivances once a year to the Landdag really all the aborigines got for paying tribute to the dutch? And he makes it sound as if the dutch ruled all of Taiwan but from what I know Dutch colonial territory covered roughly one-third of Taiwan and not all of it. Large mountainous regions of the island and many indigenous territories remained completely outside of direct Dutch authority.

Oh, so of the about 200 spanish colonists settling along the north bank of the Tamsui estuary were Filipinos... or is he referring to half of the full 500 colonists being ethnic Filipinos? Not clear. But either way, interesting detail.

No wonder Taiwanese veterans shied away from their involvement in World War 2. Come to think of it, I only remember hearing stories about indigenous people being in the Japanese army nothing about Hoklo and Hakka.

Matthew C. Perry recommended an American "protectorate over Taiwan" and considered it practically independent? Wow.

An antipathy towards chinese law... hm, I do remember Qing Taiwan being referred to as similar to the Wild West. And the author states that the "Trickle down" sinicization by the mandarines and elites only had limited effect on the population at large and the mandarin hauteu ultimately failed to findamentally comnvert Taiwan into a genuinely "Oriental" (aka authoritarian) chinese society.

What? I knew that the Qing considered selling Taiwan to the Dutch but I did not know they also considered selling it to Great Britain, twice. And the offer was rejected by the Brits.

I do wonder whether the myth that the name Taiwan is chinese in origin is still as prevalent as it seems to have been back then.