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Map of the island of Formosa and coastal China made by the Frenchman J.N. Bellin (1760).

Thanks to archaeologists and the sites and artifacts they unearthed, it has been proven that the earliest inhabitants of Taiwan – a land at least fifteen million years old – can be traced back to thirty-seven thousand years ago. On Taiwan’s east coast, the Changbin Culture site in Taitung County silently tells of stone-age men using chipped stone tools to hunt, whereas the five main sites of the Peinan Culture present the social behaviors and lifestyle of agricultural settlements that engaged in farming, pottery production, and trade.

In its long prehistoric period, Taiwan had little contact with the inhabitants of other lands that existed beyond the seas and oceans surrounding the island, and seemed to exist in isolation. Humans, far outnumbered by mountains, trees, and animals, lived simple lives in lush forests and fields, accumulating life’s skills and wisdom as they faced nature’s tests, weathering frequent typhoons and earthquakes and the shifting of the four seasons.

During that time, Taiwan was home to indigenous peoples of the Austronesian language family who varied in their language, social organization, and material culture. Since the nineteenth century, ethnologists have held that Taiwan’s indigenous peoples, aided by ocean currents and seasonal winds, arrived during different periods and through different routes from places south of it, such as the Philippines and Indonesia. For more than a decade now, however, more and more anthropologists have come to believe that Taiwan was very likely the original homeland of the peoples in neighboring regions to its south.

After the mid-sixteenth century, Western European maritime powers arrived in succession in the East Asian seas. Following Spain’s occupation of Manila, the East China Sea and South China Sea quickly became a paradise for adventurers who were half-trader, half-buccaneer. Taiwan also became a playing field where Western Europeans, Chinese, and Japanese competed for profit. In 1624, the Dutch joined forces with the East India Company to occupy Taiwan, using Tainan as a base for trade with China, and actively developed tropical agriculture that centered on sugar cane and rice; this was the first “semi-regime” to emerge on the island of Taiwan. In 1662, the Ming dynasty (1386–1644) loyalist Cheng Cheng-kung retreated to Taiwan after the resistance against the newly established Ching dynasty (1644–1911) on the mainland had been thwarted. With his military power, he established a Chinese-style regime on Taiwan. Two decades later, the powerful Ching Empire crossed the sea and wiped out the regime of the Cheng family, annexing Taiwan.

The Ching Empire was passive in attitude and weak in their rule over Taiwan, but the inhabitants of China’s coastal area, driven by the need for livelihood, braved the wind and waves of the Taiwan Strait and the government ban, arriving in this new land of opportunity in endless succession. With this great wave of immigration, people brought the technology and culture of their homeland to Taiwan, gradually settling the plains, forming settlements consisting mainly of ethnic Han Chinese people from China’s southern Fukien province.

Beginning in the mid-nineteenth century, Western colonial powers again arrived in the Far East. In 1860, northern and southern Taiwan each boasted a major trading port, and missionaries came to spread their faith. International relations, which had been severed for some 150 years since the early eighteenth century, were reopened; the production of tea and camphor became emerging industries, contributing to the rapid development of Taiwan’s northwestern mountains and hills. In 1884, French forces engaged in a landing battle on Taiwan’s northern coast, blockading Taiwan’s ports with their fleet. A decade later, Japan, undertaking massive military expansion in the footsteps of European empires, defeated the Ching Empire with their modern weapons. Taiwan was made the scapegoat and ceded to Japan as a colony.

After forcefully cracking down on one after another armed uprisings by the Taiwanese people, the Japanese launched massive transportation building projects for railroads, highways, and harbors; improved public environmental health; established modern Western healthcare and education systems; and put in place the infrastructures necessary for a modern nation, such as administrative institutions and legal systems, contributing to Taiwan’s modernization. At the dawn of the twentieth century, there emerged in Taiwan many small cities and towns with modern aspects, as well as the first generation of intellectuals in the island’s history. This led to the birth of public opinion groups and publications concerned with modern democratic thought and which carried out a difficult nonviolent resistance against the Japanese government.

Half a century later, in 1945, Taiwan, freed from colonial rule following Japan’s defeat in World War II, was taken over by the Kuomintang (KMT, Chinese Nationalist Party), which had lost the civil war against the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) on the mainland. The “Republic of China” continued to exist in Taiwan as the Generalissimo Chiang Kai-shek with 1.5 millions of soldiers and his government fled to Taiwan and made it a military base with the aim of recovering Mainland China. He declared a martial law which lasted for thirty-eight long years.

In the 1970s the “Republic of China” was forced to withdraw from the United Nations: in a few short years, most nations in the world had shifted their recognition to the People’s Republic of China and severed diplomatic ties with Taiwan, driving the island into diplomatic isolation.

Nonetheless, with resilience and resourcefulness, Taiwan broke through with its vibrant manufacturing industry and export-oriented economy. International trade has enabled Taiwan to touch all corners of the world; from the developed countries in Europe and the United States, to the developing continent of Africa, Taiwan’s entrepreneurs and trading pioneers have left their footprints, as well as won Taiwan renown as a major producer of textiles, bicycles, and computers and peripheral products. With economic development came a heightened sense of cultural awareness, and both have led to all-around social and political democratization in Taiwan.

Since the martial law has been lifted in 1987 as well as the ban on newspaper publication in 1988, Taiwan has come to enjoy unprecedented freedom of speech. Democracy, liberty, openness and diversity have become the core values most treasured by the people of Taiwan. Through waves of popular reform movements, Taiwan has seen significant change in terms of parliamentary and local-level elections and direct presidential elections, undergoing its first transfer of power between political parties in 2000, when the Democratic Progressive Party (DPP) replaced the KMT, which had been for half a century Taiwan’s ruling party. At the turn of the millennium, Taiwan has finally entered a new phase both in political and cultural terms, forging ahead through the trials of democratic transition to become the only exemplary democracy among Chinese societies throughout the globe.

The Tainan Confucius Temple, built in 1665 during the Ming Dynasty, is Taiwan’s earliest Confucian temple. This temple was known as Taiwan’s highest institute of learning during the Qing Dynasty.

The Dutch built this fortress – known as Fort Zeelandia – in what is now Tainan City in 1624. This was the center of Dutch power and trade in Taiwan.

Pingpu aborigines (one of Taiwan’s aboriginal groups) in Liukui Li in southern Taiwan (now Liukui Township, Kaohsiung County) (1871).

Canadian Presbyterian minister George Mackay on a visit to the Chilai Plain (near Nanfangao in northeastern Taiwan) (circa 1871).

Reverend Mackay, who was also a dentist, pulls teeth of converts at the Wunuan Pingpu Church in Ilan County (circa 1871).

Performers play pipa lute and sanxian. This was then one of the main forms of entertainment in respectable society (1895–1919).

A folk opera performance, one of the most popular forms of entertainment at the time, in the outskirts of Tainan (1895–1919).

A Traditional Market in Taiwan (circa 1900).

“Pig Lord Contest” – a religious festival held at the City God Temple in Tahsi, Taoyuan County. This folk ceremony is usually held on the gods’ birthdays (1926).