A Tale of Two Citadels in Dutch Tainan:

Summer is the peak season for tourism in Tainan, and it is no accident that two structures in particular—Chikan Tower (originally Fort Provintia) and Anping Old Fort (originally Fort Zeelandia)—have become major tourist attractions. History has continuity, whether people are conscious of it or not.

Tainan’s Minquan Road, located near Chikan Tower (the site of Fort Provintia), is one of the oldest thoroughfares in Tainan. The surrounding streets preserve the layout created under Dutch rule.

From this drawing made in 1670, one can see the landscape and prosperity of Zeelandia back in the day. (courtesy of the National Museum of Taiwan History)

Starting point of Tainan’s history

1624 was a year of critical change in Taiwan.

Huang En-yu, associate professor in the Department of Architecture at National Cheng Kung University, specializes in architectural history. He opens up an old map, and as we follow his discourse, time seems to go backwards to the turbulent 17th century.

At that time, amidst the rolling sand dunes of Tai­nan’s coastline, the large enclosed bay known as the Taijiang Inland Sea had not yet become silted up. An area that is currently dry land was still a lagoon, and the inland sea was sufficiently broad and deep to ­permit navigation. Ships could sail from Dayuan (a sandy island in the inland sea, today part of Anping District) to the Chikan area (now Tainan’s West Central District).

The Dutch built two forts, one on the western side of the Taijiang Inland Sea and another on the eastern side. The former was Fort Zeelandia on Dayuan, where a settlement was also constructed to the east of the fort. Later, at Chikan, an area to the east of the inland sea, now part of downtown Tainan, they developed a settlement named Provintia, and then built Fort Provintia to the north of it.

Although the terrain around these two forts has changed greatly with the passage of time, by overlaying old maps onto modern maps of these areas, Huang En-yu has discovered that the layout of the streets around the forts has retained the pattern of those far-off days.

For example, in the area around Chikan Tower, today’s streets including Minquan Road, Yongfu Road, and Zhongyi Road follow the same routes as the streets laid out by the Dutch back in the day, and the width of the modern streets in what was then Provintia City remains the same as it was in the old days: 300 “Rijnlandse voet” (feet, as defined in Rijnland—the Dutch Rhineland), with each foot equaling about 31.4 centimeters. Thus the old street layout lives on in today’s streets.

Minquan Road, one of the oldest streets in Taiwan, is home to the “Big Well,” Tainan’s most famous old water well. Scholars suggest that this place can be seen as the starting point of Tainan history.

As for Anping, because there has not been large-scale development of this area over the years, both within Anping Old Fort and on old streets such as Zhongxing Street, Xiaozhong Street, and Yanping Street, one can still see 17th-century brickwork with the bricks laid in a “Dutch cross bond” pattern.

Huang En-yu is a scholar who focuses on architectural history.

In the walls of Fort Zeelandia one can still see anchor plates that were installed by the Dutch to reinforce the structure.

In Anping District, examples of “Dutch cross bond” brickwork are still visible in foundations built in the era of Dutch rule.

The forts compared

Fort Zeelandia (Anping Old Fort)

Location: Anping District, Tainan
Start of construction: 1624
Purpose: Dutch maritime trading post
Residents: Residents inside the fort included officials of the Dutch East India Company and military personnel, while the adjacent settlement was populated with Dutch merchants, Han Chinese, and a small number of Japanese and Annamese (Vietnamese), making it quite international. Scholars estimate the number of residents inside the fort at about 1,000, while the settlement had at least 300 households.
Highlights: This was the first ever European-style fort on the island of Taiwan. The fort and settlement were built on a sandy island, with a height differential of some five meters between them.

Fort Provintia (Chikan Tower)

Location: West Central District, Tainan
Start of construction: 1653
Purpose: Consolidation of Dutch rule following a Han Chinese rebellion led by Guo Huaiyi.
Residents: The fort had a garrison of some 40–50 soldiers, while the settlement was mainly populated by Han Chinese.

Taiwan’s first urban plan

From maps one can clearly see that the settlements built by the Dutch were laid out in a neat checkerboard pattern, markedly different from the haphazardly winding streets of towns that grew up under the Qing ­Dynasty.

Considering that Taiwan was so sparsely populated at that time, one can’t help but wonder why the Dutch went to the trouble of carefully planning these settlements.

Huang En-yu explains that the answer starts with the fact that the Dutch hailed from the Netherlands, which means “low-lying country.” As much as 30% of its territory was below sea level, so they were well accustomed to co-existing with water.

With the rise of sea powers during the Age of Exploration, the Dutch, who had a knack for business, organized the Dutch East India Company to undertake commerce with and in the Far East. Their first base was in Batavia (today’s Jakarta in Indonesia), but in order to undertake three-way trade with Japan and China, they also sought out a trading post on the Chinese coast.

Given their self-confidence as a maritime and naval power, their need to control the maritime shipping routes used in trade, and their history of living in close proximity with water, ultimately the Dutch selected the island of “Taywan” (Dayuan) as the place to set up shop. Here they built Fort Zeelandia, the first ever European-­style bastion on the island of Taiwan. The name comes from the Dutch province of Zeeland, but itself combines the words zee, meaning “sea,” and land, meaning “land,” making it a “fort covering land and sea.” This was a very apt and expressive name given the fort’s geographic location.

Besides the construction of the fort, just as was the case with many medieval European towns, the rulers also built the adjacent settlement with tax collection in mind. They wanted to attract farmers to leave the countryside and make their livelihoods in a community, thereby enabling the rulers to raise tax revenues.

The Dutch had a merchant’s mindset of making ­every penny count, and in the Netherlands, where land was scarce, they had long since developed the concept of making the most efficient possible use of land. This gave them an orderly, systematic approach, so they built towns in a checkerboard pattern to make optimal use of the terrain. In terms of Taiwanese architectural history, “this was Taiwan’s first urban plan,” concludes Huang.

In addition to the combination of a mutually dependent fort and settlement, another first for Taiwan was the emergence of the concept of urban governance. The surviving documentary evidence from that era includes a wealth of detailed cadastral data. The Dutch also established a weigh house in the settlement for commercial transactions, as well as a law court to try civil cases. The courts used a system of lay judges, whereby the court considered the opinions of lay people when reaching a verdict, similar to today’s “citizen judges” system in Taiwan.

This Qing-Dynasty painting illustrates how the transfer of government administration from Fort Zeelandia on Dayuan to Fort Provintia at Chikan led to prosperous development.

Life in Taiwan for the Dutch

Fort Zeelandia was the administrative hub for Dutch rule in Taiwan, while Fort Provintia was tasked with monitoring and controlling Han Chinese. The two forts were similar in nature but each had its own mission.

Liu Yi-chang, a professor in the Institute of Archaeology at National Cheng Kung University (NCKU), began doing research at Fort Zeelandia in 2018, and in 2020, working with the Tainan City Government, he led a team to undertake an archaeological survey of the fort. The survey discovered many details that added a great deal of “human interest” to the understanding of history, which had previously been based on dry documentary evidence.

“The nature of archaeology is to see things below the surface of the ground,” says Liu. Because the Anping area is subject to severe land subsidence, and before the era of Japanese rule trash was buried where it was generated, below the surface one finds not only the foundations of buildings, but also a rich lode of cultural artifacts.

Unearthed artifacts include European-made items that the Dutch brought with them, such as ceramic ware, tobacco pipes, medicine jars, and beer bottles. However, they also used ceramic ware made in nearby China, Japan, and Southeast Asia.

But it should be noted that even if they used Chinese blue-and-white porcelain, which was quite common at that time, variations in its usage arose because of the dissimilar lifestyles of the different ethnic groups. For example, unlike Han Chinese, who ate rice and other foods out of bowls, and served chicken only after ­cutting it up into small pieces, the Dutch were accustomed to serving the whole chicken on one platter and using a knife and fork to carve it at the table. However, there are also records indicating that the Dutch, who were used to adapting to local conditions, also ate rice and enjoyed silver grunt fish caught off the coast.

Liu Yi-chang, who has dedicated 50 years of his life to archaeology, has discovered many precious items while digging at Zeelandia.

Artifacts found at Zeelandia include ceramics, tobacco pipes, and medicine jars from Europe, as well as blue-and-white porcelain from China and ceramic ware from Japan and Southeast Asia.

Archaeological work in the old streets of Anping District has exposed the strata from the era of Dutch rule. (courtesy of Liu Yi-chang)

Maritime vs. land-based mindset

The fate of the two forts changed dramatically with the arrival of the Han Chinese ruler Zheng Chenggong. To facilitate his administration of the island, in the latter period of his rule in Taiwan Zheng moved his administrative center to Fort Provintia and renamed the bastion the “Yamen of Chengtian Prefecture.” Right through the subsequent Qing Dynasty, Chikan Tower remained one of the many yamen (government offices) in Tainan, which was the center of government in Taiwan.

As for Zeelandia, a ban on maritime activity imposed by the Qing government put an end to the prosperity brought by trade, and the fort and settlement fell into decline, with the fort being converted to exclusively military use. In 1930, under Japanese rule, at the 300th anniversary of the fort’s completion (as indicated by an inscription over its main gate), an event was held in Tainan to commemorate three centuries of Taiwanese culture. In 1935 the fort was designated as an important historic site by the Office of the Governor-General of Taiwan, and funds were set aside to renovate it.

After World War II, in the late 1970s the Tainan City Government built an observation tower at Anping Old Fort, which today is seen as symbolic of this venue. The four sides of the observation room at top of the square tower are each in the shape of an inverted trapezoid, and the tower itself has a winding staircase inside. The tower turned this historic site into a major Tainan tourist ­attraction.

One can say that the transfer of the center of government from Fort Zeelandia to Fort Provintia mirrored the change in regime from a maritime power to a land-based power. However, this by no means signaled the disappearance of the old Taiwan, which had been integrated into international trade by the Dutch and had the maritime character of an island nation.

Liu Yi-chang mentions that the first group of Han Chinese immigrants to come to Taiwan during the Dutch era included not only farmers who were content to stay on their land, but also many members of the merchant class, who had been plying the seas of East Asia for at least a millennium, were skilled in maritime trade, and dared to take on challenges and adventures. This meant that there was also a maritime mindset embedded within the framework of land-based thinking, and this became part of the “cultural DNA” of the Taiwanese.

Why are the Taiwanese so successful in international trade? Why do we love to travel abroad? These phenomena are difficult to explain but certainly exist. The answers to these questions can be found, at least in part, in these two forts.

Chikan Tower, which bears witness to 400 years of historic change in Tainan, is today a major tourist attraction in the city.