Taiwan - the country's history

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The history of Taiwan dates back tens of thousands of years to the earliest known evidence of human habitation. The sudden appearance of an agrarian culture around 3000 BC is believed to reflect the arrival of the ancestors of today's Taiwanese aborigines. The island was colonized by the Dutch in the 17th century, followed by an influx of Han Chinese including Hakka immigrants from areas of Fujian and Guangdong of mainland China, across the Taiwan Strait. The Spanish also built a settlement in the north for a brief period, but were driven out by the Dutch in 1642. In 1662, Koxinga, a loyalist of the Ming dynasty, who had lost control of mainland China in 1644, defeated the Dutch and established a base of operations on the island. His forces were defeated by the Qing dynasty in 1683, and parts of Taiwan became increasingly integrated into the Qing empire. Following the First Sino-Japanese War in 1895, the Qing ceded the island, along with Penghu, to the Empire of Japan. Taiwan produced rice and sugar to be exported to the Empire of Japan, and also served as a base for the Japanese colonial expansion into Southeast Asia and the Pacific during World War II....