Paleolithic pebble tools were made in what is now the town of Changbin as early as 10,000 BCE. The same culture has also been unearthed in the southern region of Eluanbi. This culture may be related to contemporary settlements in the Chinese coastal province of Fujian.
10,000 years ago, rising sea levels from the end of the Last Glacial Period created the Taiwan Strait. The strait separates the island of Taiwan from the Chinese mainland to this day. Rising sea levels also created the Penghu Islands off the western coast of Taiwan.
The Neolithic Dapenkeng culture emerged in northern Taiwan circa 3500 BCE. Although the origins of this culture are unclear, and several potential ancestor cultures on the mainland have been identified, it is generally accepted that the culture was fostered by Austronesian migrants from China.
In the next few hundred years, the Dapenkeng culture spread around the Taiwanese coast, without penetrating the more mountainous inland region. It spread to the Penghu Islands as well. Dapenkeng society gradually transitioned from horticulture and hunting- gathering to rice and millet agriculture.
Eventually, the Dapenkeng culture diversified into a number of local cultures. Sometime after, some Austronesians left Taiwan, going on to colonize maritime regions from Polynesia to the Malay Archipelago to Madagascar. The Austronesians who remained in Taiwan are in the Formosan branch.
The Formosans kept up contact with their Austronesian relatives in the Philippines, exchanging valuable goods like jade. By the 5th century, Taiwan entered the Iron Age through metalworking technology introduced from the Philippines, leading to the emergence of new cultures.
In time, the Formosans branched out into the Taiwanese indigenous peoples, each speaking one of the related Formosan languages. They are generally divided into the Plains and Mountains peoples. Their clans were matriarchal while their tribes were patriarchal, and ancestor worship was integral.
At some point before 1624, some of the western Plains peoples united into the Tatuturo confederation, more commonly known by its Dutch name, Middag (“midday”). The confederation was centered in the modern Taiwanese city of Taichung and spanned 27 towns at its height, according to Dutch records.\
Two European empires colonized parts of Taiwan in the 1620s. The Dutch settled the south, based in modern-day Tainan. The Spanish, meanwhile, colonized the north, based in modern-day Keelung. The Europeans called the island “Formosa,” from Portuguese Ilha Formosa, or “beautiful island.”
Spain was ousted from Formosa by the Dutch in 1642. Dutch Formosa served as a trading post with China and Japan; its primary exports included the hide of the local sika deer as well as sugar, which was cultivated with the help of Chinese migrants. Indigenous peoples were suppressed and displaced.
In 1662, the Chinese warlord Zheng Chenggong, also known as Koxinga, defeated the Dutch and established the Kingdom of Tungning. Zheng was loyal to the fallen Ming dynasty of China, as opposed to the new Qing dynasty, founded by Manchu invaders from the north.
Zheng had hoped that Tungning would be a base from which Ming loyalists could eventually retake the Chinese mainland. The kingdom sponsored the Revolt of the Three Feudatories against Qing in the 1670s. The revolt failed, however, and Qing conquered Tungning in 1683.
Qing named the island “Taiwan,” likely after the Indigenous Taivoan people, and integrated it as a prefecture within Fujian Province. Though the Qing government limited migration to Taiwan until the 1760s, Han Chinese settlers slowly drove Indigenous peoples out of their traditional hunting grounds.
These seized lands were repurposed for agriculture. Han Chinese colonization of the island was often driven more by the settlers themselves than the government. The Plains peoples were conquered first, as their lands were more suitable for agriculture, and they were slowly acculturated by the Chinese.
As was the case during the Dutch era, most of the settlers were Hoklo people—a Han Chinese subgroup from Fujian that speaks Hokkien Chinese. A smaller but significant number of Hakka people, who speak Hakka Chinese, also arrived in Taiwan. By 1790, there were 940,000 Han Chinese on the island.
Relations between the settlers and the Qing government were often strained. In 1786, the Lin Shuangwen rebellion caused Qing to enlist the help of Indigenous warriors, keeping up an alliance with 93 Plains villages afterwards. At the same time, Qing forbade eastward settlement, to the ire of Han colonists.
Government policies began to take a different turn starting in 1796. In 1810, Qing authorized the colonization of Gamalan, a region of northeastern Taiwan. This was the first official Han settlement of lands east of the mountains. Meanwhile, the Han Chinese population ballooned to 1.9 million.
The Indigenous population of Gamalan were put into tiny reservations, “clearly insufficient” for normal living (Ye, 2018). Each village was left with an average of 52 jia, or 125 acres. Qing framed this as a protective measure, claiming that the natives were too “stupid” to defend themselves against settlers.
Generally, the Qing government got more involved in Taiwanese affairs starting with Gamalan. Whereas settlers could apply for large land grants in the western plains, settlers in Gamalan were limited to 5 jia (12 acres) each, to be developed as government estates.
Settlement policies changed again after 1875, at which point Qing became determined to eventually colonize all of Taiwan. Any uncolonized land that was not actively controlled by natives was considered government property. The island was finally made into its own Taiwan Province in 1887.
This was in response to the 1884 French invasion of Taiwan, after which Qing realized the island’s strategic importance. Japan, having recently annexed the Ryukyu Islands just east of Taiwan, also coveted the island. In 1895, after losing the First Sino-Japanese War, Qing ceded Taiwan to Japan.
Japan assumed full control after defeating the Republic of Formosa that same year. The Japanese implemented land reforms and forced all natives into reservations, using landmines and electrified fences, by 1924. Taiwan also began to industrialize under Japanese colonial rule.
In 1945, after Japan’s defeat in World War II, Taiwan was returned to the Republic of China, controlled by the Nationalist Party (KMT). Four years later, the KMT retreated to Taiwan, having lost the mainland to the communists. The mainlander refugees introduced Mandarin Chinese to Taiwan.
KMT officials declared martial law and ruled Taiwan as a single-party dictatorship. Having already killed 20,000 civilians during 1947’s February 28 incident, the KMT continually repressed dissent through White Terror. The KMT regime also suppressed Taiwanese Hokkien in favor of Mandarin.
After developing a strong export-oriented economy since the 1960s, Taiwan democratized in the early 90s. The new Democratic Progressive Party (DPP) is often associated with Taiwanization, or the movement to adopt a new Taiwanese identity, but Taiwan still officially claims the mantle of China.
The progressive DPP and the conservative KMT are the two main political parties in Taiwan today. The former is primarily supported by Hokkien speaking regions, while the KMT enjoys more support in Mandarin-speaking regions. Many speakers of each language are bilingual in the other.
As of today, Taiwan is one of the most developed, democratic, and socially liberal countries in the world. However, Taiwan’s political status remains precarious, with the world at large having recognized the mainland’s People's Republic of China as the legitimate government of China in 1971.