Qing Taiwan

The island of Taiwan was part of the Qing Empire from 1683 to 1895 .

In 1683, Zheng Keshuang , who ruled the remnants of lands loyal to the Ming Empire in Taiwan, surrendered to the Qing Empire. So that the island did not become a base for anti-government forces again, the new authorities did not develop it intensively, and on April 14, 1684, they incorporated it into the province of Fujian . Administratively, the island was divided into three districts: Taiwan (台湾 县), Fenshan (凤山县) and Zhulo (诸 罗 县).

In 1721, an uprising began in northern Taiwan under the leadership of Zhu Igui , who was considered a descendant of the Ming dynasty; Southerners, led by Du Junyu, supported the northerners, and the combined rebel detachments liberated the island from the power of the Qing Empire. Zhu Igui assumed the title of ruler with the motto of Yonghe rule, and restored a number of attributes of the power of the Ming dynasty. Soon, however, a feud broke out between Zhu Igui and Du Junyin, strongly fueled from the mainland. The united army broke up into two parts, which began to fight each other. Meanwhile, on the mainland in the province of Fujian, a punitive army led by Man Bao and Shi Shibiao was assembled; having landed on the island, she smashed the troops of Zhu Iguyu and Du Junyun one by one; the leaders of the uprising were captured and executed. To prevent new unrest, the Manchus significantly strengthened the local garrisons.

After the suppression of the uprising, Zhu Iguya opened up new areas of the island to settlers from the mainland, as a result of which the number of Chinese began to increase, and the aborigines gradually pushed into the inner mountainous areas of the island. For the administration of new populated areas in 1723, Changhua County was created, as well as the Commissariats of Danshui (淡水 廳) and Penghu (澎湖 廳).

In 1787, Lin Shuangwen , who was the head of the local cell of the secret " Society of Heaven and Earth, " rebelled in the northern part of Taiwan in 1787 , the rebels seized a number of administrative centers. Following this, the Society of Heaven and Earth organized an armed uprising in the south of the island under the leadership of Chuang Datyan. As a result, the entire western part of Taiwan was in the hands of the rebels; Lin Shuangwen was proclaimed ruler (with the motto of Tian Yuan rule), and Chuang Datyan was the commander in chief. However, the rebels could not take the main city of the island - Tainan , and after arriving from the mainland, two punitive detachments were forced to retreat inland.

The failure of the first punitive expedition forced the emperor to send additional troops to Taiwan. At the end of 1787, the island had a 100,000-strong group under the command of Fukanan . Lin Shuangwen's grouping was surrounded and crushed in early 1788; Lin Shuangwen himself was captured, sent to Beijing in a cage and executed there. Then Fukan'an launched an attack on the Chuang Datyan group, blocked it from land and from the sea at the southern tip of the island and destroyed there; Chuang Datyan himself suffered the fate of Lin Shuangwen. In an effort to strengthen his position in Taiwan, the Manchus in 1792 specifically introduced the strictest ban on the activities of the "Society of Heaven and Earth" into the criminal code of the empire; belonging to him was punishable by death or life imprisonment.

In 1830, agrarian unrest due to illegal redistribution of land by officials in Chiayi turned into a mass demonstration that quickly spread throughout the southern part of the island. The uprising was led by the local Triads and their leaders, Zhang Bing, Huang Feng, and Chen Ban. The rebels established an anti-Manchu government in the southern part of the island, which lasted more than two years. With great difficulty, the authorities managed to restore the Manchu domination in Taiwan in 1833 , but from 1834 new uprisings began, which were completely suppressed only by 1844 .

In May 1853, the Society of Small Swords raised a rebellion in the south of Fujian Province. The rebels, led by Huang Damay, captured a number of cities, including Xiamen , and proclaimed the restoration of the Ming dynasty. After two months of fierce fighting, the Qing forces managed to take Amoy and destroy Juan Damei. Huang Wei with the rebel squadron went to the Penghu archipelago and continued to fight for another five years.

When the Taiping rebellion raged on the continent in the 1850s and 1860s , the rebels declared themselves Christians, as a result of which anti-Christian tendencies began to spread in the camp that opposed them. The defeat of the Qing Empire in the Opium Wars led to increased penetration of Western powers into China and the spread of Christianity. As a result, this led to a series of anti-Christian speeches, which began in the fall of 1868 in Yangzhou, and subsequently spread to Taiwan.

In the 1870s, the Japanese Empire began to enter the world stage. Using the Mudanese incident as a pretext, the Japanese troops in 1874 made a Taiwanese campaign , occupied the south of the island, and left only in exchange for the payment of reparations.

During the Franco-Chinese war, France, unable to achieve a decisive breakthrough in the battles in Vietnam on land, decided to launch a naval war off the coast of China proper, and captured northern Taiwan, as well as a number of islands in the Taiwan Strait. These lands were returned to the Qing Empire after the signing of a peace treaty in 1885 .

The Franco-Chinese war for the first time created a real threat of losing Taiwan to the Qing empire, so in 1887 the island was allocated to an independent province, and additional troops were deployed there. Liu Mingchuan , who defended Taiwan during the war with the French, became the governor of the new province. He turned out to be a talented administrator: telegraph lines, a modern post office, the Jilong-Taipei railway and a state-private shipping company appeared in Taiwan. Liu Mingchuan built an arsenal in Taiwan and strengthened the defense of the island.

The Sino-Japanese War of 1894–1895 was the end of Qing domination in Taiwan. During the war, the Japanese seized the Penghu archipelago , and according to the Treaty of Shimonoseki, the Qing Empire was forced to cede Taiwan to Japan. Protesting against this, the people of Taiwan proclaimed the creation of the Republic of Taiwan and organized a defense against the Japanese, but the Japanese troops broke down the resistance. Japanese rule began in Taiwan , lasting until 1945 .