History
· The complete timeline of Taiwan's history from prehistoric times to the present 92 articles Updated 2026-10-21On July 15, 1987, when Chiang Ching-kuo announced the lifting of martial law from the Presidential Office in Taipei, no one in the world believed Taiwan could complete democratic transition within thirteen years. How could an island under authoritarian rule for thirty-eight years peacefully transfer power? Yet with the first direct presidential election in 1996 and the first peaceful change of ruling party in 2000, Taiwan set the fastest democratic transition record in human political history—without bloodshed, coups, or even large-scale protests. International scholars called it the "Taiwan Miracle," but the roots of this miracle lie buried in much deeper historical contexts.
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- Standard article2026-10
The Great Recall: The Largest Recall Wave in Taiwan’s History, Measuring Every Tick of Democracy
On the night of July 26, 2025, one-third of Taiwan’s electoral districts held simultaneous vote counts. All 25 recall cases failed. From the Bluebird Movement to claims of over 1.3 million signature supporters, and three waves of voting resulting in zero recalls, this largest recall wave in Taiwan’s history did not remove a single official, yet for the first time, it measured the mobilization energy, the height of the threshold, and the cost of polarization simultaneously.
53 ~22 min
- Standard article2026-10
National Human Rights Museum: The Names Not Written on the Tearful Monument
On International Human Rights Day in 1999, Lee Teng-hui personally unveiled the Tearful Monument on Green Island. Bo Yang wrote 28 characters that captured all mothers' long nights of weeping, yet did not write a single perpetrator's name. Six years of preparation, an unveiling in 2018, and a frozen budget in 2025. A museum built by the state itself to commemorate what the state itself had done. In the 39 years since martial law was lifted, not one perpetrator has faced judicial trial.
40 ~16 min
- Standard article2026-10
The Sino-French War in Taiwan: Eight Months at Keelung and Tamsui
In the autumn of 1884, the French fleet shelled Keelung harbor and 2,000 marines landed, seizing the port. But they spent the next seven months unable to fight their way out of the hills surrounding Keelung. That same week, 600 French sailors landed at Tamsui — and were driven back to sea within two hours. When the war ended, France took Vietnam and relinquished Taiwan. The Qing dynasty nearly lost everything, yet as a result Taiwan went from a dependency to a province.
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Colonialism & Empire 21
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The Sino-French War in Taiwan: Eight Months at Keelung and Tamsui
In the autumn of 1884, the French fleet shelled Keelung harbor and 2,000 marines landed, seizing the port. But they spent the next seven months unable to fight their way out of the hills surrounding Keelung. That same week, 600 French sailors landed at Tamsui — and were driven back to sea within two hours. When the war ended, France took Vietnam and relinquished Taiwan. The Qing dynasty nearly lost everything, yet as a result Taiwan went from a dependency to a province.
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The 1895 Taiwan Resistance War: 148 Days of the Republic of Formosa
In 1895, the Qing court ceded Taiwan to Japan. Officials on the island declared the establishment of Asia's first republic, but the president fled within ten days and the poet within four. Those who truly stayed to fight were a 19-year-old Hakka youth who scattered his family fortune to raise militia fighters. 148 days later, the republic vanished and Japanese rule began.
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Formosa: How Westerners 'Discovered' an Island That Was Already Inhabited
In 1704, a Frenchman who had never been to Asia stood before the Royal Society in London and, using a script and religion he had invented himself, convinced an entire room of scholars that he was a 'Formosan.' The deception lasted ten years. But the larger question is this: when Europeans spoke of 'discovering Formosa,' Austronesian peoples had already lived on the island for six thousand years. Whose narrative is 'discovery'?
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Japanese Colonial Era
Japan ruled Taiwan for 50 years from 1895 to 1945, bringing comprehensive modernization and institutional management while implementing assimilation policies that profoundly shaped Taiwan's social development
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The 19th-Century Camphor War: The Scent the World Craved was Hidden in Indigenous Mountains
In 1864, Swinton wrote three numbers in Tamsui: 6, 16, and 28. A load of camphor traveled from its source to Hong Kong, its price increasing nearly fivefold. The difference went into the Daotai's pocket—and the mountains of the Indigenous peoples.
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Penglai Rice: How a Grain Rewrote Taiwan's Century of Agriculture and Dining Landscape
From the 1918 Japanese rice unrest, the breeding efforts of Iso Nagichi and Suei Nagito, to No. 65 from Taichung, post-war high yields, and modern precision breeding—Penglai Rice has not only changed the texture of rice but also Taiwan's agricultural system, local landscape, and historical memory.
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The Wu Feng Legend: How a Local Story Became an Imperial Textbook
The 1855 "Haiyin Shi" contains the earliest written record of Wu Feng, yet he was not yet the perfect righteous figure found in later textbooks. During the Japanese colonial period, the Governor-General's Office rewrote the Chiayi foothills legend, erected a stele, and incorporated it into textbooks, making Wu Feng a cross-regional moral hero; as the story was amplified, the Tsou people were simultaneously fixed as the "other" awaiting civilization.
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The Lin Shuangwen Rebellion: How the Qing Empire Relearned How to Govern Taiwan
Beginning in late 1786, the Lin Shuangwen Rebellion in central Taiwan was not merely a popular uprising quelled by the Qing court; it also forced the empire to overhaul its policies on ports, garrison troops, and fortification.
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Taiwan’s Salt Industry: 338 Years of Sun-Drying and How It Found a New Existence After Industrialization
In 1665, Chen Yonghua built salt pans at Saikou in Tainan, turning seawater, monsoons, and sunlight into an industry. Between 1952 and 1961, industrial and agricultural salt demand rose from 35,000 to 245,000 metric tons, yet salt fields faced obsolescence amid industrialization and global trade; after the last mechanical harvest in 2002, Jingzaijiao and Zhou Nan returned the landscape of cessation to local stewardship.
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Three Foreigners Witness 1895 Taiwan: A Photographer's Album, a Reporter's Notes, a Pastor's Diary
In the Yi-Wei War of 1895 (乙未之役), three foreigners left behind the most important foreign-language eyewitness documents of that conflict — Japanese photographer Endo Makoto's victory album, American journalist James W. Davidson's embedded notes, and Japanese pastor Hosokawa Ryu's diary from Taiwan. The question is not what they saw, but for whom they were watching.
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The Mudan Incident: A Clash of Civilizations and the Awakening of Sovereignty in the Stone Ridge Gorge
In 1874, a military action triggered by a maritime disaster made the Stone Ridge Gorge in southern Taiwan the focal point of modern East Asian affairs. This was not only a test case for the expansion of the Japanese Empire but also a turning point for the Qing court, shifting from peripheral defense to active governance.
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The Rover Incident: A Battle 181 Soldiers Couldn't Win, Settled by Tauketok in 45 Minutes
In 1867, 181 US soldiers were repelled in the jungles of the Hengchun Peninsula and their commanding officer was killed. Three months later, Tauketok — paramount chief of the Eighteen Paiwan Tribes of Liangqiao — sat down and negotiated the Treaty of South Cape in 45 minutes. The agreement temporarily protected his people from annihilation — but the other party, Charles Le Gendre (李仙得), took the same intelligence to the Japanese Empire seven years later, helping plan the 1874 expedition.
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Chia-Yi Agricultural and Forestry High School: How a Runner-Up Team Opened the Door to Koshien for Taiwan
In August 1931, the Chia-Yi Agricultural and Forestry (Kano) baseball team traveled from Keelung to Japan’s Koshien Stadium. Composed of Han, Indigenous, and Japanese students, the team reached the finals and took second place. What it left behind was not just the slogan “The Greatest Kano,” but a record of how a colony was seen on another nation’s field, and how that field became part of Taiwan’s own memory.
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Tamkang High School: How One Campus Concentrates Taiwan's Modern Education History
What is most worth writing about Tamkang High School is not that it is old enough, but that it packed the tensions between missionary education, women's education, and colonial governance all into the same campus.
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The Dutch, Spanish, and Ming-Zheng Period
From the Dutch establishment of Fort Zeelandia in Tainan in 1624 to Shi Lang's landing in Penghu in 1683: sixty years in which Taiwan was written into the map of world trade, and the story of four successive regimes
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Qing Dynasty Rule
From 1683 to 1895, the Qing dynasty ruled Taiwan for approximately 212 years, transitioning from passive governance to active development, laying the foundation for modern Taiwan's administrative divisions and Han Chinese society.
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The Kingdom of Tungning: Twenty-One Years of a Dynasty That Wrote Taiwan into Its Name
In February 1662, Dutch Governor VOC official Pieter de Carpentier handed over the keys to Fort Zeelandia, and Koxinga transformed the island into "Tungning." For the next twenty-one years, the Zheng clan established a complex administration, settled troops as farmers, appointed Chen Yonghua to manage state affairs, and traded with Japan and the British East India Company. Following the Battle of Penghu in July 1683, Shi Lang crushed Liu Guoxuan's navy; by October, Zheng Keqiang surrendered to the Qing, bringing Tungning to an end.
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Fort Zeelandia: A Castle with Four Names
In 1624, the Dutch rebuilt a fort at Dayuan in Tainan, first naming it Fort Oranje, then renaming it Fort Zeelandia two years later. In 1662, after a nine-month siege by Koxinga, Dutch Governor Coyett handed over the keys, and it became the Ming-Zheng royal capital. During the Qing era, walls were dismantled to build Eternal Golden Castle; in the Japanese era, the inner fortress was leveled; in 2022, the Ministry of Culture merged the remnants and renamed them the "Fort Zeelandia Remains." Four names, four regimes.
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Moriyama Matsunosuke: Drawing Taiwan's Official Face with Three Prefectural Halls and a Courthouse
In 1906, a Tokyo Imperial University graduate from an Osaka merchant family arrived in Taiwan as a consultant and designed the first fully reinforced-concrete building in the entire Japanese Empire. Over the next fifteen years, Moriyama Matsunosuke completed the Taipei Prefectural Hall, Taichung Prefectural Hall, Tainan Prefectural Hall, Tainan Courthouse, the Monopoly Bureau, the Railway Ministry, and the Taiwan Governor-General's Office. His handling of asymmetrical sites, composite columns, and dual circulation patterns gave concrete form to colonial government authority, leaving behind three red-brick halls that today house the Control Yuan, Taichung City Government offices, and the National Taiwan Literature Museum.
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Sixteen Years of Spanish Rule in Northern Taiwan: Colonial Attempts from Heping Island to Tamsui
In May 1626, a Spanish fleet sailed north from Manila, landing at Keelung Harbor and establishing Fort San Salvador on Heping Island. Over sixteen years, they built Fort Santo Domingo in Tamsui, explored the Taipei Basin, and clashed with the Kavalan people, all while relying on Manila for supplies to maintain a garrison of 200–300 men. In August 1642, the Dutch captured Keelung, leading to the Spanish withdrawal from Taiwan, leaving behind only place names and fragments of castle walls.
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A History of Forest Development in Taiwan: A Century-Long Shift from Resource Extraction to National Land Security
From the camphor smoke of the Qing dynasty to the ringing rails of the Japanese colonial era and the era of massive logging that shook the mountains after the war. This article traces the global geopolitical logic behind Taiwan's forest development policies and uses data to clarify the true history of a century of forestry.
Social & Everyday History 19
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History of Taiwan's Military Dependents' Villages
Since the late 1940s, the Nationalist government built military dependents' villages to settle families following the retreat to Taiwan; from bamboo fences and mud walls to modern housing, these settlements evolved into a vital part of Taiwan's multicultural DNA.
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Disney and Taiwan: A Fantastic Journey from Hung Kwang Outsourcing and the Yue Mei Regret to IP Localization
In the 1980s, Xindian's Hung Kwang Cartoon handled nearly one-third of the world's animation production, earning the title "the Disney of the East." Taiwan twice missed opportunities with Disneyland, including the 1990s Yue Mei project in Taichung due to land development and HSR station rights; even early scripts for *Toy Story 3* featured a malfunctioning Buzz Lightyear being sent back to his "place of origin," Taiwan, for repairs. From the golden age of outsourcing to Stitch riding a scooter, this connection runs deeper than imagined.
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Taipei Main Station: The Underground City That Sends People Away, Yet Also Keeps Them
From a train terminal near the Tamsui River and Dadaocheng to the fourth-generation underground station opened in 1989, Taipei Main Station now serves as the convergence point for TRA, Taiwan High Speed Rail, Taipei Metro, and Taoyuan Airport MRT. It is not just a place for departure, but a space where people linger, gather, and forge urban memories in the halls, underground streets, platforms, and bento boxes.
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Yingge Ceramic Old Street: From Chimneys to MRT, the Transformation and Rebirth of Two Centuries of Ceramic Art
Yingge, once known as "Taiwan's Jingdezhen" for its forest of chimneys, has undergone industrial transformation and a wave of commercialization, welcoming the opening of the New Taipei Museum of Art and the opening of the MRT San-Xing Line. A new generation of ceramic artists is seeking sustainable development paths between tradition and innovation, and tourism and industry, through activities like "Open Factory Days."
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The Eight Immortals Dust Explosion: The Taiwan Wound Burned Into That Night’s Color Party
On June 27, 2015, a color party at Formosa Fun Coast triggered an internationally shocking dust-explosion disaster after colored powder flash-ignited. The incident, Taiwan’s deadliest mass-casualty event since the 921 earthquake, left 499 people with burn injuries and 15 dead, fundamentally reshaped Taiwan’s emergency medical system, and drove reforms to safety regulations for large-scale events.
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From "Dog Killing Island" to Zero Culling: Forty Years of Redemption in Taiwan's Animal Protection
In the 1990s, Taiwan was internationally known as the "Dog Killing Island" due to cruel treatment of stray dogs, leading even Japanese airports to display boycott signs. From the enactment of the Animal Protection Act in 1998 to comprehensive zero culling in 2017, this is a social movement redefining the value of life.
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No. 1 Girls' High School: How a Women's Campus Preserves Academic, Bodily, and Public Memory
From colonial screening in 1904 to the anti-aircraft green uniforms of 1952, No. 1 Girls' High School is not only the cradle of women's leadership in Taiwan but also a miniature museum of spatial politics.
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Aby Cement's Xincheng Mountain Mine: One Mine License Extension Revoked, Yet the Village Below Still Awaits Answers on Safety
The Hualien Xincheng Mountain mine, which obtained mining rights in 1957 and began operations in 1974, was granted a 20-year extension in 2017 but had it revoked by the Supreme Administrative Court in 2021 for failing to secure prior indigenous consultation and consent. While the ruling changed the procedural landscape, it did not immediately halt blasting; during the 2026 supplementary environmental impact assessment (EIA), the tribe continues to press for answers on safety, land restitution, and closure plans.
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Taiwan Sugar Railways: A Little Train That Once Outran the TRA
When the 762-mm-gauge sugar railway opened in 1908, it stitched together more than 3,000 kilometres of track across southern and central Taiwan, carrying cane, refined sugar, students, mail and everyday freight. It was never a nostalgic factory siding; it was the circulatory system of Taiwan's early industrial take-off. Today only a handful of lines still run, so preserving them means holding on to more than scenery.
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Sanxia Old Street: Power Struggles Beneath Red Brick Arcades and an Unfinished Heritage Experiment
Recognized by FIABCI with the Global Excellence in Construction Award in 2007, Sanxia Old Street served as Taiwan's first large-scale "restoration project" pilot. From the Qing Dynasty's "Sanjiaoyong" indigo dyeing trade to the 2016 tragedy of the flagstone road's removal, this red-brick street records Taiwan's intense struggle between heritage preservation and tourism development.
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The 1935 Hsinchu-Taichung Earthquake: How Streets Learned to Remember After Qingshui Was Wiped Out
At 6:02 a.m. on April 21, 1935, a magnitude 6.9 earthquake tore through Hsinchu and Taichung Prefectures near Guandao Mountain, killing 3,279 people, injuring 11,976, and destroying 17,927 households. Local figure Yang Zhaojia wrote "Qingshui Wiped Out" on a business card, while Huang Wangcheng recorded in his diary that his family fled to the side of a deep well. Post-disaster reconstruction committees, railway repairs, urban planning reforms, and seismic monitoring transformed a disaster into a new governance order, leaving behind questions about who has the authority to define safety.
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The National Railway Museum: How a Factory Built Solely for Railway Operations Was Returned to the City
Established in 1930 and opened in 1935, the Taipei Railway Workshop was once responsible for the maintenance, assembly, and upkeep of Taiwan’s railway rolling stock. After relocating in 2012, this nearly 17-hectare industrial site did not disappear; it was designated a National Monument in 2015 and opened its first phase as the National Railway Museum in 2025. It preserves not just trains, but the workers’ methods of moving an island.
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Beyond Setting Sail: How Taiwan’s Fisheries Were Rebuilt by Research Vessels, Fish Markets, and a Community of Technical Experts
Tracing how Taiwan’s fisheries transformed across ports, cold chains, education, capital, and local life—from Japanese-era hydrographic research and the Rinkai Maru, to the Batousi and Kaohsiung fish markets, postwar technical personnel, US aid for distant-water fishing, and the Dongshi fishing village.
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Morakot Typhoon: The Houses Were Built, But When Will Home Return?
The 2009 typhoon did more than destroy villages; it forced Taiwan to rethink the relationships between safety, resettlement, land, and Indigenous participation.
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The 9/21 Earthquake: A Fault Line Running Through a Campus, Taiwan Leaves the Ruins in Place
On the early morning of September 21, 1999, the Chelungpu Fault sliced through Guangfu Junior High School in Wufeng, Taichung, lifting the playground 2.6 meters and claiming 2,415 lives that night. From the loss of water supply at Shigang Dam to its preservation as an educational park, what the 9/21 earthquake left behind was not just a casualty report, but a method by which Taiwan relearned how to coexist with earthquakes.
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Vanished Amusement Parks: From the “First Park” to Ghost Legends, the Childhoods Confiscated by Urban Planning
In 1972, Taiwan’s first theme park, Datong Water Park, opened in Banqiao, inaugurating Taiwan’s two-decade “great amusement park era.” From the crowds that had Chen Zhaobing personally serving dishes, to the broken-track rumors surrounding Carton King-style Katori Amusement Park, the collective disappearance of these parks was not simply the result of aging facilities, but a microcosm of Taiwan’s urban expansion and the transformation of its leisure industry.
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History of Taiwan's Historic Preservation Movement: Three Paths Beginning with the Demolition of Lin An-tai Ancient House
On June 26, 1978, the Lin An-tai Ancient House in Taipei's Daan District began demolition amid firecrackers and incense. Architect Li Chung-yao led workers using grass ropes, chalk, and seventy engineering drawings to dismantle a two-hundred-year-old courtyard house into 38,000 bricks and stones and 240,000 tiles. This demolition directly catalyzed the 1982 Cultural Assets Preservation Act. Thereafter, the preservation movement split into three paths: Losheng Sanatorium bound historic preservation with housing rights, while Taipei's Old House Cultural Movement handed restoration to the market, producing both results and controversies.
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Taiwan Railway History: The "Lung Disease" Railway, the "Black-Headed Ones," and the Line That Lost Its Foreign Names
A road the Japanese called "lung disease" that became a high-speed artery carrying 200,000 people daily over a century. Engineer Becker was scrapped by the Japanese; Hasegawa’s trunk line was renamed post-war; every generation pushed the previous records to footnotes. Foreign names faded, leaving Taiwanese slang like "black-headed ones" and political slogans like "Juguang" and "Ziqiang," until the Puyuma and Taroko era finally laid indigenous place names back onto the tracks.
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The 19 Cattle of Qingtiangang: From Yuan Xing Cattle to Tainan Beef Soup, an Island's Beef Industry Breakthrough
Taiwan's beef self-sufficiency rate is only 4.6%, yet in 2024 the nation's first privately bred and officially certified cattle breed was born. The story of Yuan Xing cattle is an industry breakthrough scripted by a 94-year-old man, 19 wild black cattle, and a bowl of freshly slaughtered beef soup served before dawn.
Postwar & Authoritarian Era 14
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National Human Rights Museum: The Names Not Written on the Tearful Monument
On International Human Rights Day in 1999, Lee Teng-hui personally unveiled the Tearful Monument on Green Island. Bo Yang wrote 28 characters that captured all mothers' long nights of weeping, yet did not write a single perpetrator's name. Six years of preparation, an unveiling in 2018, and a frozen budget in 2025. A museum built by the state itself to commemorate what the state itself had done. In the 39 years since martial law was lifted, not one perpetrator has faced judicial trial.
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The KMT Government's Relocation to Taiwan and Postwar Reconstruction
Yen Chia-kan came from Fujian and witnessed the history of the KMT government's 1949 relocation to Taiwan. 1.2 million soldiers and civilians, 38 years of martial law, land reform: how did this history reshape Taiwan?
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Taiwan's White Terror
The martial law period of 1938 was not maintained by a few thousand secret agents, but by the 'collective responsibility guarantee' system where two million families across Taiwan had to vouch for each other to work, enroll in school, or get married. Chen Zhixiong, Shi Shuihuan, Gao Yisheng, and Bai Yang—four names, four reasons for arrest, one common machine.
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The Martial Law Era
On May 19, 1949, Chen Cheng promulgated the Taiwan Provincial Martial Law. 38 years later, on July 15, 1987, Chiang Ching-kuo announced the lifting of martial law. The Kinmen and Matsu regions did not see the end of martial law until 1992. What did they endure during these five years?
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Democratization
On March 18, 1980, in a Kaohsiung military courtroom, Shih Ming-teh discarded his sixty-thousand-word defense statement and instead demanded the judge sentence him to death. In the same trial, the young lawyers defending the accused — Chen Shui-bian, Frank Hsieh, Su Tseng-chang — all became presidents or premiers within twenty years. A show trial intended to make an example ended up accidentally producing Taiwan's next generation of political leaders.
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Taiwan Elections and Party Politics
From the flames of the Zhongcha incident to 8.17 million votes, how Taiwan transformed voting from a martial-law tool into a national faith over half a century
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Green Island Prison: Layered Memories from Political Black Jail to the Homeland of Big Brothers
Green Island, a solitary island in the Pacific, was once a purgatory for political prisoners during the White Terror era and the final resting place for underworld 'big brothers.' From the New Life Training Center to Chongde New Village, how does the history of Green Island Prison reflect the contradictions and memories of Taiwanese society?
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Taiwan's Women's Movement: From a Magazine Published During Martial Law to Laws That Reshaped Families and Schools
In 1971, Hsiu-lien Lü proposed "New Feminism"; in 1982, Yuan-chen Lee and others founded *Women's New Knowledge*; and after the 1996 murder of Wan-jui Peng, a night march was launched. All these milestones culminated in the Gender Equality Education Act, the Domestic Violence Prevention Act, and the Employment Equality Act. The history of Taiwan's women's movement is not merely about securing quotas for women, but about transforming harms, caregiving, and labor—originally dismissed as mere "household chores"—into public issues, thereby equipping women with institutional language for recourse in the workplace, family, and schools.
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The Grand Hotel: Secret Tunnels and the Transfer of Power in a Red Palace
From the site of a Japanese colonial shrine to Madame Chiang Kai-shek’s state guesthouse, the Grand Hotel is not only Taiwan’s most iconic palace-style architecture but also, through its secret tunnels and red walls, witnessed the absurdity and legend of the transition from authoritarian peak to democratic party formation.
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Alishan: The Empire's Forest and Uong'e Yata'uyungana's Mountain
On April 17, 1954, Tsou intellectual Uong'e Yata'uyungana was executed by firing squad at the Anken execution ground. Alishan, celebrated as a scenic destination, is in truth a mountain of memory rewritten by two empires in succession.
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Eradicating Malaria in Taiwan: Lien Ri-ching and a Public Health Engineering Project that Integrated Mosquitoes into Governance
Established in 1946, the Chaozhou Malaria Research Center marked Lien Ri-ching’s transition from studying mosquitoes under a microscope to leading Taiwan’s disease prevention efforts. The 1965 WHO certification of Taiwan’s malaria-free status reveals a history involving foreign aid, local research, household spraying, local public health, and state mobilization, while leaving behind public health challenges such as monitoring vectors and imported cases post-eradication, illuminating how post-war governance penetrated daily life.
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The Tay Ping: Before Reaching Keelung, Taiwan Received a Nameless Grave
In 1949, the Tay Ping sailed from Shanghai to Keelung but sank in the waters near Zhoushan; its legacy is not merely a maritime disaster, but a question of how immigration, family memory, and public commemoration took root in Taiwan.
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The August 7 Flood: How Floodwaters Rewrote Taiwan’s Homes and State
The August 7 Flood of 1959 devastated central and southern Taiwan, killing 667, leaving 408 missing, and displacing over 300,000 people. Looking back from the torrential rains in Douliu, broken bridges, US military helicopter aerial photos, post-disaster reports, and a female migrant worker’s memory of returning home, the August 7 Flood was not merely a weather-induced disaster, but a turning point in how the state counted, rescued, rebuilt, and reorganized local life.
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Xiluo Bridge: Fifteen Years at a Standstill, Seven Months to Connect North and South
In 1937, the bridge over the Zhuoshui River completed 32 piers first, but the superstructure was stalled by wartime steel shortages. Fifteen years later, U.S. aid steel, local petitions, and a multinational engineering crew finished it in seven months in 1952. The Xiluo Bridge thus became not only the longest bridge in the Far East at the time, but also a history where postwar Taiwan layered transportation, the Cold War, Taiwan Sugar Railway transport, and local memory onto a single steel truss. Today it remains in use, while continuing to face choices between preservation and safety.
Economic History 9
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The Ten Major Construction Projects: A NT$200 Billion Gamble Backed by US$1 Billion in Foreign Reserves
In 1973, Taiwan held just US$1 billion in foreign exchange reserves, yet Chiang Ching-kuo announced an investment of approximately NT$300 billion in the Ten Major Construction Projects. This was not merely an economic pivot in response to the oil crisis and diplomatic isolation, but also a political narrative that repackaged blueprints inherited from Japanese colonial rule and transformed them into a source of national identity.
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Pirate Kingdom: The Reverse Engineering of the Counterfeit Era Woven into TSMC’s Trust Gene
From the 1970s to the 1990s, Taiwan was dubbed the "Pirate Kingdom" by international media. This article traces the rise and fall of the counterfeit industry, how the June 12 deadline and the Special 301 clause forced institutional transformation, and explains why TSMC’s "do not compete with customers" trust model is the reversal of this history.
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Chianan Irrigation: Water Scarcity Necessitated the Three-Year Crop Rotation
Completed in 1930 after starting in 1920, the Chianan Irrigation System connected the Wushantou Reservoir and over 10,000 km of waterways to the Chianan Plain, supporting approximately 150,000 hectares of farmland. Its most significant lesson is not the biography of Yoichi Hatta, but how farmers collectively managed water distribution during shortages.
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US Aid: How a Sack of Flour Became a Development System
From 1951 to 1965, US aid delivered not only dollars, military supplies, and food, but also capital, technology, education, and Cold War security into Taiwan's postwar economy. From the Seventh Fleet's entry into the Taiwan Strait after the Korean War to Yin Zhongrong's industrial selection, the distribution of Public Law 480 materials, scientific education, and administrative institutions, how was US aid re-translated by local and bureaucratic actors? It supported postwar reconstruction while leaving behind controversies over dependency, oversight, and autonomy.
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Taichung Port: How a Single Truckload of Stones Pushed Wūqí Toward the Sea and Rewrote the Coastline
On October 31, 1973, Chen Shu-hsi dropped the first truckload of stones at the Wūqí North Breakwater. Three years later, Taichung Port opened with merchant vessels, warships, and 300,000 visitors, becoming an artificial international gateway for central Taiwan. Yet port completion did not equal the city’s dream. Sand drift, the outward shift of the old town, and controversies over white dolphin habitats mean this "Ten Major Construction Projects" site still answers the same question: How do we turn the sea into a door without losing the sea itself?
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Kaohsiung Export Processing Zone: The 72 Hectare Industrial Testbed That Sent Taiwan to the World
Established in 1966, the Kaohsiung Export Processing Zone compressed tax exemptions, a single window system, and export orders into one park, enabling female labor, foreign investment, and technology to co-write the beginning of Taiwan's globalization.
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Shimen Reservoir: How a Dam Built to Solve Water Scarcity Resettled Immigrants and Water Culture
In 1954, Chen Cheng chaired the Shimen Reservoir Design Committee, where Taoyuan’s water scarcity, post-war fiscal constraints, and US aid technology converged to place a major dam on the national agenda. Completed in 1964, it provided irrigation, power generation, flood control, and public water, while displacing residents from the submerged zone. The history of Shimen Reservoir is not merely an engineering triumph, but a long-term negotiation over who receives water, who bears the cost, and how the state mapped engineering benefits onto local lives.
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Taiwan Land Reform: Farmers Got the Land, But Landlords’ Land Became Another Form of Capital
The three-stage land reform of the 1950s turned tenant farmers into owner-cultivators, while simultaneously embedding the contradictions of landlord compensation, disputed co-owned land, and the shift of agricultural capital into industry into the starting point of Taiwan’s economic takeoff.
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Taiwan's Fisheries Modernization: How a Fishing Net Connects Qianzhen, the Three Oceans, and the Island's Table
Tracing Taiwan's fisheries from coastal livelihoods to a transoceanic industry: from colonial fisheries administration and postwar Qianzhen Port's cold chain, to the 1979 distant-water development plan, the 1982 EEZ regime, and 2005 international sanctions. The article examines fisheries schools, aquaculture exports, fishing village households, port diversification, and flag-state responsibility, revealing the resource, labor, local governance, and international regulatory realities behind production growth.
Democracy & Governance 6
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The Great Recall: The Largest Recall Wave in Taiwan’s History, Measuring Every Tick of Democracy
On the night of July 26, 2025, one-third of Taiwan’s electoral districts held simultaneous vote counts. All 25 recall cases failed. From the Bluebird Movement to claims of over 1.3 million signature supporters, and three waves of voting resulting in zero recalls, this largest recall wave in Taiwan’s history did not remove a single official, yet for the first time, it measured the mobilization energy, the height of the threshold, and the cost of polarization simultaneously.
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Taiwan’s Democratic Transition: The Grave Dug by Authoritarianism
Every crackdown breeds more resistance. From the February 28 Incident to the Sunflower Movement, how an island allowed a dictatorial regime to cultivate the very forces that buried it.
- Standard article
Taiwan and North Korea: From Fourth Largest Export Destination to a Gray Zone Confrontation
Taiwan was once North Korea's fourth-largest export destination, with Acer computers and HCG sanitary ware visible in Pyongyang offices. This history—from robust trade to comprehensive embargoes—is interwoven with secret agricultural aid, maritime smuggling, and deep geopolitical intelligence struggles.
- Standard article
Withdrawal from the United Nations: The 17 Minutes in 1971 When Taiwan Went from “China” to International Orphan
On October 25, 1971, the moment Chou Shu-kai stepped down from the podium in the UN General Assembly hall, the Republic of China went from a founding member of the United Nations to an observer still kept outside its doors. Half a century later, that decision, framed as “the Han and the bandits cannot coexist,” continues to reverberate: in 2025, the United States passed legislation reaffirming that Resolution 2758 never addressed Taiwan’s representation.
- Standard article
The Taiwan Parliament Establishment Petition Movement: A Single Petition, Fourteen Years of Bringing Self-Governance into Public Life
From 1921 to 1934, Lin Hsien-tang and others challenged the Governor-General's colonial governance through fifteen petitions. Though the movement failed to secure a Taiwan Parliament, it transformed legal reasoning, periodicals, and organizational structures into public technologies for Taiwanese self-governance.
- Standard article
Taiwan Strait Crises and Cross-Strait Relations Development
How the collective psyche of Taiwanese people was shaped by seven decades of Taiwan Strait crises, from the memory of shelling in Kinmen to the casual daily life of young people in Taipei.
Prehistory & Indigenous Peoples 4
- Standard article
Prehistoric Era and Indigenous Peoples: Changbin 20,000 Years Ago to the Austronesian Expansion Origin
The earliest human activity in Taiwan dates back about 20,000 years to the Changbin culture (Paleolithic era, Baxian Cave site); there are 16 officially recognized indigenous tribes. Nine of the ten major branches of the Austronesian languages exist in Taiwan, leading it to be considered one of the possible origins of the Austronesian language family; the latest research from 2024 indicates that approximately 20% migrated out of Taiwan, with an Indonesian dispersal route also noted, and academic consensus is still forming. The Dadu Kingdom, a cross-tribal alliance, existed in the 17th century, and the Shisan Culture ushered in the Iron Age.
- Evolving · community
The Penglou Peoples: From "Administrative Formatting" to the Siraya's Century-Long Rebirth as the 17th Tribe
On July 30, 2026, the Executive Yuan officially recognized the Siraya as the 17th statutory indigenous people, ending the Penglou community's century-long "administrative disappearance." From 40,000 people in Dutch-era household registers to collective invisibility caused by omissions in the 1950s Nationalist government records, and now with 8 tribes still waiting for recognition, this naming movement opens a new chapter in Taiwan's multicultural historical narrative.
- Standard article
History of Taiwan's Indigenous Peoples and the Rectification of Names Movement
In 1987, 19-year-old Tsou youth Tang Ying-shen was executed by firing squad at the Taipei execution ground; his death ignited the initial spark of Taiwan's Indigenous peoples' rectification of names movement. From the founding of the Alliance of Taiwan Aborigines in 1984, the toppling of the Wu Feng bronze statue and the "Return Our Land" parade in 1988, to the 1994 constitutional amendment changing "mountain compatriots" to "indigenous peoples," and the 2005 Indigenous Peoples Basic Law adding the character "zu" (ethnic group), this path took 21 years. The Dutch's "acculturated barbarians" and "wild barbarians," the Qing's "cooked barbarians" and "raw barbarians," the Japanese colonial era's "fanren" and "lifan," and the postwar "mountain compatriots" — every name was a lock; the first three times others named you, the last two times you seized the name back yourselves.
- Evolving · community
History of Taiwan's Maritime Trade
During the Age of Discovery in the 16th and 17th centuries, this island was not a remote outpost of East Asia, but a vital trade hub connecting China, Japan, and Southeast Asia. The Dutch East India Company established Fort Zeelandia in Tainan, importing raw silk, porcelain, and tea from China, silver ingots from Japan, and spices and timber from Southeast Asia for transshipment—earning it the reputation of being the Amsterdam of East Asia. Furthermore, the Zheng dynasty established maritime hegemony, writing a history of rise and fall that transitioned from a trade hub to a pirate kingdom.
Military History 4
- Standard article
The February 28 Incident
How a widow's private cigarette stall ignited thirty-eight years of silence—the ten days in 1947 that changed Taiwan's destiny, and the wounds still healing seventy-eight years later.
- Evolving · community
Black Bat Squadron: Unnamed Heroes of the Dark Night and a Lonely Flight Across the Strait
Established in 1952, the Air Force 34th Squadron performed high-risk low-altitude reconnaissance missions amidst the fog of the Cold War. Working with the CIA, they traded the lives of 148 members for critical intelligence, remaining anonymous for decades until the easing of Cross-Strait relations in the 1990s allowed families to finally bring their fallen loved ones home.
- Standard article
The August 23 Artillery Duel: Forty-Four Days of Fire, Leaving Twenty Years of Kinmen’s Daily Life
On August 23, 1958, Kinmen endured over 30,000 artillery shells in 85 minutes. Forty-four days later, the fire did not truly leave; the "hit singles, spare doubles" policy continued until 1979. This war not only altered the strategic landscape of the Taiwan Strait but also left residents, students, and displaced families within the memory of the war zone. Between artillery fire and evacuation, Kinmen became an island that bore anxiety through routine, raising the most difficult question in war zone preservation: Does remembering victory also mean remembering the cost to civilians?
- Evolving · community
The Two Faces of Shengli Road: From Armored Corps Coup to the "Great Parking Lot" Memories of Hukou
On Shengli Road in Hukou, Hsinchu, one side of the military camp wall holds tanks and political storms, while the other holds residences, cooperatives, and vanished cinemas. This is a local history of neighborhood, accident, and social justice.
Modern History 2
- Standard article
The Formosa Incident
A military trial that was supposed to completely collapse the opposition movement unexpectedly became the most powerful propaganda film for Taiwan's democracy due to its broadcast.
- Standard article
Taiwan's Transitional Justice
Taiwan has revoked nearly six thousand convictions from the authoritarian era, yet almost no perpetrator has been held accountable—a gap that is harder to explain than the White Terror itself.
Others 13
- Standard article
Island Historiography of Taiwan: How a Repeatedly Governed Island Invented Its Own Subjectivity
The "Taiwanese Island Historiography" (臺灣島史觀) reclaims Taiwan from the timelines of external regimes, asking instead how people on this island lived, migrated, were governed, survived, and reconstructed their memories. It does not portray Taiwan as a uniquely special island by birth, but reminds us that identity grows out of shared living, shared suffering, and shared burdens; the protagonists of Taiwanese history should not always be merely the regimes that passed through.
- Standard article
Four Yardsticks Beyond Blue and Green: From a Plot of Land to a National Health Insurance Card—Taiwanese Policies That Outlived Their Partisan Origins
A reader, tired of the constant bickering between the Blue and Green camps at the dinner table, wanted to remember the things that truly benefited Taiwan. Thus, we examined eleven policies spanning seventy years—from the authoritarian land reform involving forced agricultural land seizure, martial law lifting, and National Health Insurance, to the ongoing debates over same-sex marriage and the Forward-looking Infrastructure Development Program. Instead of using partisan yardsticks, we deliberately applied four: livelihood, democracy, civil rights, and sovereignty. The conclusion is somewhat counterintuitive: policies that outlive their original political affiliations were often the most fiercely contested on the day they were born.
- Standard article
Taiwan's History of Going Abroad: An Island People's Cross-Border Narrative from "Police Headquarters Approval" to "Worldwide Access"
On New Year's Day 1979, Taiwan issued its first tourist passport. This was more than the release of a piece of paper — it was a turning point from martial-law isolation to citizen diplomacy, documenting how Taiwanese people transformed from 'foreign-exchange-wasting' sinners into world travelers.
- Standard article
Taiwan's Future Resolution: Two Characters, "Currently," Held Up for Twenty-Seven Years
In 1999, Lin I-hsiung added the two characters "currently" before "Republic of China," which displeased the Chen faction. These two characters simultaneously soothed hardliners and middle voters, opening the door for the first peaceful transfer of power in 2000. Twenty-seven years later, Taiwan's young people take it for granted that "Taiwan has always been independent," unaware that this common sense comes from a document full of ambiguity.
- Standard article
Chiang Kai-shek Memorial Hall
It is the most colossal political totem at the heart of Taipei — and the most democratic dance practice space. From authoritarian sanctuary to the storm's eye of transitional justice, this building records the most violent tremors in Taiwan's soul.
- Standard article
Social Movements During Japanese Rule in Taiwan
Hidden within the Imperial Police's surveillance documents lies a map of how Taiwanese people resisted. In the 1920s, three currents ignited simultaneously — parliamentary petitions, peasant unions, and an underground party — yet burned toward each other.
- Evolving · community
Taichung Prefectural Office: How an Administrative Building Ordered the City, and How Citizens Reclaimed It
Built in phases from 1913 to 1934, the Taichung Prefectural Office served as the permanent seat of colonial administration and later as the site of postwar municipal government. Viewed through its street corner, arcades, annexes, and restoration site, it is not merely a neoclassical monument, but a public building that layers power, engineering, labor, and civic memory onto a single address.
- Evolving · community
The Zhongli Incident: How a Tampered Ballot Ignited the Path to Local Democracy
On November 19, 1977, Hsu Hsin-liang contested the Taoyuan County Magistrate election against the KMT nominee. Starting from a disputed ballot at Zhongli Elementary School, crowds surrounded the police substation. This night spiraled out of control, later changing how ballots are witnessed and leaving behind archives and deaths still awaiting rectification. The article traces the origins of authoritarian order’s loss of persuasiveness through campaign songs, local factions, and the spatial dynamics of polling stations.
- Standard article
Psychological Warfare: From Kinmen's Broadcasting Walls to the Paradigm Shift of AI Cognitive Operations
From the 1960s' Deng Lijun appeals and 'surrender food' dropped by balloons on Kinmen to the 2026 digital era's information penetration and AI cognitive manipulation, cross-strait psychological warfare has evolved from physical material incentives to digital semantic offense and defense. This article thoroughly梳理s the historical context of Taiwan's psychological warfare against China, specific material lists, and contrasts the challenges of the current AI industrialization stage.
- Standard article
Sound Has No Address: How Taiwan’s Radio Evolved from a State Megaphone to a Local Public Space
Tracing the receiver’s journey from the 1925 experimental broadcasts and colonial broadcasting bureaus to the post-war "Voice of Taiwan," martial-law private stations, and underground radio, this article follows how the radio transmitted not only government decrees and songs, but also the local experiences that were difficult to silence.
- Evolving · community
The Taiwan Minpao: How One Newspaper Taught an Island to Speak for Itself
From its Tokyo launch, vernacular Chinese, island-wide circulation, and Governor-General censorship, understand how the Taiwan Minpao built readership, organized news production, and placed political reform, cultural enlightenment, and everyday social issues on the same page under colonial constraints.
- Evolving · community
Agricultural Cooperatives Do More Than Sell Fertilizer: How Taiwan's Rural Public Organizations Evolved from Colonial Institutions to Credit Department Reforms
Tracing the evolution of agricultural cooperatives from the 1900 Sanxia Cooperative, the 1943 Agricultural Associations, the post-war merger and division of cooperatives, to the credit departments and the 2003 Agricultural Finance Act, this article explores how cooperatives serve as a public interface for agricultural technology, local finance, and rural power. It also examines how cooperative archives, membership qualifications, local elites, and credit department reforms have collectively shaped the institutional memory of Taiwan's rural areas.
- Evolving · community
Orchid Island’s Nuclear Waste: Promised Removal by 2002, Left with Forty Years of Yellow Barrels
In 1982, low-level radioactive waste was sent to the home of the Tao people; in 1998, the community demanded its removal in the name of "exorcising evil spirits," and Taipower had also promised to move it out by the end of 2002. Forty years later, what remains on Orchid Island is not just a storage facility, but an unfinished negotiation concerning safety, consent, and who gets to decide the fate of their homeland.
Curatorial Reading
Taiwan has experienced the world's most frequent regime changes. Over four centuries, eight different powers have ruled this island: the Dutch East India Company, Spanish Empire, Zheng Dynasty, Qing Empire, Japanese Empire, and Republic of China. On average, the ruling power changes every fifty years—an extremely rare phenomenon in world history. Even rarer is that each regime change brought completely different languages, legal systems, religions, education systems, and even time zones (changed three times). Taiwanese people were forced to learn new identities and adapt to new ruling logics repeatedly.
This "professional experience of being ruled" cultivated a unique Taiwanese resilience: the ability to deeply adapt while maintaining distance, never fully assimilating nor completely resisting. Both the Japanese assimilation policies and the KMT's Sinicization education attempted to reshape Taiwanese souls, yet Taiwanese always preserved part of themselves in the cracks. This survival wisdom of navigating between different rulers may be the key to Taiwan's peaceful transition—because Taiwanese people are so accustomed to regime changes that they never regard any regime as eternal.
Even more remarkable is Taiwan's historical density. From the Austronesian maritime civilization established 6,000 years ago, to the first modern regime established by the Dutch in 1624, to today's democratic Taiwan, this island carries an exceptionally dense concentration of historical events. In Europe, the Roman Empire ruled for a thousand years; in China, dynasties averaged two hundred years. But in Taiwan, each ruling regime averaged only fifty years, meaning historical change occurred four times faster than elsewhere in the world.
If history is humanity's collective memory, then Taiwan is one of the richest repositories of human memory. Here, you can see Qing dynasty gates, Japanese shrines, Chinese paifang, and American McDonald's on the same street. Taiwanese DNA carries Austronesian oceanic genes, Han agricultural wisdom, Japanese modernization experience, and American democratic values. This isn't a cultural potpourri, but a concentrated essence of human civilization.
Ancient Roots and Colonial First Contact
Six thousand years ago, when humans elsewhere were still learning agriculture, Taiwan was already the cradle of Austronesian civilization. These brave oceanic peoples set forth from Taiwan in outrigger canoes to conquer the entire Pacific, establishing the most geographically dispersed language family empire from Easter Island to Madagascar. Taiwan was not the world's periphery, but the launching point of humanity's greatest maritime adventure. However, when European powers of the Age of Exploration arrived, Taiwan's indigenous peoples faced their first civilizational shock. Dutch, Spanish, and Ming loyalist forces competed here, each trying to redefine this island according to their own logic. This was Taiwan's first lesson in "multi-rule adaptation."
prehistoric-era-and-indigenous-peoples | History of Taiwan's Indigenous Peoples and Name Recognition Movement | Dutch-Spanish-Ming Loyalist Period | Qing Period
Imperial Ambitions and Modernization Experiments
In 1895, the Treaty of Shimonoseki transformed Taiwan from Qing's "outer territory" into the Japanese Empire's "model colony." The following fifty years marked Taiwan's most contradictory golden age. The Japanese conducted Asia's largest-scale modernization experiment in Taiwan: building the island-spanning railway, establishing modern healthcare systems, creating the Imperial University, and implementing compulsory education. When Alishan's cypress logs rolled down the mountain, they carried not just timber, but the dreams of an agricultural society's transformation into an industrial one. The price was cultural suppression and war mobilization. The Kominka movement attempted to transform Taiwanese into Japanese, yet paradoxically birthed modern Taiwanese consciousness. This history teaches us that modernization and colonialism can coexist, but modernized people won't remain silent forever.
Japanese Colonial Period | taiwan-railway-history
Authoritarian Curtains and Traumatic Memories
On February 27, 1947, a gunshot on Taipei's streets opened Taiwan's darkest postwar chapter. The February 28 Incident was the first direct confrontation between Taiwanese and the KMT government, marking the beginning of Taiwan's modern political trauma. The following thirty-eight years of martial law saw Taiwan endure political repression under the glow of economic miracle. White Terror gunshots echoed on Green Island, military dependents' villages nursed homesickness during Lunar New Year, yet democratic seeds quietly sprouted in the most unlikely places. Authoritarian rule's contradiction lies in needing to cultivate modern citizens to support a modern state, yet modern citizens inevitably question authoritarian legitimacy. Taiwan's democratic transition wasn't a gift from heaven, but an inevitable result growing in authoritarian cracks.
february-28-incident-and-white-terror-taiwan-authoritarian-rule-trauma-and-memory | White Terror in Taiwan | Martial Law Period | KMT Retreat to Taiwan and Postwar Reconstruction | Military Dependents' Village History
Quiet Revolution and Political Breakthrough
On September 28, 1986, the Democratic Progressive Party was founded at the Grand Hotel Taipei—the first organization to openly challenge KMT one-party rule during martial law. From that moment, Taiwan's politics entered an irreversible democratization process. Lifting of martial law in 1987, direct presidential elections in 1996, and party alternation in 2000—Taiwan completed in fourteen years what might take other countries decades. More importantly, this revolution was so quiet that many forgot how incredible it once seemed. The night Chiang Ching-kuo announced he wouldn't seek re-election, there were no military mutinies, political assassinations, or even large demonstrations. Taiwanese seemed to already know democracy would come, patiently waiting for it to happen naturally. Where did this political maturity come from? Perhaps precisely because Taiwanese had witnessed too many regime changes to take any political promises too seriously.
democratization | Taiwan Democracy Movement | taiwan-elections-and-party-politics
Economic Leap and Geopolitical Games
Postwar Taiwan's greatest mystery isn't political transition, but economic miracle. How did a small island lacking natural resources, densely populated, and politically turbulent leap from agricultural society to industrial powerhouse within thirty years? The answer lies in Taiwanese oceanic genes. From being a 17th-century international trade hub to developing a 20th-century export-oriented economy, Taiwanese inherently knew how to do business with the world. Even during the most isolated martial law years, Taiwan's economic tentacles extended to every corner of the globe. Yet economic achievements cannot escape geopolitical realities. Taiwan Strait crises, cross-strait division, and international isolation are structural challenges Taiwan must face. Taiwan's history teaches us that small nations' survival depends not on resisting great powers, but on creating their own irreplaceability.
economic-miracle | taiwan-maritime-trade-history | taiwan-strait-crises-and-cross-strait-relations
Source: Wikimedia Commons | CC BY-SA 3.0 | Photo: Andreas Krebs
Further Reading
Trauma and Reconciliation
february-28-incident-and-white-terror-taiwan-authoritarian-rule-trauma-and-memory — In-depth exploration of political persecution during the authoritarian period and transitional justice
Cross-Era Topics
A complete Taiwan historical narrative requires understanding how different eras influenced contemporary Taiwan. Each historical period left indelible cultural genes that constitute today's complex and rich civilizational foundation of Taiwan.
History is not merely a record of the past, but the foundation for understanding the present and imagining the future. Taiwan's four centuries of regime changes and civilizational collisions serve as precious teaching material for all humanity about resilience, adaptation, and innovation.