In the mid-15th century, seafarers from European nations traveled the oceans to search out new trade routes to East Asia, thereby launching the Age of Discovery (a.k.a. the Age of Exploration).

Ships set off alone or in groups for the Maluku Islands, known as the Spice Islands. When they ventured beyond these lands, if they wanted to access Chinese coastal ports or trade with Japan, they had to pass by Taiwan.

First appearance as “Formosa”

Abel Wang states that Portuguese ships began appearing along the Chinese coast as early as 1513. In 1553 the Portu­guese established an onshore trading post at Macao, and later their ships passed through the Taiwan Strait and reached Japan. It was inevitable that their crews would see the island of Taiwan along the way, and sailors looking at the thickly forested island from the sea admiringly named it Ilha Formosa (“Beauti­ful Isle”) in their logbooks.

In 1554 Lopo Homem, cartographer to the king of Portugal, created the Planisfério Nautica, a nautical world map on which an island in an archipelago extending southward from Japan, close to the Tropic of Cancer, was labeled “I. Fremosa.” Ships’ logs were transcribed by engravers for printing, and four years after this map appeared Lopo Homem’s son Diogo Homem changed the spelling to “Fermosa” in the Queen Mary Atlas. From this the late Tsao Yung-ho (1920‡2014), a renowned scholar of Taiwanese history, inferred that “Fremosa” was a mis­spelling of “Fermosa” (equivalent to “Formosa”), and opined that this was the first time Taiwan had appeared on a world map.

Abel Wang has researched Taiwan’s place in history through old maps, and has produced a book on the subject so that readers can get to know these documents from all over the world. (photo by Lin Min-hsuan)

Where is Taiwan?

Abel Wang, who has worked as an editor for many years, says that in international copyright negotiations Taiwan is often mistaken for Thailand. He couldn’t help but think: “In the eyes of the world, where after all is Taiwan?” Consequently he began searching for Taiwan in old maps in the online databases of major libraries and museums around the world.

Even when Taiwan is not clearly labeled by name, Wang can still figure out its location from clues in old books. For example, on the world’s oldest terrest­rial globe, the “Erd­apfel,” held by the Germanisches National­museum in Nuremberg, Germany, there are many islands depicted between the eastern edge of the Indochina Peninsula and the western edge of Japan. “In terms of relative position, the Tropic of Cancer skirts the southern coast of China, and as it extends eastward, after passing near Quanzhou—which used to be called Citong—it runs between two islands, one red and one green. These are probably Taiwan, which was often mistakenly depicted as consisting of two islands, one to the north and one to the south,” writes Wang in his book.

The Charta Rogeriana, a map of the world made by Muslim scholars at the behest of King Roger II of Sicily, was completed in 1154. At odds with the traditions of placing north or east at the top of the map, it has the southern part of the world above the northern part, and it abandons the previous belief that the Indian Ocean was a closed sea. To the east of the Indochina Peninsula, located in the upper left-hand part of the map, many unnamed islands are shown, and Wang believes that one of them may be Taiwan.

Taiwan appears under the name “Fermosa” for the first time on a world map, on the map of Asia contained in the 1558 Queen Mary Atlas made by Diogo Homem.

Bewildering dual islands

Before the Dutch occupied Southern Taiwan in the 17th century, Taiwan was mostly portrayed on world maps as two islands, or even three. Wang explains that few sailors had actually come ashore and explored Taiwan. “Four or five centuries ago the mountain forests had not been cut down and the mouths of major rivers like the Zhuoshui and the Dajia were not affected by silta­tion, so their estuaries were very broad and when seen from the sea they appeared to be stretches of ocean water between islands.” This gave rise to the misconception that Taiwan consisted of more than one island.

In Chinese documents and drawings of the time, Okinawa, though smaller than Taiwan, was dubbed “Da Liuqiu” (“Greater Liuqiu”) while Taiwan was called “Xiao Liuqiu” (“Lesser Liuqiu”). This was because the Ryukyu Kingdom, based on Okinawa, was a tributary state of the Ming Dynasty, while Taiwan was considered to be on the outer fringes of civilization. (“Ryukyu” is the Japan­ese pronunciation of “Liuqiu.”) The fact that the larger island was called “lesser” while the smaller one was called “greater” caused confusion among foreign cartographers who consulted those docu­ments. For example, on the map of the East Indies and nearby islands in the atlas Theatrum Orbis Terrarum, published in 1570, north of the Tropic of Cancer there are a pair of islands labeled “Lequio minor,” an archipelago labeled “Formosa,” and, close by Japan, “Lequio maior.” After combing through historical documents, Wang surmises that the place called “Formosa” on this map is prob­ably Okinawa, while the orange pair of islands near the Tropic of Cancer is actually Taiwan.

On the oldest maps, Taiwan is mistakenly depicted as two or even three islands, and is not given a consistent name. For example, Abel Wang believes that the two islands to the north of the Tropic of Cancer that are colored orange and labeled “Lequio minor” on this map of the East Indies and nearby islands, contained in the atlas Theatrum Orbis Terrarum, are in fact Taiwan.

A complete island emerges

On a map called India quae Orientalis dicitur, et insulae adiacentes (The East Indies and Adjacent Islands), made in 1635 by the Dutch East India Company, Taiwan appears as a single large island straddling the Tropic of Cancer, and the shape is not so far off its true outline. The island is labeled “I. Formosa,” and the map also includes the Penghu Islands (the Pescadores), Xiaoliuqiu (off the southeast coast of today’s Pingtung County), Lüdao (Green Island), Lanyu (Orchid Island), and Guishan Island (Turtle Mountain Island). “This was probably the first time that the four smaller islands aside from the Penghus were marked on a large-format Western map,” says Wang.

This map depicts the most vibrant areas for inter­national trade at the time, including India, Japan, and the Spice Islands. Of the many criss-crossing navigation routes marked on the map, quite a few pass by Taiwan.

Studies of Austronesian languages, plants, and artifacts made from seashells demonstrate the links between Taiwan and the Austronesian peoples of the world. (photo by Lin Min-hsuan)

The unique island of Taiwan

In the 19th century, maps had not only political, economic, and military uses, but were also made for scholarly purposes. One example is the Physikalischer Atlas, published in 1839 by the German geographer Heinrich Berghaus.

On one of the maps in the atlas, a map of major agricultural crops, Taiwan is considered to be a rice-­producing area. On a map of the distribution of ethnic groups, Taiwan is included in the area inhabited by the “brown” or “Malay” race. In his book Wang points out that in those days Malay people were considered repres­ent­ative of the “brown” race, but it would be more accurate to say that the “Proto-Malay” peoples were one of the Austro­n­esian ethnic groups.

Taiwan is the northernmost location in the dis­tribu­tion of Austronesian languages, and in recent years many studies have indicated that Taiwan is where this group of languages originated. More than 300 million people in Southeast Asia and the Pacific islands speak Austro­nesian languages, and they share much in common in terms of vocabulary and syntax. Nine of the ten major branches of the Austronesian language family are found in Taiwan, which boasts the greatest diversity of these tongues. Studies have also found that the paper mulberry tree of the Western Pacific region, which was closely integ­rated into the lives of Taiwan’s indigenous peoples, originated in Taiwan, in­directly supporting the hypo­thesis that Taiwan is the birthplace of the Austro­nesian languages.

After perusing so many old maps, has Abel Wang found Taiwan’s place in the world? He says with a laugh: “The more I see, the more I feel that Taiwan should not sell itself short. On one hand it is the northernmost extent of the Austronesian languages, and on the other Taiwan has proven very resistant to conquest. Even the power­ful Yuan Dynasty, which conquered parts of Europe, could not successfully attack Taiwan. So Taiwan is a very ­special place, and deserves to be treasured by us all.”                                                        

On this 1635 map of The East Indies and Adjacent Islands, Taiwan is labeled as “Formosa.” The depicted location and shape are quite close to reality, and the numerous navigation routes that pass close by show that Taiwan was becoming increasingly important in international trade.