Lin Heng-tao has lived through much history and dedicated himself to the research of Taiwan's historical events. From what perspective does he view the history of Taiwan? How does this historical researcher-who often describes himself as having been "mistakenly admired" compared to academic historians-recount Taiwan's history prior to the era of Japanese rule?
When I studied at Touhoku Imperial University, Japan, what I studied was economics, but looking back now on my whole life, I have had virtually no connection with economics at all. All of my work and experience in the past has always had a deep relationship to history. Many people mistakenly admire me, saying that I am an expert on history. The fact is I'm thoroughly embarrassed by this title. But now let me play along with this fallacy and tell you the whole story of Taiwanese history from the beginning.
The first instance that Taiwan had any relations with mainland China was in the Penghu islands. For military reasons, they were claimed by China as its territory during the Yuan dynasty. At the time there were also fishing folk that came here in scattered groups to open up land, but it was during the Ming dynasty that a greater number of Han Chinese people came to Taiwan. At the time, most of the Han Chinese who settled in the north lived in Keelung (originally called "Chicken Coop") and in the Tanshui area. In the south they settled along the coast at Tungkang ("East Harbor") in Pingtung, Hsikang ("West Harbor"-now Chichin in Kaohsiung), Chihkan (Tainan), Penkang (Peikang), and Wenkang (Tungshih Rural Township in Chiayi).
At the time many indigenous people lived in Taiwan, the "Pingpu" (plains tribes) in the flatlands and the "Kaoshan" (mountain tribes) in the highlands. During that era, the first contact between Han Chinese and indigenous people was through trade. What kind of business did they do? The indigenous people took a liking to salt. The Chinese would bring salt from the mainland and exchange it for deerskin and venison. Back then, the indigenous people didn't know how to mine and didn't know how to make iron. For the Han, taking a little iron and selling it to the indigenous people was a way to make a big profit. The indigenous people in those days didn't have any monetary currency, and they could only pay for things with the hides and meat of deer. According to Western reports, Taiwan produced the most deerskin in the world during that era. This was the first stage.
Taiwan sold out by Xiamen officials?
Mainlanders began to come to Taiwan to open up land for cultivation. All of the land at that time belonged to the indigenous people. Han people wanted to plant crops, but they didn't have their share, and they encountered many difficulties. So Han people who came to Taiwan would negotiate with the indigenous people, saying, "You be the landowner, I'll be the tenant farmer, and we'll open up the land for farming together, okay?" The indigenous people had never had any idea that there was such a good landowner/tenant system, and they agreed in large numbers. In the era before formal government had ever arrived in Taiwan, Han people used this method to settle down on the indigenous people's land. The landowner/tenant system, which started in China during the Qin and Han dynasties, was moved over in this way to Taiwan. This was the second stage, when the Han Chinese opened up new land for settlement in Taiwan.
Taiwan in those days was wilderness, but the wide-open land and bountiful resources continued to attract Han Chinese from the coastal areas of Fujian and Guangdong. According to historical sources, the population of coastal Fujian and Guangdong in that era was highly concentrated, with mountainous areas outweighing habitable ones, which further intensified the attraction of Taiwan for the Han. Toward the end of the Ming dynasty, Han Chinese began moving in large numbers. Then in the fourth year of the Tianqi reign (1624), the Dutch occupied the southern part of Taiwan.
Why did the Dutch want to occupy Taiwan? During those years, Holland was the strongest country in the world, the greatest maritime power on earth, and they controlled three great oceans of the world. At the time, the world's most important trade commodity was undyed silk, and its principal point of manufacture was mainland China. The Dutch, who held the major trade of the world in their hands, wanted to open up a trading port in mainland China. Their earliest plan was to do so in Xiamen, but the government in Xiamen at the time was afraid of foreigners, and would not agree to open a trading port. So the Dutch decided to go to Taiwan, the land mass opposite Xiamen that was "unclaimed" territory. That's why the Dutch came to Taiwan. The phrase we use nowadays is that the Dutch "stole" Taiwan. I believe that is not correct. The local officials of Xiamen gave it away to the Dutch for no good reason.
The private farms of southern Taiwan
After the Dutch occupied Taiwan, they set up many store houses and businesses at Yikunshim (renamed Anping after Zheng Chenggong took the island). They used illegal measures to ship China's silk to Europe, Vietnam and Japan. With little effort, they made tremendous profits in the trade. Furthermore, the Dutch occupied a large amount of land and declared that all of Taiwan's land belonged to Holland. They implemented the "king's fields" system, in which all the land belonged to the "king." In fact, it belonged to the management of the Dutch East Indies Company. The Dutch forced Chinese people to plant sugar cane for sale in Europe. At the time, Europe did not have sugar cane, only sugar beets, which yield a very low amount of sugar. Therefore, raising sugar cane was the most profitable way of doing business.
The Dutch colonized Taiwan for 38 years. Then they were pushed out by Zheng Chenggong (Koxinga). Zheng set fire to all the sugar cane fields and replanted them with sweet potatoes. Taiwan's agricultural produce once again took a sharp turn. This was easy to understand, because before Zheng Chenggong came, Taiwan only had a population of 100,000 people. Once Zheng arrived, he brought with him many immigrants. The army alone amounted to 70,000 people. So Zheng Chenggong ordered that sweet potatoes be planted, so that the army could at least be fed before they worried about other considerations.
After Zheng Chenggong's son Zheng Jing inherited the rule of Taiwan, he did away with the system of "king's fields" and changed it into "mandarin fields." Much farm land officially became the property of the government. But what was different from the Dutch was that beside's the "mandarin fields," Zheng Jing encouraged people to open up "military camp fields." One reason was that so many soldiers and immigrants had come to Taiwan that it was simply impossible for the government to feed them all. That is why soldiers were given land to raise crops and feed themselves. This was the "military farming system." Today we can still get a deep feeling for the remains of these "military farms" among the place names in southern Taiwan.
For instance, such spots as Tsuoying ("Left Camp"), Youying ("Right Camp"), Shangying ("Upper Camp"), Chungying ("Middle Camp"), Hsiaying ("Lower Camp"), Linfengying (the camp started by General Lin Feng), Chamuying, Chienchen ("Front Town"), and Houchen ("Back Town") were all started this way. Most of these soldiers became self-employed farmers. This is the reason southern Taiwan has so many private farms of large acreage. In addition, the Qing government encouraged ordinary people to set up their own private farms here.
The mansion at Chiangchun Harbor
Taiwan came under the rule of the Qing dynasty in the 22nd year of the Kangxi reign (1684). The Qing government was very generous, maintaining the system of self-administered farming. The "mandarin fields" and private farms were kept in place as well. But the officials could also gain some benefits. Some officials incorporated farmlands as their own and collected rents. For instance, Shi Lang took away the best places in the south and called it government land. In Tainan County, there is Chiangchun ("General") Harbor. This site has Shi Lang's mansion. Place names that are still around today such as Chiangchun Harbor and Chiangchun Rural Township, are all left behind from that era.
During the early Qing dynasty, the Qing court was unwilling to let the population on Taiwan increase. Fearing that the people who lived in Taiwan would become more and more difficult to rule, they prohibited and restricted residents of the mainland from moving to Taiwan. During the Qianlong era, the prohibitions and restrictions were lifted, and people from Fujian and Guangdong entered Taiwan in swarms. The population of Taiwan immediately began to increase.
At that time, northern Taiwan was opened up by "big tenants." The settlement areas of the "big tenants" were very large, from this mountain to that mountain, boundless. So the "big tenants" gathered together their relatives and friends to collectively open up the land, distributing their land to "little tenants." Nevertheless, even though the land was divided up among "little tenants," the range of the land they settled was vast, so some people wrote letters to the mainland inviting homeless people to come settle. In this way, a three-tiered land system developed in Taiwan during the middle of the Qing dynasty, with "big tenants" and "little tenants" and below them the peasants. The structure for managing the land did not go beyond the landlord/tenant system, yet it did feature different elements. Tiny traces of this can still be seen in Taiwan's place names. For example, land opened up by "little tenants" or refugee immigrants might have such names as Tienliao ("Hut in a Field"), Shangliao ("Upper Hut") or Chungliao ("Middle Hut"). Other place names, such as Sanchangli ("Three Plows"), are derived from farm implements and are left over from the era of immigrant settlement.
In those days, because of geographical factors, northern and southern Taiwan developed distinct varieties of settlement. On the wide, flat plains of southern Taiwan, villages basically massed together. In the mountainous north, settlement was spread out among many little villages. This was also influenced by the factor of water resources. The south lacked water, so the population had to concentrate in places that had water. The topography of the north is complex, with many mountains and hills rising up, and there is plenty of water, so the villages tended to spread out.
Two-and-a-half bags of rice for one yuan
How did the "big tenants" and the "little tenants" divide the harvests? Usually the big and little tenants did not work the land themselves. Putting it in the words of today, they were just land owners. After the big tenants disbursed the land among the little tenants, the little tenants had to build huts, find farmers to actually work the fields, buy farming tools and so forth. Because of this, the little tenants came to possess about four-fifths of the harvest. The "big tenants" were only the owners of the land, and they did not concern themselves with the actual affairs of farming. Therefore, they only got one-fifth of the harvest. For instance, my ancestors of the Lin clan of Panchiao were "big tenants" who settled here during the Qianlong era. Besides possessing land, big tenants also frequently maintained soldiers to strengthen their influence. This was also one of the special features of immigrant society. In the mainland, private individuals were not allowed to possess military power, but in Taiwan the big tenants maintained private militias using the "threat of savages" as an excuse. Some even maintained from 4000 to 5000 soldiers.
During the era of Japanese rule, the Japanese administration issued government bonds to purchase the land rights of the big tenants. Because having two owners for each piece of land was not suitable for developing a modern capitalist economy, the little tenants were made the direct owners of their land, and a single-owner system was set in place. Lin Hsien-tang suggested that those big tenants, whose once vast stretches of land had been traded for government bonds, should invest in the Changhua Bank. This became the Chang Hwa Commercial Bank of today.
The land system of the Qing dynasty also had a serious problem concerning taxes. The government of that era exacted a land tax, for which the big tenants were responsible, and a poll tax, which everybody had to pay. Females only paid half as much as males, and indigenous people paid half the rate of the Han. But in that era when the household registration system was not sophisticated, evading taxes was easy. The simplest method was to hide when taxes were being collected, or say to the people from the government, "Our family has no son." That is why we say that there were a lot of "hidden farms" during the Qing era. 100 chia of land was probably recorded as being only 30 chia (a chia is slightly less than a hectare). Historically, China had many odd and sundry taxes. Starting from the Xianfeng reign (1851), Taiwan also had customs tariffs.
While we're on the subject of taxes, we might as well mention the question of currency. The currency used by Zheng Cheng-gong and his successors was very different from that used by the Qing dynasty. They used "barbarian silver," in other words the coinage left behind by the Spanish, that is Mexican pesos, and sometimes they used Dutch money. The Qing dynasty used silver coins known as yuan. One yuan equaled 1000 wen. In the Tongzhi period (1862-1875), more than 130 years ago, one yuan could buy two-and-a-half sacks of rice. At the time, the director of the Mingchih Academy in the hills of Hsinchuang received an annual salary of 300 yuan.
Taking taxes and spanking bottoms
During the period of rule by the Zheng clan, Taiwan had no stores. The Zheng administration had more than 300 boats developing trade at sea, plying back and forth between Cambodia, Siam, Malacca and Japan. They developed international trade. The Zheng clan personally possessed all kinds of goods from all over the world, and for this reason they never developed stores. In that era, the common folk bought things in markets that formed in front of temple gates, such as the Buddhist temple in Tungmen, Tainan.
Only in the Qing dynasty were stores developed in Taiwan. They were divided into two categories-wholesale and retail. In the past, stores sold the goods they manufactured themselves, and were managed by a government-commissioned association. For ease of management, the stores were all concentrated in a single area, and streets specializing in specific kinds of wares appeared, such as hat streets and shoe streets. Even today, Lukang still has a lumber street and a rice-market street. Wholesale business was managed by associations. The Taiwan Government City Wholesale Association was the most famous of the so-called "three exchanges," which handled the distribution of all kinds of goods from many different places. The northern division would do business with Tianjin and Niuzhuang (Yingkou), while the southern division would do business with Fuzhou, Xiamen, Shantou and Guangzhou.
The Tainan Trade Hall was situated in the vicinity of Hai-an Temple. To this day, Lukang has the remains of the Chuan Trade Hall. The Ting Trade Hall of Mengka (today's Wanhua) was held in Lungshan Temple, and it was an organization of considerable authority at the time. Its functions were similar to that of a small-scale city government. Besides managing the affairs of businessmen, it also handled the affairs of a municipal government, such as ferry services, night watchman duties and relief for the poor during the winter months. In the past, the imperial government did almost nothing at all. They only handled taking taxes and spanking the common people's bottoms (keeping public order), so business organizations joined together to manage city government on their own.
Since Lungshan Temple did so many things, of course it needed to have military power. At its height, it employed 2000 soldiers. On the face of it, their task was to protect Mengka, but in reality they were the local underworld strong arm, used to bully people from Zhangzhou (an area of Fujian). In that era, the immigrants from Zhangzhou and the immigrants from Quanzhou (also in Fujian) frequently came into conflict. The people of Mengka, who were Quanzhou-ites, often had conflicts with the people of Shihsanchuang in Panchiao, who were Zhangzhou-ites. The name of today's Taipei suburb Chungho was actually Changho, meaning "peace talks with the Zhangzhou-ites." The Japanese then changed the name to Chungho. We don't understand the past, so we don't change the name back to the way it was during the Qing dynasty, but continue to use the Japanese expression.
Of all the business associations of the past, the Chuan Trade Hall in Lukang had the most property. But good times never last for long. During the Xianfeng reign of the Qing dynasty, the coasts of Taiwan were opened to trade, and this coastal trade fell under the control of Western companies. The "three exchanges" of the past, run by the Chinese themselves, were wiped away.
Western companies came to Taiwan principally to sell opium and Western medicine, and then to buy a little rice and brown sugar to take back. The places with the most Western companies were Takou (literally, "Beating the Dog," the former name of Kaohsiung) and Fucheng ("Capital," now Tainan) in the south, and Tanshui, Tataocheng (now a part of West Taipei) and Keelung in the north. They purchased tea, camphor and sulfur to take back, and many large ships stopped in Keelung to restock on coal. Most of Taiwan's camphor was sold away during that period, when 95% of the world's camphor exports came from the island.
Taiwanese began planting tea during the Jiaqing reign (1796-1821), nearly 200 years ago. At the time, the quality of life among Taiwan's farming folk was very low. No one drank tea. After the Western companies came in, all the mountainous areas from Puli on north were planted with tea. Tea by that time had already become an international commodity. The price went through constant fluctuations, so during those years some people made money, and some people lost money. In this way, the stable system of agricultural production and commerce in previous times, as well as the systems of wholesale distribution and management, were all destroyed. Some people's businesses collapsed, and they were forced to flee into the mountains to take up a life of banditry. During that period, there appeared many bands of brigands. Lingyun Temple on Mt. Kuanyin in the north, Mt. Shihtou in Miaoli and other places were all the hideouts of thieves.
Always throughout history, those who made money have been few, and those who lost money have been many. When Taiwan entered the international marketplace, some people made a profit in trade, yet the average person just smoked imported opium, and suffered greatly both physically and mentally. Just like today, the middle class is always taken advantage of. I believe that when Taiwan opened up its ports, it only benefited a small number of the merchant class. What's even more serious, all of Taiwan's resources were gradually swallowed up by England. Taiwan became a half-colony, up until 1895, when with the signing of the Treaty of Shimonoseki, it became a colony of Japan.
p.95
How many young scholars have fallen in love with the vital history of Taiwan under the tutelage of Lin Heng-tao? This picture shows the old streets of Hukou in Hsinchu. (rephotographed from the Academia Sinica's Reminiscences of Mr. Lin Heng-tao)
p.97
(facing page) Some immigrant farmers from Fujian and Guangdong had to draw irrigation water manually with chain pumps. (rephotographed from 300 Years of Taiwan)
The indigenous people lived in Taiwan long before the wave of ethnic Chinese immigration, but ethnic Chinese control only extended into the mountainous regions after 1874. (rephotographed from 300 Years of Taiwan)
p.98
(upper) During the period of Dutch rule, sugar was Taiwan's major export. This picture was published in London on Nov. 5, 1859. (rephotographed from Traces of the Settlers)
(lower) During the Qing era, many ships docked in Mengka. Later, the river's water level fell, and the harbor could only accommodate small boats. (rephotographed from 300 Years of Taiwan)
p.100
In April, 1895, people all over Taiwan posted public declarations excoriating prime minister Li Hong-zhang for giving away Taiwan in the Treaty of Shimonoseki. (rephotographed from 300 Years of Taiwan)
（upper） During the period of Dutch rule, sugar was Taiwan's major export . This picture was published in London on Nov. 5, 1859. （rephotographed from Traces of the Settlers）
（lower） During the Qing era, many ships docked in Mengka. Later, the riv er's water level fell, and the harbor could only accommodate small boats. （rephotographed from 300 Years of Taiwan）
In April, 1895, people all over Taiwan posted public declarations excoriating prime minister Li Hong-zhang for giving away Taiwan in the Treaty of Shimonoseki. （rephotographed from 300 Years of Taiwan）
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