Since the Dutch occupied Taiyuan Island in Taiwan in 1624, they have claimed the right to rule Taiwan Island. After that, the Dutch colonists spent nearly two decades bloodyly suppressing the resistance of various tribes on the island of Taiwan. The information cited in this article all comes from the original information of the Dutch East India Company, including "Relanja's Diary", "Batavia Diary" and "HTIL East India Affairs Report".
At first, the territory occupied by the Dutch was only Taiyuan Island and some nearby places. In 1625, the Dutch purchased a piece of land from the Xingang Society of Taiwan's aboriginal Pingpu people for fifteen bolts of cloth, namely Chicai, located on the other side of Da Yuan Island, and built a small town called Proventia.
Near the Dutch colonial stronghold, there are four major Tufan communities, namely Xingang, Xiaolong, Mojialiuwan and Madou. The social structure of Taiwan's aboriginal people is simple and exists in the form of tribes. They do not have a unified political power and their folk customs are very simple. "Batavia Diary" describes the indigenous residents this way: "As long as they have a full meal, a find of cheesecloth and a bag of tobacco, they feel satisfied." The Dutch exchanged a mere fifteen pieces of cotton cloth for a large piece of land, which was like a fraud. But this does not mean that Tufan is a group of gentle and uncontested people. In fact, among these primitive tribes, the martial spirit is very strong. There were many battles between tribes, and men who were brave and good at fighting could easily win the respect of others and gain authority. Almost all adult men here are warriors. They live a simple life and don't like to be ruled. Generally speaking, "the person with the strongest combat power has the greatest power."
When the Dutch first arrived, they were committed to trade with the Ming Empire and Japan, and their garrison was limited, so they tried their best to avoid conflicts with the Tufan people. However, as time went by, Tufan naturally sensed a huge threat, which was quietly changing their long-standing lifestyle.
1629, fifty-two Dutch soldiers broke into Madoushe to search for so-called "Chinese pirates". On their way back, the local Tuban suddenly attacked and killed all these soldiers.
Since the Dutch occupied Taiwan, they have been domineering. Whenever their troops passed through a river, they ordered the local natives to carry them across the river on their backs. The Tufan, who were dissatisfied with the Dutch colonial rule, made careful plans. They pretended to be as obedient as usual and carried the Dutch soldiers on their backs. Others carried the muskets that the soldiers had unloaded. When they reached the middle of the river, these natives suddenly attacked and killed the defenseless Dutch. More than fifty Dutch soldiers were slaughtered and no one was left alive. Eleven of the other non-combatants traveling with Holland were killed, and only one slave and translator managed to escape.
This is the so-called "Madou Creek Incident".
Among the people who were killed, some were important figures in the East India Company, including businessmen Howman and Balleriel, and officer Panyat. In addition to the participation of the Madou people in this attack, Xiaolong Society and some other tribes were also involved. Madou has the largest number of warriors among the four major societies, with about 2,000 warriors. Xiaolong is the second largest clan, with more than 1,000 warriors.
Due to the limited military strength of the Dutch colonists, Taiwan Governor Putmans (the fourth governor, in office from 1629 to 1636) adopted the strategy of knocking on the mountain to shock the tiger. He did not directly attack the strongest Madoushe, but attacked the weaker Mojia Liuwan. The indigenous people with inferior weapons quickly realized that it was difficult to resist the Dutch colonial troops who were armed with live ammunition. Mujialiuwan and Madoushe successively asked the Dutch for peace.
At that time, the main target of the Dutch colonists was the coast of Fujian. For them, the island of Taiwan was too backward. However, in 1633, the Dutch fleet suffered an unprecedented defeat in the great battle of Liaoluo Bay with the Ming Dynasty Navy. Nine of the Netherlands' main warships were destroyed by the Ming army, four were captured, and nearly half were lost. Faced with the painful facts, Putmant realized that he could not defeat the Ming Navy with his own strength, so he turned to develop Taiwan with all his strength.
1635, Putmans was reinforced by nearly 500 soldiers from the Batavia colonial authorities, greatly increasing his strength, and began his bloody campaign to conquer Taiwan. The first stop that
conquered was Madou.
There are many Tufan tribes in Taiwan and they fight with each other. This gives the Dutch an opportunity to "use barbarians to control barbarians." A sudden infectious disease made Madou, Xiaolong, and Mujialiuwan successively become epidemic areas, and a large number of people died of the disease, including many able-bodied soldiers. This is undoubtedly good news for Putmans.
Among the four major Tufan societies around Da Yuan, the one closest to the Dutch is Xingang Society, which is also the weakest among the four major societies. In the Dutch conquest of Tufan, Xingang Society acted as a thug and contributed a lot.
1 At the end of 1635, five hundred Dutch soldiers, together with a similar number of Xingangshe natives, attacked the strongest Madoushe.
The Dutch used artillery and spears from the 17th century, while Madoushe Tufan used ancient bows, arrows and spears. The level of weapons differed by more than ten centuries and were not at the same level at all. As soon as the gunfire rang out, Madou's soldiers fell down one after another. There was no suspense in this asymmetrical battle. Putmans finally avenged the "Madou Creek Incident". Madou Club was burned down by a fire and twenty-six people were beheaded. The Madou people were forced to surrender in humiliation and hand over everything they owned to the Dutch authorities, "including all the property handed down by our ancestors and in our current Madou community and the jurisdiction of the plains, from the mountains in the east to the sea in the west and to our jurisdiction in the north and south." Not only that, they were also forced to sign an agreement with the Dutch. Once the Dutch launched a war, they had to fight side by side with them.
The Tufan tribes were not united and scattered, which gave the Dutch colonists every opportunity to defeat them.
After the Madou Society was forced to surrender by force, Putmans went south to attack the Kaliyan Society. The cause of the crusade against Tagaryan was a conflict between the society and the Xingang people, which resulted in the death of four Xingang people, one of whom was an influential local Christian. The Newport Society was an important ally of the Dutch, so Putmans sent troops to attack Targaryan. The residents of Tagaliyan community knew the power of the red hair and fled after hearing the news. The Dutch killed nine people, cut off their heads, and set fire to all the cottages.
At the beginning of 1636, Putmans targeted Xiaolong Society, which had not yet surrendered. The residents of Xiaolong County confessed seven so-called "rebels", who were probably involved in the "Madouxi Incident" or instigators against Dutch rule. The Dutch colonial authorities arrested and executed all seven of them. After Xiaolong Society followed Madou Society, it was forced to sign an agreement with the Dutch to lose all rights.
Putmans' conquest of Madou, Xiaolong and other Tufans lasted a month. The colonists boasted of their achievements - "executed all the traitors who stubbornly resisted, burned their houses, destroyed their plantations, and successfully retaliated for the massacres they had committed against us before." After this conquest, the colony under the actual control of the Dutch greatly increased, including roughly fifteen miles south and north of Da Yuan, and about a day and a half's walk to the east.
These conquered aboriginal tribes could only surrender completely to the rule of the Dutch. During the era when Putmans was in power, the Dutch showed their true colonial nature as robbers. The island of Taiwan was bloody and violent, and the social structure experienced changes unseen in thousands of years.
The numerous crimes committed by the Dutch were Xiaoliuqiu massacre the most.
The Xiaoliuqiu Massacre occurred in 1636. This incident has antecedents and can be traced back to fourteen years ago.
Xiaoliuqiu is a small island off the coast of Pingtung, Taiwan. In 1622, a ship of the Dutch East India Company, the "Golden Lion", was shipwrecked. About fifty people escaped and landed on Xiaoliuqiu Island. After the Dutch crew landed, they clashed with the Tufans and were all killed during the fighting. More than 40 local Tufans also died. The Dutch have always been worried about this matter, but because their military strength is very limited and their policy focus is on opening the Ming Empire's trade door, they have not launched retaliation against Xiaoliuqiu.
In 1633, Putmans returned from the naval battle of Liaoluo Bay with a major defeat, and led the defeated troops to attack Xiaoliuqiu Island. The local residents dispersed and fled into the mountains and forests. All the houses on the island were burned down by the invaders. Even so, Putmans still couldn't forgive his hatred.
In 1636, after successively conquering the Tufan surrounding Da Yuan, Putmans once again targeted Xiaoliuqiu Island. For the residents of Xiaoliuqiu, this was definitely a war of extermination.
In April of that year, one hundred Dutch soldiers and about 80 Tufan who surrendered to the Dutch took a boat to Xiaoliuqiu Island. After landing, they captured 20 local indigenous residents. The residents of Xiaoliuqiu Island rose up to resist. However, this was a contest between a modern armed force and a group of primitive tribes, and the strength was by no means unequal. The local indigenous residents fled into the mountains and forests, but the Dutch wanted to kill them all. After two months of clearing up, "Xiaoliuqiu Island was wiped out by us, and all residents were cleared. 554 people were transported by us, and 300 people refused to surrender and preferred to die in harsh environments such as hunger, disease, and odor." Among the 554 captured people, 191 men and women were transported to Batavia. The remaining women and children were given to the Newport people who had friendly relations with the Dutch, and the men were put in chains and worked as slaves in places such as Dayuan.
There are also a very small number of residents of Xiaoliuqiu Island who have escaped capture and are living in caves and jungles. The colonial authorities stationed thirty soldiers on the island, but three more soldiers were killed. The angry colonial authorities once again sent 30 soldiers and 300 Tufan to launch a dragnet search for the survivors on Xiaoliuqiu Island, and captured 30 people. Of the thirty island residents, only one child was lucky enough to survive, while the other twenty-nine had their heads cut off. After the massacre, Xiaoliuqiu Island was almost deserted and desolate.
After conquering the main Tufan tribes near Dajuan, the Dutch were not satisfied and wanted to expand their sphere of influence farther away. Huweilong is a large society with about 3,500 people, which is larger than Madou Society. Huweilongshe was well prepared for the Dutch invasion, and they had built simple fortifications. But faced with 300 Dutch soldiers and 1,400 Tufan warriors summoned from various tribes, they could only make symbolic resistance. Eight hundred Huweilongshe soldiers quickly dispersed in front of the fierce Dutch fire, and 22 of them were killed. In comparison, the losses on the Dutch side were minimal, with only two Dutch soldiers wounded and three Turkish soldiers dead.
In the case of insufficient troops, the Dutch defeated the Tufan tribes one by one, and then used these Tufan soldiers to attack other tribes that were unwilling to comply by wooing, intimidating, and threatening. This was a powerful means for the Netherlands to rule Taiwan. This method showed great destructive power in the war to conquer various countries. The Dutch scorned the fighting capabilities of the Huweilongshe and other indigenous tribes, saying contemptuously: "These people are the easiest people to conquer in Formosa (Taiwan). Their weapons are only bows and arrows." It can also be seen from here that in the seventeenth century, it was absolutely impossible to win a war with a huge disparity in weapons by relying on bravery alone.
Although the Huweilong people were forced to hand over their land rights to the Dutch under force, their hostility did not disappear. The residence of the Huweilong people is one of the breeding areas for wild deer, and hunting is an important source of income in the area. For the Dutch, deerskin is one of the most important trading commodities in Taiwan. They hunt a large number of wild deer every year and sell the deerskin to Japan and other places. However, the Huweilong people strongly resisted the foreign predators, causing bloody conflicts.
At the end of 1638, Taiwan Governor-General Johan Van der Burgh (the fifth governor, in office from 1636 to 1640) led 200 Dutch soldiers and 1,400 Tuban soldiers to storm into Huwei Ridge and demand the handover of the murderers and saboteurs. The people of Huweilong were unwilling to hand over the perpetrator, claiming that the murderer had escaped. Vanderbilt ignored such reluctant reasons and was determined to teach the Huweilong people a lesson by bloody means again. He ordered one hundred and fifty houses and two hundred rice barns to be burned. This atrocity aroused the resistance of some bloody men, but the resisters were all executed without exception.
In order to strengthen their control over Tufan, the colonial authorities launched two major measures: the first was to promote Christianity, and the second was to hold large gatherings of village communities in the north and south. These two major measures were intended to ease the confrontation with the Tufan and eliminate their dissatisfaction and antagonism, but this did not change the cruel and bloody nature of the Dutch colonists.
1641 The Dutch began a new round of conquest. The cause of the
incident was the murder of three Dutch people, and those involved were Huweilong Society and Xiluo Society. The governor of Taiwan, Paulus Traudenius (sixth governor, served from 1640 to 1643), could not tolerate this kind of rebellion, so he sent an army of 400 men to suppress it. At the same time, Dutch pastor Yunus summoned ten village communities with a total of 1,400 natives to come to help in the battle. The Dutch colonial army launched an attack on Xiluoshe. Although the villagers tried to block the enemy in the fields, there was a huge disparity in strength. Thirty people were killed in the battle, and the rest fled in all directions. The Dutch colonists still continued the cruel policy of "burning them all", burning 150 houses and 400 warehouses in Xiluoshe, and cutting down the fruit trees in the village. This terrible policy means that even if the escaped villagers return after the war, they still face a harsh living environment with no shelter and no food.
After destroying Xiluo Society, the colonial army once again entered Huweilong Society.
In order to severely punish this extremely disobedient village community, the Dutch colonists once again destroyed all the living space in Huweilong, burning 400 houses and 1,600 warehouses. The shocked Huweidong people had to give in again. They sent the heads of the three killed Dutchmen back to their chief ministers and signed a treaty with the colonial authorities, which included the following clauses: surrender to the Dutch governor and the East India Company; admit to committing murders against the Dutch; pursue the murderers with all their strength; and provide all personnel, supplies and other assistance to the Dutch.
After solving the Xiluo Society and the Huweilong Society, Taiwan Governor Duradi New Zealand led his army to attack Taimali without stopping. The cause of
's conquest of Taimari was the death of Weserland.
After the Dutch took over the island of Taiwan, they have been trying to find gold mines on the island. Weserling was mainly responsible for the prospecting work. In 1641, Weserling and several Dutch soldiers were searching for gold mines in eastern Taiwan. When passing through Beinan (today's Taitung), they were killed by Taimali residents. It is said that Witherland was killed after being drunk, and two Dutch soldiers were also killed. In January 1642, Duradinius assembled an armed force of 353 people to attack Taimari, including 225 Dutch soldiers.
The Taimaris lurked in the reeds of a creek and launched a surprise attack as the Dutch soldiers waded across the creek. Although this raid resulted in the death of one Dutch soldier and the injury of five others, there was a huge disparity in strength after all. Soon the Taimali attack turned into a rout, and a total of twenty-seven people were killed. After crossing the creek, the Dutch continued their march towards Taimalishe. The Taimali village community is located on a mountain. The resistance of the residents was quite tragic. In the end, their home met the same fate as other village communities that tried to resist Dutch rule. The colonists burned the houses to ashes.
However, in December 1643, the arrogant Dutch suffered a heavy blow when they attacked Boar Maoshe.
Prior to this, all the colonial wars launched by the Dutch were easily won, and they had reason to believe that this time would be no exception. The governor of Taiwan, Duradinius, sent an army of 150 men to attack Shanzhumaoshe, along with some Tufan tribes conquered by the Dutch. Shanzhumaoshe and other local residents assembled an armed force of 3,000 people and attacked the colonial army unexpectedly, resulting in the death of four Dutchmen.
After the Dutch stabilized their position, they began to attack the village communities of Tufan. Leading the charge were twenty-one Dutch soldiers and their allies, the Targaryans. With their weapons at a disadvantage, the Boarhair communes used a close-quarters combat strategy, which prevented the Dutch's weapons from taking advantage of long-range shooting. After the first battle, nine Dutchmen were shot dead, and 16 Tagayans were also killed. The logistics personnel responsible for transporting supplies were all captured by the Boarhair communes.
Because the logistics team was intercepted, the Dutch, who were short of ammunition, were unable to launch a major attack even though they approached the village community. In this crusade against the Shanzhusheshe, twenty-one Dutch soldiers died, and about fifty of their allies and support staff died. Thirty-nine Dutch soldiers were also wounded.
Although the Dutch quickly sent another 60-man armed support force, the terrain of Shanzhusheshe was very unfavorable to the attacking Dutch. The mountains here were steep and the roads were difficult to navigate. In the end, the Dutch were forced to give up and withdraw their officers. This was also the first time since the Dutch launched a colonial war in Taiwan that it ended in failure.
However, in the next 1644, the Dutch gained a lot.
In September 1644, Commander Pieter Boon led three hundred officers and soldiers to the northern part of Taiwan Island in an attempt to conquer the aboriginal tribes in this area. The northern Tufan tribes could not control their own destiny and could only relinquish power. In front of the heavily armed Dutch, thirty village communities expressed their submission. They sent people to see Boone, offered rice, animal skins, etc., and said they would go to the chicken coop to pay tribute. In addition, although there were 14 village communities that did not send representatives, they also expressed their willingness to surrender and pay tribute. Facing the powerful colonists, the weak party had no choice.
In order to ensure the smooth flow of the road between Dayuan and Danshui in the north, the Dutch colonists conquered the villages that refused to surrender along the way in 1645. A total of 126 resisters were executed, and 16 children were captured and taken to the Dutch castle as slaves. The Dutch's military deterrence finally forced the southern Boar Hair Society to submit, although they had made the Dutch pay a heavy price for their bravery.
The colonial rule of the Dutch on Taiwan Island was actually based on the fourth colonial governor of Taiwan, Putmans. Later, Vanderbilt and Duradinius continued the iron-blooded policy of their predecessors, and finally forced the indigenous people of Taiwan Island to succumb to the foreign colonial power. The simple political structure based on primitive villages for thousands of years was finally outlawed by the colonial political system. Taiwan, which has been developing slowly, has entered an express track of rapid evolution under the influence of external forces. This evolutionary process is indispensable without the tragic story of blood and tears.
