Isle of Time
Dutch and Spanish Colonial Taiwan: Maritime Trade, Missionaries, and Indigenous Encounters (1624–1662)

Sea and Fortress

16 Volumes

Vol. 1

Two Years in Penghu

On 11 July 1622 the fleet of Cornelis Reijersen, commander for the Dutch East India Company, sailed ...

1 images
Vol. 2

The Dutch Arrival

In the late summer of 1624, several colossal armed merchantmen flying the red, white, and blue trico...

2 images
Vol. 3

Fort Zeelandia

Following the landing of the Dutch on the Tayouan sandbar in the late summer of 1624, they were conf...

3 images
Vol. 4

Spanish Northern Taiwan

In the pale dawn of 1626, as the Pacific monsoons swept across the northeastern cape of Formosa, sev...

3 images
Vol. 5

The Hamada Yahee Incident

In the early seventeenth century, Taiwan was not yet the Chinese island that would later be ruled by...

2 images
Vol. 6

Indigenous Encounters

Before the colossus of the Age of Sail crashed through Formosa's pristine coastlines, this emerald i...

2 images
Vol. 7

The Madou She War

In the early seventeenth century, the southwestern plains of Taiwan were not a unified land ruled by...

Vol. 8

The Cave on Lamey

In October 1622 a Dutch East India Company ship, the Gouden Leeuw, put in at a coral island off the ...

1 images
Vol. 9

The Staff With the Silver Head

On 20 February 1636 the Dutch called the first assembly of villages at Sinkan. Each headman who atte...

1 images
Vol. 10

The Sinckan Script

In the early seventeenth century, the plains of Taiwan had no written language....

2 images
Vol. 11

The Banishment of the Inibs

Siraya religion was in the hands of women. The inibs conducted the rites, treated the sick and read ...

1 images
Vol. 12

The Deer That Built an Empire

If a modern person could travel back to seventeenth-century Taiwan, the most astonishing sight would...

Vol. 13

The Last Bastion of San Salvador

In 1626 the Spanish came north from Manila and raised the fortress of San Salvador on Sheliao Island...

1 images
Vol. 14

The Guo Huaiyi Rebellion

In the 1650s, Taiwan entered a period of unprecedented population growth....

Vol. 15

A Map That Changed a Dynasty

In history, some people build dynasties with their own hands....

Vol. 16

The Siege of Fort Zeelandia

On the pale morning of April 30, 1661, as the heavy mists over the Tayouan sea slowly dissolved in t...

3 images