Taiwan: A New History

A New History

Murray A. Rubinstein

• Publisher: Routledge
• Year: 2020
• ISBN:
  9781000161373
• Edition: 3
• Topic: Geschichte
• Subtopic: Chinesische Geschichte

This book explores Taiwan's development from its beginnings as a political entity to a home for a Mingloyalist regime, to its centuries as a Ch'ing prefecture and province, to its half-century as a Japanese possession, and to fifty years as the home of the Kuomintang-controlled Republic of China.

1
The Shaping of Taiwan’s Landscapes

Ronald G. Knapp

A rice field in Ilan County, Taiwan.

“TAIWAN: TOO BIG TO IGNORE” proclaimed The New York Times in early 1990. Attaching apparent hyperbole to an area only a third the size of Virginia or a little smaller than Switzerland provokes one to ask just how such a small piece of the earth 160 kilometers (96 miles) away from the mainland of Asia overcame its seemingly overwhelming physical limitations. Today Taiwan remains, as it has always been, quite small in total area, yet it has clearly traversed a development path that has strikingly altered its natural environment and given shape to cultural landscapes that resonate both an inherited Chinese character and international elements. The transformation of Taiwan’s landscapes is a compelling story that involved acknowledging and overcoming conspicuous constraints as well as seizing opportunities at critical times. In the process, “little” Taiwan indeed has become “too big” to ignore.

As background to the historical drama realized on Taiwan’s stage that is the focus of this book, this chapter examines the changing geographical dimensions of Taiwan. At the outset, the island is presented as rather raw, geometrical space, distinguished in terms of Taiwan’s absolute and relative location as well as distance and direction within a more extensive spatial framework. As it will become clear, these somewhat abstract attributes are actually nothing more than a geographical matrix that humans endow with meaning. In the process of transforming space, Taiwan has emerged as a distinctive and still-evolving place. It is this continuing dynamic shaping of selected aspects of Taiwan’s landscapes that comprises the bulk of this chapter. Examining the shaping of space into place allows one to understand better the interlinked relationships among the elements of the physical environment—landforms, climate, and natural vegetation—and the economic, social, and political dimensions of the human enterprise over time that have imparted meaning to a specific portion of the earth’s surface.

Locational Attributes

Among the festooned islands that embrace coastal East Asia, Taiwan lies closest to the mainland. Yet even with such seeming proximity, Taiwan remained obscure and relatively remote off the southeastern coast of China for most of its history. The location of a place has both absolute and relative meanings. From the perspective of Taiwan’s absolute location—its latitude and longitude—the island shares characteristics with other places in the world. Straddling the Tropic of Cancer (23½°N)—some 2,600 kilometers (1,560 miles) north of the Equator—Taiwan is at the same latitude as the Bahama islands, Burma, Mexico, and, perhaps surprisingly, the Sahara and Arabian deserts; Taiwan shares some geographical characteristics of all these disparate areas. The island’s subtropical latitudinal location has defined the basic elements of its climate, as discussed below. Taiwan’s longitude, on the other hand, plays no role relative to the island other than simply to fix it at a unique location on the earth’s surface some 120° east of the Greenwich meridian.

Clearly, it is Taiwan’s changing relative location in relation to the coastal mainland, its place astride the arc of islands that rims the western Pacific Ocean basin from the Kuriles to Indonesia, and, in recent centuries, its position straddling the sea and air lanes that crisscross this part of the world that has been essential in the island’s transformation. Once viewed as a rather remote and shadowy satellite along China’s cultural flank, Taiwan has become today a pivot within “Greater China,” an increasingly dynamic part of the global economy.

Until the early years of the seventeenth century, the island was populated by non-Han aboriginal groups as well as limited numbers of Han-Chinese migrants from the mainland. The commercial sweep of European interests—principally the Dutch but also the Spanish—into East Asia in the sixteenth century, however, served as a catalyst leading to the island’s ensuing inclusion as a cultural and economic extension of southeastern China. Relative proximity, even though across unpredictable straits, led subsequently to substantial migration from Fukien and Kuangtung, the two facing Chinese provinces. Through arduous and intensive efforts between the seventeenth and nineteenth centuries, migrant peasants and fisherfolk transformed the coastal lowlands of the island into agricultural and settlement landscapes quite similar to those on the mainland across the strait. Although Taiwan’s absolute location has not shifted, its relative location— its geographic circumstances—clearly has been subject to continual adjustment. As the twentieth century ends, Taiwan is no longer remote or isolated from either the Chinese mainland or Europe or the Americas but has become pivotal in the restructured global economy that has emerged.

The Physical Environment: Landforms, Climate, and Vegetation

Taiwan is a mountainous island with a prominent north/south longitudinally trending backbone. Two of the landform regions comprise hills and mountains that are tectonically quite active. On the east, the T’ai-tung Mountains between Hua-lien and T’ai-tung rise precipitously from the Pacific Ocean as coastal ranges with average elevations above 1,000 meters (1,100 yards, 3,300 feet). The uplifted and tilted Central Mountain Range, considered an outlier of similar mountains found across the strait in Fukien province, dominates the island with its imposing landscapes of deep gorges and soaring peaks. On its eastern flank, the Central Mountain Range rises abruptly to elevations over 4,000 meters (4,400 yards, 13,200 feet); more than forty crests exceed 3,000 meters (3,300 yards, 9,900 feet). Along its western slopes, the Central Mountain Range gives way less dramatically to mountain depressions, such as Sun Moon Lake and the intermontane alluvial basins that cradle the cities of Taipei and Taichung, as well as a wide band of hilly terrain that runs from the northeastern coast nearly to the water in the south.

Two other prominent physiographic regions encompass lowlands: the narrow T’ai-tung Rift Valley in the east and the broader coastal alluvial plain on the west. The T’ai-tung Rift Valley, squeezed like a 140-kilometer-long (84-mile) slim cigar between the T’ai-tung Mountains and the Central Mountain Range, is but 2 kilometers wide in some places and never exceeds 7 kilometers at its broadest. Isolated from the densely populated western lowlands by the Central Mountain Range, this eastern valley was a “marginal region” throughout most of the island’s history until the twentieth century, when Japanese policies brought concerted agricultural colonization to the region. Short rivers with steep gradients that pour from the mountains have produced alluvial fans composed of gravel that challenged humans as they set out to tame the region’s agricultural potential through the construction of terraces. Throughout the valley floor, farmers have collected round river-borne rocks to form stone walls that are reminiscent of those encountered in New England. Wherever one stands in the rift valley, the fringing mountains are in view.

Extending some 300 kilometers (180 miles) from Tan-shui (Tan-sui) in the north to Ping-tung in the south, the larger Western Coastal Plain is rather monotonously flat, consisting of a series of coalesced alluvial fans that splay forth from the foothills. The relatively short, seasonally rapid rivers that flow from the uplands carry with them substantial rocks that are deposited somewhat haphazardly as the streams meander sluggishly across the plain on their way westward to the Taiwan strait. Narrowest in the north and widening substantially in its southern reaches, the Western Coastal Plain is at no place broader than 50 kilometers (30 miles).

Between the Western Coastal Plain and the Central Mountain Range, as mentioned briefly above, are coastal rolling hills and several intermontane basins. These areas, together with the Western Coastal Plain, are where most of Taiwan’s population has lived, and where humans have crafted distinctive cultural landscapes as they have modified substantially the natural landscapes created by nature. The Taipei and Taichung basins are structural depressions with important rivers passing through them on the way to the sea. Draining the rimming hills surrounding the Taipei basin, the Tan-shui River also gave sailing ships entry upstream into the basin until increasing siltation blocked river passage except for very shallow draft vessels. The shallow Tatu River and its tributaries drain the Taichung basin. Both the Taipei and Taichung basins, as well as Sun Moon Lake, are embraced by foothills of the Central Mountain Range. These gently sloping foothills have provided important secondary areas for settlement.

Bisected by the Tropic of Cancer, a geographic reality that governs the intensity and pattern of solar energy reaching a place, Taiwan possesses a subtropical climate that is distinguished by both relatively high temperatures and substantial precipitation throughout the year. However, even as subtropical conditions dominate across the island, other significant factors actually function to modify local climates. The relative proximity of the massive continent of Asia, the warm Kuroshio current that moves north from the Equator, and the prominent high and rugged mountain core of the island all bear on modifying local climates from expected subtropical norms.

Most of Taiwan shares average annual temperatures that are clearly subtropical, with the result that growing seasons are long, nearly year round throughout the island. Highest temperatures all over the island are reached between June and August, when the sun’s rays are most intense and the days are longest. Winter, as it is understood in the middle latitudes, does not occur in the lowlands of Taiwan, but for six months of the year days become shorter and the sun’s rays are comparatively less intense. There is not much difference in mean annual temperature between northern and southern Taiwan, although in general one can note a change of about 1° C for each 1° of latitude. In the hot month of July, there is very little difference in temperature between north and south. On the other hand, in January or February, when southern Taiwan remains quite warm, the temperatures in northern Taiwan turn rather chilly because of the cool damp winds that blow across the Taiwan strait from the mainland. During this “winter” season, northern Taiwan becomes more like places found in middle latitude locations than a location crossed by the Tropic of Cancer. Wind velocities within powerful storms are especially great between November and February throughout the P’eng-hu islands and at exposed coastal locations in western Taiwan because of the dominance of high pressure over the Asia mainland. The seasonal steadiness as well as alternation of prevailing winds both have been important climatic variables to which early settlers on the island paid attention. Throughout eastern Taiwan between December and March, however, most places enjoy subtropical conditions because of the protection afforded by the Central Mountain Range, which acts as a formidable barrier to the winds that blow from the mainland. A further moderating influence on temperature extremes throughout coastal Taiwan is the Kuroshio ocean current, a warm northward flow of equatorial waters that divides into two streams as it passes the island. In the high mountains, as one might suspect, altitude leads to significant decreases in temperature. Here in upland areas, ice and snow appear even as the lowlands enjoy subtropical conditions.

East Asian monsoonal conditions of recurring seasonal wind flow—affecting in particular the patterns of rainfall—are governed by the alternating high and low pressure systems that form over the oceans and continent. There is a somewhat unusual pattern of alternating monsoonal seasons in northern and southern Taiwan, with dry and rainy periods occurring at opposite times during the year. Throughout southern Taiwan, the rainy season lasts from April to September, while in the north the rains come between October and March. Each of these rainy periods is followed by relative drought. In general, rainfall is greater in the south than in the north, and there are differences in the type of rainfall as well. Falling during the cooler months, rain in northern Taiwan is steady and not particularly intense, brought by the winds that flow from the Siberian High across the relatively warm East China Sea. The areas around Keelung and Hualien in northeastern Taiwan, for example, experience abundant cloudy days between November and March, when the Siberian outflow leads to day after day of depressing drizzle. In southern Taiwan, by contrast, the southwestern monsoonal winds carry with them abundant moisture that is released from thunderstorm downpours during the hot summers between June and September. Rainy days during the year, moreover, are more than 50 percent greater in eastern Taiwan than they are on the Western Coastal Plain. Along the Western Coastal Plain from Taipei in the north to Kao-hsiung in the south, there is a pronounced “winter” drought caused by the moisture-deficient outflow of air from the cold and dry high pressure system that dominates in East Asia at that time of year. In general, rainfall throughout Taiwan is considered sufficient for most domesticated crops. Clouds that pile up against the mountain slopes contribute to high humidity at ground level and reduce the appearance of the sun in these areas. Relative humidities all over the island generally are high and range from 75 to 80 percent year round.

Taiwan, like other coastal locations that front on the Pacific Ocean, experiences typhoons, or intense tropical cyclones, that periodically bring in their wake abundant rain as well as destructive winds. The two to three typhoons that strike coastal Taiwan every year always enhance annual rainfall. Sometimes they are also a very destructive natural force, rivaling earthquakes in terms of the catastrophic winds and short-term flooding that directly affect human life. Damage to double-cropped rice has been particularly significant over time, far exceeding the deleterious impact of either drought or disease. Eastern Taiwan receives the brunt of Pacific typhoons between May and O...