30-second overview: For a long time, Taiwan's history was treated as a "record of regime change" or as the periphery of some continental empire. The "Taiwan island historiography" proposed by historian Ts'ao Yung-ho completely reversed this perspective: he argued that the subject of Taiwan's history is "Taiwan island" itself. Regimes appear one after another like actors, but the island is the stage that has always remained. This is an island that changed rulers eight times within 400 years. In the cracks between multiple regimes, its people developed world-class resilience and adaptability, transformed foreign institutions into their own nourishment, and ultimately, at a maritime point of convergence, invented an island time and democracy of their own.
In 1990, Ts'ao Yung-ho, a scholarly genius who had never attended university and who taught himself more than ten languages while working at the National Taiwan University Library, published a paper that shook the field of history: "Another Approach to the Study of Taiwan Island History." He argued that we should no longer begin from "who ruled Taiwan," but from "this land called Taiwan" itself.
What this article asks readers to find surprising is this: the most unusual feature of Taiwan's history is not that it was "ruled," but that it was able to retain a part of itself from each episode of rule, and to weave a fractured history into an organic subject.
✦ "The subject of Taiwan's history is 'Taiwan island' itself. History is the interaction among people, time, and space. Regimes are merely actors appearing one after another, while the island is the stage that has always remained." (Attributed to Ts'ao Yung-ho, 1990)
I. Taking Place as the Frame for History: Returning the Stage to the Island
Influenced by Fernand Braudel of the French Annales School, Ts'ao Yung-ho emphasized the decisive role of geographical space in history's long-term development. Under this "island historiography," Taiwan is no longer the "periphery" of the Eurasian continent, but the "center" and "crossroads" of East Asian maritime trade routes.
If Taiwan is treated as a "small island," much of its history becomes passive suffering; if Taiwan is treated as a "node in sea routes," history becomes a matter of active choice. This shift in perspective turns Taiwan history from a "history of imperial reclamation" into a "history of maritime civilization."
| Within 400 years | 8 regimes |
|---|---|
| Frequency of regime change | On average, institutional rupture and reconstruction once every 50 years |
📝 Curator's note
Ts'ao Yung-ho's greatness lies in how, through his study of seventeenth-century Dutch and Spanish sources, he rescued Taiwan history from the shadow of continental historiography and returned it to the island itself.
Related reading: Taiwan's Maritime Trade History, Prehistoric Era and Indigenous Peoples
II. The Maritime Genes of the Austronesians: Islandness as Worldliness
The starting point of Taiwan history long predates 1624. Around six thousand years ago, Taiwan became the cradle of Austronesian civilization. These courageous maritime peoples set out from Taiwan, crossed the Pacific and Indian Oceans in canoes, and established the most widely dispersed language-family empire on Earth (Britannica).
This proves that Taiwan's "maritime character" was not externally imposed, but innate. When we speak of island historiography, we are speaking of a civilizational technology of "making the island home," one fundamentally different from the agricultural logic of continental civilization. Islandness does not mean isolation; on the contrary, it means infinite possibilities for reaching the world.
Related reading: History of Taiwan's Indigenous Peoples and the Name Rectification Movement
III. The First Collision of Empires: The Kingdom of Middag and Global Trade
In the early seventeenth century, the Dutch (1624) and Spanish (1626) successively established footholds in Taiwan. Traditional narratives often emphasize the colonizers' "discovery," but island historiography directs your attention toward the local polity that already existed at the time: the Kingdom of Middag.
This was a cross-ethnic kingdom composed of Indigenous peoples, and it endured in central Taiwan for two centuries. It proves that before the large-scale entry of European and Han Chinese regimes, Taiwan already possessed the capacity to evolve autonomous forms of rule. The Dutch did not "discover" Taiwan; they merely joined a vast East Asian theater already interwoven by Japanese, Han Chinese maritime merchants, and local Indigenous peoples.
💡 Did you know?
In the seventeenth century, Taiwanese deerskin was an essential material for Japanese samurai armor. The anonymous deerskin traders of the time were the real figures who drew Taiwan into the tide of the global economy, directly linking the island of Taiwan with Kyoto's military equipment.
Related reading: Dutch, Spanish, and Koxinga Era
IV. The Frontier of Migration: Han Chinese Immigrants and Institutional Transplantation
In 1662, Koxinga expelled the Dutch; in 1683, Qing forces took control. During this period, Taiwan became a "frontier of migration and cultivation." Island historiography emphasizes that this process of Han-ization was not simply cultural expansion, but a survival choice on a geographical frontier.
People arrived on the island with agricultural knowledge and lineage organizations, but in order to survive in a frequently changing environment, they learned a more flexible and more pragmatic social contract than that of the continental motherland. Taiwan's "Han Chinese society" carried, from the beginning, a certain gene of instability and risk-taking, visible in the frequent uprisings of the Qing period, as in the saying "a minor rebellion every three years, a major disturbance every five."
Related reading: Qing Dynasty Rule, Taiwan Economic Miracle: From Agriculture to Asian Tiger
V. 1895: The Double-Edged Blade of Colonial Modernity
After the Treaty of Shimonoseki in 1895, Japan carried out the largest modernization experiment in Asia in Taiwan. The construction of railways, electricity, education, and medical systems did not arise from goodwill, but from the demands of administrative efficiency. Yet these transplanted institutions ultimately became an indelible foundation of Taiwanese society.
Island historiography does not deny colonial oppression, but it does acknowledge this: a large part of Taiwan's modernity was built amid such contradictory ruptures. This was a form of "imposed modernization," yet the people of the island internalized it as their own strength.
⚠️ Contested view
Colonial modernity is the most difficult part of Taiwan history to handle. How can we remember both the pain of oppression and the progress brought by institutions? This is precisely the tension that island historiography attempts to weave together: we accepted the institutions, but we refused assimilation.
Related reading: Japanese Colonial Era, Taiwan Railway History
VI. The Strata of Authoritarianism and Memory
In 1945, with the end of World War II, Taiwan once again faced a transfer of regime. The 228 Incident of 1947 and the subsequent 38 years of martial law constitute the deepest trauma in Taiwan's history. This was not merely a political event, but a "large-scale rupture" in the island's memory.
From the perspective of island historiography, however, this period was also the moment when the "strata of memory" accumulated most heavily. Military dependents' villages, Green Island Prison, classrooms where local languages were forbidden, silent living rooms: these seemingly fractured memories erupted after the lifting of martial law in 1987 into nourishment for Taiwan's multiculturalism. Island historiography views this history as a kind of "compressed eruption," the final crucible of Taiwan's subjective identity.
Related reading: 228 Incident, Martial Law Era, Taiwan White Terror, Kaohsiung Incident: the night that changed Taiwan's fate
VII. The Four Core Claims of Island Historiography
Ts'ao Yung-ho's theory provides four pillars for looking history in the eye:
Taking Place as the Frame for History (Stage-Centric History):
Taiwan island is treated as the stage that has always existed. Regimes are only actors that come and go; the continuity of island life is the true subject.Maritime Hub and Global Context (Maritime Hub & Global Context):
Taiwan is not the end of a continent, but the center of the ocean. Taiwan history must be examined within the context of "world history."Multi-ethnic Subjectivity (Multi-ethnic Subjectivity):
It rejects "Han Chinese centrism" and recognizes all groups that have lived here as subjects of Taiwan history."Professionalism in Being Ruled" and Resilient Evolution (Resilience of the Ruled):
Frequent regime change cultivated extraordinary adaptability and the ability to survive in the cracks. This is the most invisible cornerstone of Taiwan's democratic transition.
📊 Comparison of historiographical shifts
Dimension Continental Historiography Taiwan Island Historiography Geographical role Periphery, final puzzle piece Hub, first cornerstone Narrative center Regime change, legitimacy Island subject, continuity of life Historical driving force Land reclamation, agricultural expansion Maritime trade, cultural circulation Basis of identity Bloodline, motherland order Land, institutional adaptability
VIII. Islandness in the Twenty-first Century: From Silicon Island to Coordinates in the World
Contemporary Taiwan, within the context of "island historiography," is undergoing its fourth critical turning point. We are no longer merely a "safe harbor" or "relay station," but the core of the global digital supply chain.
The idea of the Silicon Shield is, in essence, the digitization of the maritime trade hub. Taiwan's semiconductor industry is an extension of island subjectivity: we use globally circulating capital and technology to create a form of "hardware sovereignty" that the entire world cannot ignore. Island historiography reminds us that this is not a miracle that appeared out of nowhere, but the highest-level adaptive technology that the island has honed through 400 years of survival in the cracks.
IX. Democracy as Technology: From "Professionalism in Being Ruled" to "Governing Ourselves"
In 1996, Taiwan held its first direct presidential election. This is often called a "democratic miracle," but under island historiography, it is in fact the "maturation of a technology."
Eight regimes in 400 years taught Taiwanese people not to regard any ruler as eternal. This "professionalism in being ruled" cultivated an exceptionally strong political resilience: we learned how to repeatedly rebuild our own lives atop the ruins of institutions. When rulers departed, the institutions and technologies they left behind were taken up by us and redefined as "democracy."
IX. Conclusion: Writing Ourselves into History
The endpoint of island historiography is subjectivity. Taiwan's history has been written many times by empires, colonizers, and dictators. But Ts'ao Yung-ho tells us that what truly determines the island's future is how the people on the island rearrange these foreign narratives and write them into their own story.
On the map of the world, Taiwan is a small island; in the density of history, it is like a piece of metal hammered again and again. Every episode of rule has left traces, but it has also forced the island to invent a new order of time. Taiwan is not an appendix of the periphery, but a human island that continually rewrites itself.
Further Reading:
- Formosa — From Psalmanazar's hoax to its recovery by the National Museum of Taiwan History: the deconstruction and reversal of four centuries of Western "discovery" narratives
- National Museum of Taiwan History — A national third-level institution opened in 2011, it turned Ts'ao Yung-ho's 1990 paper into the physical exhibition "Our Land, Our People: The Story of Taiwan," serving as the institutional instantiation of Taiwan island historiography
References
- Ts'ao Yung-ho, "Another Approach to the Study of Taiwan Island History: The Concept of 'Taiwan Island History,'" Taiwan Historical Research, no. 10, 1990.
- Chou Wan-yao, An Illustrated History of Taiwan: From Prehistory to 1945, Linking Publishing, 1997.
- Weng Chia-yin and Huang Yen, Decoding Taiwan History: 1550-1724, Yuan-Liou Publishing, 2017.
- Blussé, Leonard. Around and About Dutch Formosa: Essays in Honor of Ts'ao Yung-ho. Ts'ao Yung-ho Foundation for Culture and Education, 2003. (English)
- Taipei Times. "History of a Taiwan historian." August 10, 2003. (English)
- Taiwan.gov.tw — HISTORY
- Britannica — Taiwan
- Britannica — Austronesian languages
- Wikipedia — History of Taiwan
- Wikipedia — Martial law in Taiwan
- Wikipedia — Kingdom of Middag
- National Museum of Taiwan History (國立臺灣歷史博物館） — Exhibition Discourse