History of Norway

History of Norway

Etymology
Modern etymologists believe the country’s name means “the northward route” (the way north), which in Old Norse would be nor veg or *norð vegr. The Old Norse name for Norway was Nóregr, in Anglo-Saxon Norþ weg, and in mediaeval Latin Northvegia. The present name of the Kingdom of Norway in Norwegian Nynorsk is “Kongeriket Noreg”, which is only a couple of letters removed from the original “northern way”; “Nor(d)-(v)eg”.
Earliest times 10 000 BC –
Recent archaeological finds (2005) suggest that hunters from the south – most likely the Hamburg culture – in summer time could travel far north along the Norwegian coast line as early as the start of Holocene, 12 000 years ago, when the icecap was still on the highland. Temporary settlements and traces of tipis have been found as far north as the Alta region. Bremsnes-hulen, a cave near Kristiansund and Fosna north of Trondheim are the earliest sites. The clue to travel the coastal tundra dryshod was the sea level being 50 m lower than today.
Settled since the end of the last ice age, modern-day Scandinavia contains finds from the Stone age and Bronze age, such as rock carvings. From the time of the Roman Empire until about 800 AD, Scandinavia is known for its Iron Age culture. Many stone inscriptions can be found, written in Runes. Then Scandinavia became famous in the Middle Ages for its raiders, explorers, settlers and traders, the Vikings. Between AD 800 and AD 1100, the Vikings discovered and settled Iceland and Greenland, and conquered parts of Britain and Ireland, and were also known to travel as far as Constantinople, Greece, Northern Africa and Newfoundland. By using their excellent boats and organisation they became master traders and warriors.
In the 12th and 13th centuries, several history works, known as the kings’ sagas were written in Norway and Iceland, the best known of which is Snorri Sturluson’s Heimskringla (c. 1220). These provide our main sources for the early history of Norway. However, their accuracy for the earliest period is uncertain, and a much debated topic among modern historians. The stories about the earliest times are partly legendary in nature, and are not taken as accurate history by modern historians.
The Viking kings
See also: Viking Age
By the time of the first historical records of Scandinavia, about the 700s AD, Norway was divided into many petty kingdoms [citation needed]. A number of small communities were gradually organised into regions of larger stature in the 9th century, and in 872 King Harald Fairhair unified the realm and became its first supreme ruler. King Harald had many children, and his heirs ruled Norway with short interruptions until 1319. Religious influence from Europe (especially England and Ireland) led to the adoption of Christianity. Central in this was King Olav Haraldsson (“The Holy”) who died in the Battle of Stiklestad on July 29, 1030. He became Norway’s patron Saint Olav, and his tomb at Nidaros cathedral Trondheim became the most important pilgrimage destination in Northern Europe. The archdiocese of Nidaros was established in 1153. Between 1130 and 1240 Norway underwent a period known as the civil war era. Around 1200, the Norwegian king ruled over land from Man in the Irish Sea to the Kola Peninsula in the east. Greenland and Iceland were incorporated as dependencies in 1262.
The Kalmar Union and the union with Denmark
After the Black Death Norway entered into a period of decline. The Royal line died out and the country entered into two unequal unions from 1396 until 1814; this period was called “the 400-year-night” by Henrik Ibsen during the national romantic period as Norwegian national awareness was rediscovered in the 19th century. It can be broken into two main periods:
• The union of all Scandinavia referred to as the Kalmar Union, and
• The Danish Period or Union with Denmark.
The Kalmar Union (1396–1536)
Main article: Kalmar Union
King Haakon V died without male heirs in 1319. His daughter married a Swedish prince, whose son Magnus Eriksson inherited both kingdoms. Magnus’s son Haakon VI and his infant son Olav IV were Norway’s last native kings until Harald V ascended to the throne in 1991. Margrethe, the queen mother, succeeded in uniting Norway with Denmark and Sweden in the Kalmar Union (1397–1523), which ended after 180 years when Sweden seceded in 1536. Norway’s power was weakened during this period by the loss of a large part of the population during the Black Death pandemic of 1349–1351.
The Union with Denmark (1536–1814)
Main article: Denmark-Norway
The elite in Norway was so weakened that it was not able to resist the pressures from the Danes. More and more decisions were taken in Kopenhagen and the Norwegian Riksråd was eventually disbanded. The Danish crown was represented by a governor styled Statholder, but it was always important for the King to maintain Norway’s legal status as a separate hereditary kingdom. The Danish period can be separated into subperiods:
• The Reformation in Norway (1536–1596): Norway’s power was further weakened by the dissolution of the independent Norwegian church in the reformation of 1537.
• The Northern Wars (1596–1720): A period of virtually continual war and preparation for war, including the Kalmar War (1611–1613), the Thirty Years’ War (1618–1648), the Northern War (1655–1658), the Gyldenløve War (1675–1679) and culminating in the Great Northern War (1700–1721).
• The Period of Peace and Economic Growth (1721–1770): During the 18th century, Norway enjoyed a period of great prosperity and became an increasingly important part of the united kingdoms.
• National Reawakening and Preparation for Independence (1770–1814): This period was built on the strong natural independence of the Norwegian farm culture, combined with awareness of the American Revolution (1775–1783) and the French Revolution (1789–1799), building the natural national assertiveness, and culminating in the constitutional convention of 1814.
Union with Sweden
Main article: Union between Sweden and Norway

Constitution Day celebration march in Narvik, 2005.
In 1814 Denmark-Norway was defeated in the Napoleonic wars and the king was forced to cede Norway to the king of Sweden in the Treaty of Kiel (January 14). Owing to an omission in the treaty, the Norwegian dependencies Iceland, Greenland and the Faroe Islands were kept by Denmark. In an attempt to retain control over Norway despite the treaty, the Viceroy and hereditary prince of Denmark-Norway encouraged representatives of various social and political factions to gather at Eidsvoll to declare independence, adopt a constitution and elect hereditary prince Christian Frederik as king. May 17 is still celebrated as the day of the new democratic constitution of independent Norway. Sweden responded later the same year by waging war on Norway. In the peace negotiations, Christian Frederik agreed to relinquish claims to the Norwegian throne and return to Denmark if Sweden would accept the democratic Norwegian constitution and a loose personal union. The Norwegian parliament (Stortinget) then elected the Swedish king as king of Norway on November 4, 1814. The Swedish crown was represented by a governor-general styled Stattholder, often noble, repeatedly even the Crown Prince (then called Viceroy).
The union was peacefully dissolved in 1905 after several years of political unrest when Sweden recognised Norwegian independence. The parliament offered the throne to Prince Carl of Denmark, who accepted it after a referendum confirmed the monarchy and rejected a republican form of government. On November 18 he ascended the throne under the Norwegian name of Haakon VII.
See: Dissolution of the union between Norway and Sweden in 1905
Independent Monarchy
Norway’s kings (Norges Konge is the official style) in modern times, with periods of reign, are:
• Haakon VII (1905-1957)
• Olav V (1957-1991)
• Harald V (1991-present)
Norway in World War I
Norway remained neutral during World War I. However, 1,892 Norwegian sailors were lost during the U-boat war. Despite their neutrality, the Norwegian government went to considerable lengths to accommodate Britain, on account of both British pressure and an anti-German sentiment. These accommodations came in the form of the very large Norwegian merchant fleet, who delivered essential supplies to Britain, who in return supplied Norway with vital coal. This led to Norway occasionally being called The Neutral Ally.
Norway in World War II
Main Article: Occupation of Norway by Nazi Germany
See also: Norwegian Campaign, Norwegian resistance movement, and Legal purge in Norway after World War II
As World War II erupted, Norway insisted on remaining neutral despite warnings from some political factions that the country’s strategic importance was too great for Nazi Germany to leave it alone, and attempts from the same factions to obtain political consensus to build up sufficient defences to withstand an invasion long enough for Allied reinforcements to arrive from France and Britain, (the specially raised British Independent Companies, who were the immediate forerunners of the Commandos).
In a surprise dawn attack on April 9, 1940, Germany launched Operation Weserübung. The German forces attacked Oslo and the major Norwegian ports (Bergen, Trondheim, Kristiansand and Narvik) and quickly gained footholds in those cities and the surrounding areas. The Norwegian Army, manning a fort in the Oslofjord, sank the German cruiser Blücher using cannons and torpedoes. This delayed the Nazi German invasion long enough for King Haakon, his government and the parliament to escape the city with much of the treasury, and to resist the invaders. Despite the strength of the German invaders and the lack of air support, the Norwegian armed forces, together with allied British, French and Polish forces, kept up an organized military resistance for two months, longer than any other country invaded by Germany, except for the Soviet Union. Eventually, on June 7 the Norwegian forces had to surrender and King and government left Norway to form a government in exile in London. Many servicemen, and civilians who would join them, also escaped to Britain where they served invaluably with the British Forces and the Special Operations Executive (SOE).
The Norwegian national socialist politician Vidkun Quisling attempted a coup the same day, but was met with such strong resistance from the people that Nazi Germany deposed him within a week and installed a bureaucratic administration in lieu of a government. In September of 1940 the German Reichskommissar Josef Terboven formed a cabinet with himself presiding, and with most ministers recruited among members of Quisling’s Nazi party, plus some independent collaborators. In 1942 this administration was replaced with a semi-independent puppet government headed by Quisling, who was promoted to “minister president” by the Reichskommissar. Quisling’s name has come to mean “traitor” in several languages.
King Haakon and his government fled to Britain on June 7th, the same day the allied forces that had retaken Narvik abandoned it and the French forces returned to a quickly disintegrating France. The continued existence of a legitimate Norwegian government gave the exiles considerably more room for action than the French. The worldwide operations of the large Norwegian merchant fleet was a material aid to the Allies.
The Norwegian resistance movement began on a small scale right after the invasion, but gained in strength, especially after the installation of Quisling’s puppet government in late 1940 and its attempt to enforce the native brand of fascism (see the next paragraph), and to enroll labour, teachers and officials in its organizations (for an anecdote of Norwegian civil resistance, see paper clip).
The resistance became very active towards the end of the war, closely and continuously supported by the British SOE. Norwegian resistance, (generally termed the ‘Home Front’), and its military branch (milorg) kept many German divisions tied down in occupation duty, and Norwegian spotters contributed to the destruction of numerous German warships and installations. The Norwegian resistance also smuggled people in and out of Norway during the war, (typically to Scotland via the ‘Shetland Bus’, and to neutral Sweden), and, with the SOE, managed to destroy much of the world’s supply of heavy water and cripple the Vemork heavy water plant at Rjukan, thus perhaps preventing Germany from developing an atomic bomb (Operation Gunnerside).
Not all Norwegians sided with the legitimate government in exile. Some became members of Quisling’s National Socialist party (Nasjonal Samling – NS), some out of misguided idealism. Numerous opportunists joined his movement initially, while Germany seemed to be winning the war. Several thousand young Norwegians joined German Waffen-SS divisions to fight against the Soviet Union on the Eastern Front.
Following the 1941 raid by British Commandos on the minor port of Vaagsoy, Hitler further reinforced Norway, mistakenly thinking that the British might invade northern Norway to put pressure on Sweden and Finland. By the end of the war the German garrison was 372,000 strong (the Norwegian population at the time numbering a little over 3 million)[1]. In May of 1945 when the milorg was advised they no longer need act covertly, they were found to number some 50,000 members.
During the entire occupation, the German authorities built the so called Festung Norwegen. Innumerable bunkers, pillboxes, air strips and submarine hangars dotted the coast to fend off any invaders. Coupled with the large number of German soldiers in Norway, the Allies (especially the Norwegian government in exile) were worried that the remnants of the Nazi party would flee to Norway and make their last stand there. They could probably have held out for months, which would have devastated Norway. Fortunately, the Wehrmacht commander Böhme saw that resistance was futile, and surrendered on the order of Hitler’s successor Dönitz on the May 8.
The Norwegian merchant ships that were in Allied waters at the time of invasion were requisitioned by the exiled Norwegian Government in London. The Norwegian Shipping and Trade Mission was established in London shortly thereafter, and the name abbreviated to Nortraship, following a suggestion from the British Postal Services. The main duties were those of war transports, supply services etc. including the supply of food, ammunition and reinforcements to the front lines, besides evacuating the wounded. Nortraship had 1,081 ships with 33,000 sailors. 570 ships were lost (these numbers vary according to source), along with 3,734 sailors.
By the end of the war, Norwegian naval vessels were also fighting alongside the British. Norway was counted among the victors in World War II and was a founding member of the United Nations. The first UN Secretary General, Trygve Lie, was a Norwegian.
A side effect of the large German garrison was the birth of up to 12,000 children born to Norwegian women and German soldiers. Most of these women suffered recriminations after the war, as did their children, who were called “German children” or “Nazi children”. Many of these children were abused throughout their childhood, some were sexually abused.[1] [2] Norwegians who publicly regretted instances of maltreatment were occasionally accused of being too conciliatory.
After the liberation, active members of the National Socialist party and those who had collaborated with the enemy were prosecuted and sentenced. Twenty-five Norwegians, including Quisling, were executed for treason and/or war crimes, and 12 Germans were executed for war crimes.
After the war the Norwegian government forced German prisoners of war to clear minefields. When the clearing ended in September 1946, 392 of them had been injured and 275 had been killed. Meanwhile only 2 Norwegians and 4 British mine-clearers had sustained any injuries. Many of the Germans were killed through their British guards’ habit of chasing them criss-cross over a cleared field to ensure that no mines remained. The Geneva Convention, Relative to the treatment of prisoners of war which states that it is forbidden to use prisoners for harmful or dangerous labor proved to be of no value as it was circumvented by the Norwegians claim that the German prisoners were Disarmed Enemy Forces.[3]
Post-war Foreign and military policy
See main articles on Foreign relations of Norway, Military of Norway, and Norway and the European Union
In 1949 Norway became a member of NATO. The discovery of oil and gas in adjacent waters in the late 1960s boosted Norway’s economic fortunes. The current focus is on containing spending on the extensive welfare system and planning for the time when petroleum reserves are depleted. In referenda held in 1972 and on November 28, 1994, Norway rejected joining the European Union, though it remains associated with it through being part of the wider European Economic Area.
Militarily, while Norway and Britain both maintain independent forces, some common defence policies evolved as well as certain integration of training and deployment of both nations’ Special Forces.
Post-war Economic development
Post-war Social policy
Norway has advanced in its standard of living beyond many of its European counterparts, in large part to its affluent economy. As a result, for the last several years the United Nations has ranked Norway as having the highest standard of living in the world. This ranking compares nations’ level of education and income, combined with expected length of life.
Norway also ranked 2nd in a study conducted by World Economic Forum on the gender gap in 58 nations based on measuring the level of equality with men in five areas: Economic participation, economic opportunity, political empowerment, educational attainment, and health and well-being.[2] [3]

History of Brunei

History of Brunei

Early history
Historians believe that there was a forerunner to the present day Brunei Sultanate. One possible predecessor state was called Vijayapura, which possibly existed in northwest Borneo in the seventh century A.D.[1] It was probably a subject state of the powerful Srivijaya empire based in Sumatra. Another possible predecessor state was called Po-ni. Chinese and Arabic records indicate that this trading kingdom existed at the mouth of the Brunei River as early as the seventh or eighth century A.D. By the tenth century Po-ni had a close mercantile relationship with first the Song and later the Ming Dynasty and at some point even entered into a tributary relationship with China. By the fourteenth century Po-ni also fell under the influence of the Javanese Majapahit Empire, but this may have been nothing more than a symbolic relationship, as one account of the annual tribute owed each year to Majapahit was a jar of areca juice obtained from the young green nuts of the areca palm. The relationship with mainland China nevertheless continued, culminating in 1408, when the Po-ni ruler Kala visited China and died there. Around the same time the Chinese admiral Zheng He visited the region and found a large trading port with numerous Chinese traders carrying on business with the mainland. In 1424 the Hongxi Emperor ended China’s maritime program, and the mainland’s relationship with Po-li effectively ended.
Song historians and archaeological evidence suggest that Po-ni was heavily influenced by Hindu civilization, as transmitted by Hindu culture in Java and Sumatra, and not directly from India. The system of writing used was a Hindu script, and discovered artifacts include elephants, bulls, and yonis. There was also a heavy Chinese influence, with Chinese coins dating from as early as the seventh century being found in present-day Brunei.
Conversion to Islam and “Golden Age”
The latter history of Po-li, or Brunei, remains somewhat obscure. By the middle of the fifteenth century the state had entered into a close relationship with the Muslim kingdom of Malacca. This era also saw the origin of the ruling dynasty, which continues to this day. According to the Syair Awang Semaun, Brunei’s national epic poem, the present-day sultanate originated when Dewa Emas Kayangan descended to earth from heaven in an egg. He had children with a number of aboriginal maidens, and one of these children converted to Islam and became the first sultan. However, the state continued to be multicultural. The second sultan was either Chinese or married a Chinese woman. The third sultan was Arabic, said to be a direct descendant of Muhammed.
The sultanate oversaw a gradual expansion of the state’s influence and borders. This was accelerated with the conquest of Malacca by the Portuguese in 1511. Brunei benefited from the scattering of Muslim merchants and traders who were forced to use other ports. These merchants probably also helped to speed the conversion of the general population to Islam.
The sultanate was a thalassocracy, a realm based more on controlling trade than land. Situated in a strategic location between China and the trading networks of southeast Asia, the state served as an entrepot and collected tolls on water traffic. The society was hierarchical, with the sultan serving as despot. His powers were limited, however, by a council of princes of royal blood. One of the council’s duties was to arrange for royal succession.
The reign of the fifth sultan, Bolkiah, is often marked as Brunei’s “Golden age”. The sultanate’s control extended over the coastal regions of modern-day Sarawak and Sabah, the Sulu archipelago, and the islands off the northwest tip of Borneo. The sultanate’s influence also spread north into the Philippines, where colonies were planted in Manila Bay. The sultan also visited Java and Malacca. At the end of Bolkiah’s reign, in 1521, the first Europeans visited Brunei when Ferdinand Magellan’s expedition arrived at the port. Antonio Pigafetta, a navigator on the trip, described an amazing city. The Europeans rode to visit the sultan on top of “elephants, caparisoned in silk-cloth”. The inhabitants of the palace “had their loins covered with gold-embroidered cloth and silk, wore poniards with golden hilts, ornamented with pearls and precious stones, and had many rings on their fingers”. The visitors were fed meals on porcelain plateware.
Pigafetta described a city of 25 000 families living in wooden houses built on stilts to raise them above the water. During high tides women would ride in boats selling merchandise. The sultan’s palace was surrounded by brick ramparts and protected by numerous brass and iron cannons.
This prosperous era continued through the reign of the ninth sultan, Hassan, who is credited with developing an elaborate Royal Court structure, elements of which remain today.
Relations with Europeans
Brunei’s relations varied with the different European powers in the region. The Portuguese, for the most part, were more interested in economic and trading relations with the regional powers and did little to interfere with Brunei’s development. This does not mean that relations were always cordial, such as in 1536 when the Portuguese attacked the Muslims in the Moluccas and the ambassador to the Brunei court had to leave because of the sultan’s hostility. The Portuguese also noted that the sultanate was heavily involved in the region’s politics and wars, and that Brunei merchants could be found in Ligor and Siam.
Relations with the Spanish were far more hostile. From 1565 on, Spanish and Brunei forces engaged in a number of naval skirmishes, and in 1571 the Spanish succeeded in capturing Manila from the Brunei aristocracy that had been established there. Brunei raised several large fleets with the intention of recapturing the city, but the campaigns, for various reasons, never launched.[2] In 1578, the Spanish took Sulu and late in the year attacked and captured Brunei itself, after demanding that the sultan cease sending missionaries to the Philippines and, in turn, allow Christian missionaries to visit his kingdom. The invaders were forced to withdraw because of sickness. The short term damage to the sultanate was minimal, as Sulu was recaptured soon after.
The long term effects of regional changes could not be avoided. After Sultan Hassan, Brunei entered a period of decline, due to internal battles over royal succession as well as the rising influences of European colonial powers in the region, that, among other things, disrupted traditional trading patterns, destroying the economic base of Brunei and many other Southeast Asian sultanates.
In 1839, the English adventurer James Brooke arrived in Borneo and helped the Sultan put down a rebellion. As a reward, he became governor and later “White Rajah” of Sarawak in northwest Borneo and gradually expanded the territory under his control. Brooke never gained control of Brunei; though he did attempt to. He asked the British to check whether or not it would be acceptable for him to claim Brunei as his own, however, they came back with bad news; although Brunei was poorly run, it had a definite sense of national identity and could therefore not be absorbed by Brooke.
Modern history
In 1959, a new constitution was written declaring Brunei a self-governing state, while its foreign affairs, security, and defence remained the responsibility of the United Kingdom, now represented by a High Commissioner. An attempt in 1962 to introduce a partially elected legislative body with limited powers was abandoned after the opposition political party, Parti Rakyat Brunei, launched an armed uprising, which the government put down with the help of British forces. In the late 1950s and early 1960s, the government also resisted pressures to join neighbouring Sabah and Sarawak in the newly formed Malaysia. The Sultan eventually decided that Brunei would remain a separate state.
In 1967, Omar Ali Saifuddin abdicated in favour of his eldest son, Hassanal Bolkiah, who became the 29th ruler. The former Sultan remained as Defence Minister and assumed the royal title Seri Begawan. In 1970, the national capital, Brunei Town, was renamed Bandar Seri Begawan in his honour. The Seri Begawan died in 1986.
On January 4, 1979, Brunei and the United Kingdom signed a new treaty of friendship and cooperation. On January 1, 1984, Brunei Darussalam became a fully independent state.
References
Primary source
• The Philippine Islands: Explorations by Early Navigators, Descriptions of the Islands and their People, their History and Records of the Catholics Missions, as related in contemporaneous Books and Manuscripts. Vol. IV-1576-1582. Eds. Emma Helen Blair and James Alexander Robertson. Cleveland: The Arthur H. Clark Company, 1903.
Secondary sources
• This article incorporates text from the Encyclopædia Britannica Eleventh Edition, a publication now in the public domain.
• Ongkili, James P. “Ancient Chinese Trading Links.” East Malaysia and Brunei. Ed. Wendy Hutton. Tuttle Publishing, 2001.
• Saunders, Graham. A History of Brunei. London and New York: RoutledgeCurzon, 2002.
• Wright, Leigh. “Brunei: An Historical Relic.” Journal of the Hong Kong Branch of the Royal Asiatic Society. Vol. 17 (1977).

History of Taiwan

 

History of Taiwan

Taiwan (including the Pescadores) was first populated by Austronesian peoples. It was colonised by the Dutch in the 17th century, when influx of Han from the continent across the Taiwan Strait took place. The Spanish later settled in the North for a brief period, but were driven out by the Dutch. In 1662, it became a base for Koxinga, a Ming loyalist. It was defeated by the Qing (Ch’ing) dynasty of China in 1683. The Qing Dynasty was forced to cede the island to Japan in 1895 after the 1st Sino-Japanese War. Then Japan was forced to renounce control to Taiwan in 1945 after Japanese defeat in the 2nd World War. In 1949, after losing the Chinese mainland as a result of the Chinese civil war, the ROC government under the Kuomintang (KMT) withdrew to Taipei. KMT had been the seat of the government of the ROC until the presidential election in 2000, when Democratic Progressive Party (DPP) candidate Chen Shui-bian was elected president of Taiwan, becoming the first non-KMT member to assume the executive office since 1945. Chen was elected again in the 2004 election and currently serves as Taiwan’s president.

Prehistoric Settlement

The Puyuma’s Moon-shape Monolith ca. 1896
Taiwan is estimated by anthropologists to have been populated for approximately 30,000 years. Little is known about the original inhabitants, but distinctive jadeware, and corded pottery of the Changpin, Puyuma and Tapenkeng (Dapenkeng) cultures show a marked diversity in the island’s early inhabitants. Today’s Taiwan’s aboriginal peoples are classified as belonging to the Austronesian ethno-linguistic group of people, a linguistic group that stretches as far west as Madagascar, to Easter Island in the east and to New Zealand in the south with Taiwan as the northern most point. Austronesian culture on Taiwan begins about 4,000 B.C.
Early history
Several entries that may refer to Taiwan appear in Chinese historical records, but otherwise no records exist of Taiwan in the early period. Between 607 and 610, some generals of Sui Dynasty embarked on several military operations on Liuqiu (流求國), described in the Book of Sui (《隋書流求傳》). Many scholars think that the Liuqiu of the Sui Dynasty was what is the island of Taiwan. In 1292, Kublai Khan of the Yuan Dynasty tried to force minorities in Yizhou (夷州) to pay tribute. Between 1335 and 1340, Wang Dayuan (汪大渊) wrote a book (《岛夷志略》) which describes Liuqiu (琉求) after he had visited it. In 1375, the Ming Dynasty dispatched a delegation to the now Ryūkyū Islands. Thereafter the Han referred to the Ryūkyū Islands as “Liuqiu” (琉球) and an island south of the Ryūkyū Islands as “little Liuqiu” (小琉球), which may be the island of Taiwan. Between 1403 and 1424, the great fleet of Ming Dynasty’s admiral Zheng He possibly visited Taiwan. None of these records were definite (the earlier records being set in mythical or legendary contexts), and it was not certain that the island(s) referred to is indeed Taiwan (Teng;2004, pp. 33-49). Permanent Han settlement on Penghu began in the 1100s but the same on the main island of Taiwan did not take place until several centuries later (Shepherd;1993, pp.1-8).
Despite Taiwan being rumored as the fabled “Island of Dogs,” “Island of Women,” or any of the other fabled island thought, by Han literati, to lie beyond the seas, Taiwan was officially regarded by Qing Emperor Kangxi as “a ball of mud beyond the pale of civilization” and did not appear on any map of the imperial domain until 1683 (Teng;2004, pp. 34-59). The act of presenting a map to the emperor was equal to presenting the lands of the empire. It took several more years before the Qing court would recognize Taiwan as part of the Qing realm. Prior to the Qing Dynasty, the Middle Kingdom was conceived as a land bound by mountains, rivers and seas. The idea of an island as a part of the Middle Kingdom was unfathomable to the Han prior to the Qing frontier expansion effort of the 17th Century (Teng;2004:pp 34-49, 177-179) The presence of the Great Wall demonstrates some earlier concepts of “China’s” borders in relation to the PRC’s current holdings and claims (Millward;1998, pp 36-38). The “suspicious history” of Taiwan is often cited by Chinese nationalists to support their claim that “Taiwan has belonged to China since antiquity”. Supporters of Taiwan Independence do not regard these claims as valid.
Dutch and Spanish rule
Main article: Taiwan under Dutch rule
Portuguese sailors, passing Taiwan in 1544, first jotted in a ship’s log the name of the island “Ilha Formosa”, meaning Beautiful Island. In 1582 the survivors of a Portuguese shipwreck spent ten weeks battling malaria and aborigines before returning to Macau on a raft.
Dutch traders, in search of an Asian base first arrived on the island at the request of the Ming court in 1623 to use the island as a base for Dutch commerce with Japan and the coastal areas of China. The Spanish and allies established a settlement at Santissima Trinidad, building Fort San Salvador on the northwest coast of Taiwan near Keelung in 1626 which they occupied until 1642 when they were driven out by a joint Dutch-Aborigine invasion force. They also built a fort in Tamsui (1628) but already abandoned it in 1638. The Dutch later built Fort Anthonio here (1642), which still stands (now part of the Fort San Domingo museum complex).

The Island Formosa and the Pescadores/ Johannes Vingboons/ ca.1640/ Nationaal Archief, Den Haag
The Dutch East India Company (VOC) administered the island and its predominantly aboriginal population until 1662, setting up a tax system, schools to teach romanized script of aboriginal languages and evangelizing. Although its control was mainly limited to the western plain of the island, the Dutch systems were adopted by succeeding occupiers. The first influx of migrants from coastal Fujian came during the Dutch period, in which merchants and traders from the Chinese coast sought to purchase hunting licenses from the Dutch or hide out in aboriginal villages to escape the Qing authorities. Most of the immigrants were young single males who were discouraged from staying on the island often referred to by Han as “The Gate of Hell” for its reputation in taking the lives of sailors and explorers.
The Dutch originally sought to use their castle Zeelandia at Tayowan as a trading base between Japan and China, but soon realized the potential of the huge deer populations that roamed in herds of thousands along the alluvial plains of Taiwan’s western regions. Deer were in high demand by the Japanese who were willing to pay top dollar for use of the hides in samurai armor. Other parts of the deer were sold to Han traders for meat and medical use. The Dutch paid aborigines for the deer brought to them and tried to manage the deer stocks to keep up with demand. The Dutch also employed Han to farm sugarcane and rice for export, some of these rice and sugarcane reached as far as the markets of Persia. Unfortunately the deer the aborigines had relied on for their livelihoods began to disappear forcing the aborigines to adopt new means of survival. The Dutch built a second administrative castle on the main island of Taiwan in 1633 and set out to earnestly turn Taiwan into a Dutch colony.

Fort Zeelandia built in Tainan.
The first order of business was to punish villages that had violently opposed the Dutch and unite the aborigines in allegiance with the VOC. The first punitive expedition was against the villages of Baccloan and Mattauw, north of Saccam near Tayowan. The Mattauw campaign had been easier than expected and the tribe submitted after having their village razed by fire. The campaign also served as a threat to other villages from Tirossen (Chia Yi) to Lonkjiaow (Heng Chun). The 1636 punitive attack on Lamay Island (Hsiao Liu Chiu) in response to the killing of the shipwrecked crew of the Beverwijck and the Golden Lion ended ten years later with the entire aboriginal population of 1100 removed from the island including 327 Lamayans killed in a cave, having been trapped there by the Dutch and suffocated in the fumes and smoke pumped into the cave by the Dutch and their allied aborigines from Saccam, Soulang and Pangsoya. The men were forced into slavery in Batavia (Java) and the women and children became servants and wives for the Dutch officers. The events on Lamay changed the course of Dutch rule to work closer with allied aborigines, though there remained plans to depopulate the outlying islands.
Japanese invasions
Japan had sought to claim sovereignty over Taiwan (known as Takayama Koku) since 1592, when Toyotomi Hideyoshi undertook a policy of overseas expansion and extending Japanese influence southward [1]. Korea, to the west, was invaded and an attempt to invade Taiwan and subsequent invasion attempts were to be unsuccessful due mainly to disease and attacks by aborigines on the island. In 1609, the Tokugawa Shogunate sent Haruno Arima on an exploratory mission of the island. In 1616, Murayama Toan led an unsuccessful invasion of the island. In 1871, an Okinawan vessel shipwrecked on the southern tip of Taiwan and the crew of 54 were beheaded by the Botan aborigines. When Japan sought compensation from Qing China, the court rejected compensation on the account that they didn’t have jurisdiction over the island. This was to lead to Japan testing the situation for colonizing the island and in 1874 an expedition force of 3,000 troops were sent to the island . It was not until the defeat of the Chinese navy during the First Sino-Japanese War in 1894-95 was Japan to finally realize possession of Taiwan and the shifting of Asian dominance from China to Japan. The Treaty of Shimonoseki was signed in 1895 ceding Taiwan and the Pescadores over to Japan, which would rule the island for 50 years until its defeat in World War II.
Ming loyalist rule
Main article: Kingdom of Tungning
Manchu forces broke through Shanhai Pass in 1644 and rapidly overwhelmed the Ming Dynasty. In 1661, a naval fleet led by the Ming loyalist Koxinga, arrived in Taiwan to oust the Dutch from Zeelandia and establish a pro-Ming base in Taiwan.
Koxinga, born in 1624 in Japan to Japanese mother and a Chinese father, Iquan, in a family made wealthy from shipping and piracy, inherited his father’s trade networks, which stretched from Nagasaki to Macao. Following the Manchu advance on Fujian, Koxinga retreated from his stronghold in Amoy (Xiamen) and besieged Taiwan in the hope of establishing a strategic base to marshal his troops to retake his base at Amoy. In 1662, following a nine month siege, Koxinga captured the Dutch fortress Zeelandia and Taiwan became his base (see Kingdom of Tungning). Concurrently the last Ming pretender had been captured and killed by General Wu Sangui, extinguishing any hope Koxinga may have had of re-establishing the Ming Empire. He died four months thereafter in a fit of madness after learning of the cruel killings of his father and brother at the hands of the Manchus. Other accounts are more simple, chalking up Koxinga’s passing to a case of malaria.
Qing Dynasty rule
In 1683, following a naval engagement with Admiral Shi Lang, one of Koxinga’s father’s trusted friends, Koxinga’s grandson Zheng Keshuang submitted to Manchu Qing Dynasty control. Koxinga’s followers were forced to depart from Taiwan to the more unpleasant parts of Qing controlled land. By 1682 there were only 7000 Han left on Taiwan as they had intermarried with aboriginal women and had property in Taiwan. The Koxinga reign had continued the tax systems of the Dutch, established schools and religious temples.

1896 map of Formosa, revised by Rev. William Campbell
From 1683, the Qing Dynasty ruled Taiwan as a prefecture and in 1875 divided the island into two prefectures, north and south. In 1887 the island was made into a separate Chinese province.
The Manchu authorities tried to limit immigration to Taiwan and barred families from travelling to Taiwan to ensure the immigrants would return to their families and ancestral graves. Illegal immigration continued, but many of the men had few prospects in war weary Fujian and thus married locally, resulting in the idiom “mainland grandfather no mainland grandmother” (有唐山公無唐山媽). The Qing tried to protect aboriginal land claims, but also sought to turn them into tax paying subjects. Han and tax paying aborigines were barred from entering the wilderness which covered most of the island for the fear of raising the ire of the non taxpaying, highland aborigines and inciting rebellion. A border was constructed along the western plain, built using pits and mounds of earth, called “earth cows”, to discourage illegal land reclamation.
Following a shipwreck of an Ryūkyūan vessel on the southeastern tip of Taiwan in winter of 1871, in which the heads of 54 crew members were taken by the aboriginal Taiwanese Paiwan people in Mutan village (牡丹社), the Japanese sought to use this incident as a pretext to formally annex the Ryūkyū Kingdom as a Japanese prefecture.[1] and expand into Taiwan. According to records from Japanese documents, Mao Changxi (毛昶熙) and Dong Xun (董恂), the Chinese (Qing) ministers at Zongli Yamen (總理衙門) who handled the complaints from Japanese envoy Yanagihara Sakimitsu (柳原前光) replied first that they had heard only of a massacre of Ryūkyūans, not of Japanese, and quickly noted that Ryūkyū was under Chinese suzerainty, therefore this issue was not Japan’s business. In addition, the governor-general of Chinese province Fukien had rescued the survivors of the massacre and returned them safely to Ryūkyū. The Chinese explained that there were two kinds of aborigines on Taiwan: those governed by Chinese, and those unnaturalized “raw barbarians… beyond the reach of [the Chinese] government and customs.” They indirectly hinted that foreigners travelling in those areas settled by unnaturalized aboriginal people must exercise caution. After the Yanagihara-Yamen interview, the Japanese said that the Chinese government had not opposed Japan’s claims to sovereignty over the Ryūkyū Islands, disclaimed any jurisdiction over aboriginal Taiwanese, and had indeed consented to Japan’s expedition to Taiwan; however, these claims were unfounded [2]. The Qing Dynasty made it clear to the Japanese that Taiwan was definitely within Chinese jurisdiction, even though part of that island’s aboriginal population was not yet under the influence of Chinese civilization. The Qing also pointed to similar cases all over the world where an aboriginal population within a national boundary was not under the influence of the dominant culture of that country.
The Japanese nevertheless launched an expedition with a force of 2000 soldiers in 1874. The number of casualties for the Paiwan was about 30, and that for the Japanese was 543 (12 Japanese soldiers were killed in battle and 531 by disease). Eventually, the Japanese withdrew as about Qing Dynasty sent 3 divisions of forces (9000 soldiers) to reinforce Taiwan. The Okinawan affair was more of a trial balloon sent up by the Japanese to test the situation on Taiwan for a possible colonization campaign of their own. This caused the Qing to re-think the importance of Taiwan in their maritime defense strategy and greater importance was placed on gaining control over the wilderness regions. The second test of Qing commitment came during the French blockade of Keelung harbor during the Sino-French War of 1884-1885. The result was a brief bombardment of Qing positions and a French amphibious operation. The French had some limited early gains but was eventually forced to withdraw. The Qing finally made Taiwan a province and appointed Liu Mingchuan as the first governor of Taiwan to initiate Taiwan development in 1887. In the waning years of Qing control over Taiwan, Governor Liu Mingchuan initiated a series of modernizing reforms and infrastructure projects, including 60 km of railroad track laid between Keelung and Hsinchu. This segment of railroad became too old in the Japanese eye, and was demolished for modernization later under Japanese rule.
On the eve of the Sino-Japanese War about 45 percent of the island was administered under direct Qing administration while the remaining was lightly populated by Aboriginal. As part of the settlement for losing the Sino-Japanese War, China ceded the island of Taiwan and the Pescadores to Japan in 1895. The loss of Taiwan would become a rallying point for the Chinese nationalist movement in the years that followed.
Japanese rule
Main article: Taiwan under Japanese rule.

A 1912 map of Japan with Taiwan, which was part of the Empire of Japan from 1895 to 1945.
After receiving sovereignty of Taiwan, the Japanese feared military resistance from both Taiwanese and Aborigines who followed the establishment by the local elite of the short-lived Republic of Formosa. Taiwan’s elite hoped that by declaring themselves a republic the world would not stand by and allow a sovereign state to be invaded by the Japanese, thereby allying with the Qing. The plan quickly turned to chaos as standard Green troops and ethnic Yue soldiers took to looting and pillage. Given the choice between chaos at the hands of Chinese or submission to the Japanese, the Taipei elite sent Ku Hsien-rong to Keelung to invite the advancing Japanese forces to proceed to Taipei and restore order.
The Taiwanese resistance was sporadic, yet at times fierce, but was largely crushed by 1902, although relatively minor rebellions occurred in subsequent years, including the Ta-pa-ni incident of 1915 in Tainan county. The rebellions were often caused by a combination of the effects of colonial policies on local elites and extant millenarian beliefs of the local Taiwanese, rather than nationalism or patriotism. Aboriginal resistance to the heavy-handed Japanese policies of acculturation and pacification lasted up until the early 1930s. The last major Aboriginal rebellion, the Wushe Uprising in late 1930 by the Atayal people angry over their treatment while laboring in the burdensome job of camphor extraction, launched the last headhunting party in which over 150 Japanese officials were killed and beheaded during the opening ceremonies of a school. The uprising, led by Mona Rudao, was crushed by 2,000-3,000 Japanese troops and Aboriginal auxiliaries with the help of poison gas.
Japanese colonization of the island fell under three stages. It began with an oppressive period of crackdown and paternalistic rule, then a dōka (同化) period of aims to treat all people (races) alike proclaimed by Taiwanese Nationalists who were enlightened by the Self-Determination of Nations (民族自決) proposed by Woodrow Wilson after World War I, and finally, during World War II, a period of kōminka (皇民化), a policy which aimed to turn Taiwanese into loyal subjects of the Japanese emperor.

Bank of Taiwan established in 1897 headquartered in Taipei.
Initial infrastructural development took place quickly. The Bank of Taiwan was established in 1899 to encourage Japanese private sectors, including Mitsubishi and the Mitsui Group, to invest in Taiwan. In 1900, the third Taiwan Governor-General passed a budget which initiated the building of Taiwan’s railroad system from Keelung to Takao (Kaohsiung). By 1905 the island had electric power supplied by water power in Sun-Moon Lake, and in subsequent years Taiwan was considered the second-most developed region of East Asia (after Japan). By 1905, Taiwan was financially self-sufficient and had been weaned off of subsidies from Japan’s central government.
Under the governor Shinpei Goto’s rule, many major public works projects were completed. The Taiwan rail system connecting the south and the north and the modernizations of Keelung and Kaohsiung ports were completed to facilitate transport and shipping of raw material and agricultural products. Exports increased by four-fold. 55% of agricultural land was covered by dam-supported irrigation systems. Food production had increased four-fold and sugar cane production had increased 15-fold between 1895 to 1925 and Taiwan became a major foodbasket serving Japan’s industrial economy. The health care system was widely established and infectious diseases were almost completely eradicated. The average lifespan for a Taiwanese resident would become 60 years by 1945.

In October 1935, the Governor-General of Taiwan held an “Exposition to Commemorate the 40th Anniversary of the Beginning of Administration in Taiwan,” which served as a showcase for the achievements of Taiwan’s modernization process under Japanese rule. This attracted worldwide attention, including the Republic of China’s KMT regime which sent the Japanese-educated Chen Yi to attend the affair. He expressed his admiration about the efficiency of Japanese government in developing Taiwan, and commented on how lucky the Taiwanese were to live under such effective administration. Somewhat ironically, Chen Yi would later become the ROC’s first Chief Executive of Taiwan, who would be infamous for the corruption that occurred under his watch.
The later period of Japanese rule saw a local elite educated and organized. During the 1930s several home rule groups were created at a time when others around the world sought to end colonialism. In 1935, the Taiwanese elected their first group of local legislators. By March 1945, the Japanese legislative branch hastily modified election laws to allow Taiwanese representation in the Japanese Diet.
See also
Political divisions of Taiwan (1895-1945), List of Governor-General of Taiwan,Structure of the Taiwan Army of Japan
As Japan embarked on full-scale war in China in 1937, it expanded Taiwan’s industrial capacity to manufacture war material. By 1939, industrial production had exceeded agricultural production in Taiwan. At the same time, the “kominka” imperialization project was put under way to instill the “Japanese Spirit” in Taiwanese residents, and ensure the Taiwanese would remain loyal subjects of the Japanese Emperor ready to make sacrifices during wartime. Measures including Japanese-language education, the option of adopting Japanese names, and the worship of Japanese religion were instituted. In 1943, 94% of the children received 6-year compulsory education. From 1937 to 1945, 126,750 Taiwanese joined and served in the military of the Japanese Empire, while a further 80,433 were conscripted between 1942 to 1945. Of the sum total, 30,304, or 15%, died in Japan’s war in Asia.
In 1942, after the United States entered in war against Japan and on the side of China, the Chinese government under the KMT renounced all treaties signed with Japan before that date and made Taiwan’s return to China (as with Manchuria) one of the wartime objectives. In the Cairo Conference of 1943, the Allied Powers declared the return of Taiwan to China as one of several Allied demands. In 1945, Japan unconditionally surrendered and ended its rule in Taiwan.
Chinese Republic rule
Main article: History of the Republic of China
See also: Legal status of Taiwan
The Republic of China proclaimed October 25, 1945 as Taiwan Retrocession Day with the surrender of Japanese troops. The validity of the proclamation is subject to some debate, with some supporters of Taiwan independence arguing that it is invalid, and that the date only marks the beginning of military occupation that persists to the present. During the immediate postwar period, the Kuomintang (KMT) administration on Taiwan was repressive and extremely corrupt compared with the previous Japanese rule, leading to local discontent. Anti-mainlander violence flared on February 28, 1947, prompted by an incident in which a cigarette seller was injured and a passerby was indiscriminately shot dead by Nationalist authorities (Kerr, 1966; pp. 254-255).

Tensions between local Taiwanese and Chinese mainlanders resulted in an uprising known as the “February 28 Incident” where 30,000 civilians were killed by the ROC military.
For several weeks after the February 28 Incident the rebels held control of much of the island. Feigning negotiation, the Nationalists assembled a large military force (carried on United States naval vessels) that attacked Taiwan, massacring nearly 30,000 Taiwanese and imprisoning thousands of others.
The killings were both random and premeditated as local elites or educated Taiwanese were sought out and disposed of. Many of the Taiwanese who had formed home rule groups under the Japanese were the victims of 2-28. This was followed by the “White Terror” in which many thousands of Taiwanese were imprisoned or executed for their real or perceived opposition to the Kuomintang military regime, leaving many native Taiwanese with a deep-seated bitterness to the mainlanders. Until 1995, the KMT authorities suppressed accounts of this episode in Taiwan history. In 1995 a monument was dedicated to the victims of the “2-28 Incident”, and for the first time the ROC President Lee Teng-hui publicly apologized for the Nationalists’ brutality.
From the 1930s onward a civil war was underway in China between Chiang Kai-shek’s ROC government and the Communist Party of China led by Mao Zedong. When the civil war ended in 1949, 2 million refugees, predominantly from the Nationalist government, military, and business community, fled to Taiwan. In October 1949 the People’s Republic of China (P.R.C.) was founded on the mainland by the victorious communists; several months before, Chiang Kai-shek had established a “provisional” ROC capital in Taipei and moved his government there from Nanjing. Under Nationalist rule, the mainlanders dominated the government and civil service forcing 37,000 Taiwanese out of the government sector.
In the 1952 San Francisco Peace Treaty, Japan renounced all right, claim, and title to Taiwan, but no “receiving country” was specified. This ambiguity has been used by independence supporters to argue against the legitimacy of the ROC government’s rule over the island.
Economic developments

The Chinese Civil War led to severe inflation. Currency was issued in denominations of 1 million Old Taiwan dollars.
In the immediate aftermath of World War II, post-war economic conditions compounded with the then-ongoing Chinese Civil War caused severe inflation across China and in Taiwan, made worse by corruption. This gave way to the reconstruction process and reforms.
The KMT took control of Taiwan’s monopolies and property that had been government property under the Japanese passed into possession of the KMT party-state. Approximately 17% of Taiwan’s GNP was nationalized. Also, Taiwanese investors lost their claim to the Japanese bond certificates they possessed. These real estate holdings as well as the large amount gold reserves brought from the Chinese mainland helped KMT become one the wealthiest political parties in the world but also helped to ensure Taiwan recover quickly from war.
With the help of the China Aid Act of 1948 and the Chinese-American Joint Commission on Rural Reconstruction, the KMT authorities implemented a far-reaching and seemingly highly successful land reform program on Taiwan during the 1950s. They redistributed land among small farmers and compensated large landowners with commodities certificates and stock in state-owned industries. Although this left some large landowners impoverished, others turned their compensation into capital and started commercial and industrial enterprises. These entrepreneurs were to become Taiwan’s first industrial capitalists. Together with businessmen who fled from the mainland, they once again revived Taiwan’s prosperity previously ceased along with Japanese withdraw and managed Taiwan’s transition from an agricultural to a commercial, industrial economy.
Taiwan has developed steadily into a major international trading power with more than $218 billion in two-way trade. Tremendous prosperity on the island was accompanied by economic and social stability.
Taiwan’s phenomenal economic development earned it a spot as one of the Four Asian Tigers.
Democratic reforms

Until the early 1970s, the Republic of China was recognized as the sole legitimate government of China by the United Nations and most Western nations, both of which refused to recognize the People’s Republic of China on account of the Cold War. The KMT ruled Taiwan under martial law until the late 1980s, with the stated goal of being vigilant against Communist infiltration and preparing to retake the mainland. Therefore, political dissent was not tolerated.
The late 1970s and early 1980s were a turbulent time for Taiwanese as many of the people who had originally been oppressed and left behind by economic changes became members of the Taiwan’s new middle class. Free enterprise had allowed native Taiwanese to gain a powerful bargaining chip in their demands for respect for their basic human rights. The Kaohsiung Incident would be a major turning point for democracy in Taiwan.
Taiwan also faced setbacks in the international sphere. In 1971, the ROC government walked out of the United Nations shortly before it recognized the PRC government in Beijing as the legitimate holder of China’s seat in the United Nations. The ROC had been offered dual representation, but Chiang Kai-shek demanded to retain a seat on the UN Security Council, which was not acceptable to the PRC. Chiang expressed his decision in his famous “the sky is not big enough for two suns” speech. In October 1971, Resolution 2758 was passed by the UN General Assembly and “the representatives of Chiang Kai-shek” (and thus the ROC) was expelled from the UN and replaced as “China” by the PRC. In 1979, the United States switched recognition from Taipei to Beijing.
Chiang Kai-shek’s eventual successor, his son Chiang Ching-kuo, began to liberalize Taiwan’s political system. The events of 1979 highlighted the need for change and groups like Amnesty International were mobilizing a campaign against the government and President Chiang Ching-kuo. Finally, in 1986, the Democratic Progressive Party was formed illegally and inaugurated as the first opposition party in Taiwan to counter the KMT. A year later Chiang Ching-kuo lifted martial law. Chiang selected Lee Teng-hui, a native Taiwanese technocrat to be his Vice President. The move followed other reforms giving more power to the native Taiwanese and calmed anti-KMT sentiments during a period in which many other Asian autocracies were being shaken by People Power movements.
After the 1988 death of Chiang Ching-Kuo, his successor as President Lee Teng-hui continued to hand more government authority over to the native Taiwanese and democratize the government. Under Lee, Taiwan underwent a process of localization in which local culture and history was promoted over a pan-China viewpoint. Lee’s reforms included printing banknotes from the Central Bank rather than the Provincial Bank of Taiwan, and disbanding the Taiwan Provincial Government. Under Lee, the original members of the Legislative Yuan and National Assembly, elected in 1947 to represent mainland constituencies, were forced to resign in 1991. Restrictions on the use of Taiwanese languages in the broadcast media and in schools were lifted as well.
However, Lee failed to crack down on the massive corruption that developed under authoritarian KMT party rule. Many KMT loyalists feel Lee betrayed the R.O.C. by taking reforms too far, while other Taiwanese feel he did not take reforms far enough.
Lee ran as the incumbent in Taiwan’s first direct presidential election in 1996 against DPP candidate and former dissident, Peng Min-ming. This election prompted the PRC to conduct a series of missile tests in the Taiwan Strait to intimidate the Taiwanese electorate so that electorates would vote for other pro-unification candidates, Chen Li-an and Lin Yang-kang. The aggressive tactic prompted U.S. President Clinton to invoke the Taiwan Relations Act and dispatch two aircraft carrier battle groups into the region off Taiwan’s southern coast to monitor the situation, and PRC’s missile tests were forced to end earlier than planned. This incident is known as the 1996 Taiwan Straits Crisis.
One of Lee’s final acts as president was to declare on German radio that the ROC and the PRC have a special state to state relationship. Lee’s statement was met with the PRC’s People’s Army conducting military drills in Fujian and a frightening island-wide blackout in Taiwan, causing many to fear an attack. Lee’s assertion that the ROC is a sovereign and independent nation separate from the mainland was popular among Taiwanese. However, many suspected that his two nation theory was intended to ultimately create a Republic of Taiwan, which was not popular among the electorate.
In the 2000 presidential election marked the end to KMT rule. Opposition DPP candidate Chen Shui-bian won a three way race that saw the pro-reunification vote split by independent James Soong and KMT candidate Lien Chan. President Chen garnered 39% of the vote. In 2004, President Chen was re-elected to a second four year term after an apparent assassination attempt which occurred the day before the election. The gunman fired two shots, one grazing the President’s belly, the other grazing the vice president’s knee.