Koxinga and the Zheng Dynasty: The First Han Chinese Government on Taiwan (1662–1683)
15 volumes
Vol. 1
In May 1661, following the successful landing of Zheng Koxinga’s twenty-five thousand elite troops at the Luermen channels, this emerald island—governed by the Dutch for thirty-eight years—witnessed the dawn of its very first Han Chinese regime. At this historical crossroads, though Fort Zeelandia remained locked in a fierce defense under the Dutch Governor, Frederick Coyett, the Prince of Yanping could not wait to commence his grand nation-building project upon the coastal plains. He decreed that the captured Fort Provintia in Chikan be transformed into the "Chengtian Prefecture," serving as the supreme imperial capital of the Ming Dynasty’s overseas orthodoxy, while establishing Tianxing and Wannian counties to the north and south. In a grand proclamation, Koxinga formally christened the island "Dongdu" (The Eastern Capital of the Ming). This was never meant to be a mere temporary refuge; it was a sovereign kingdom carved out of the wilderness by a desperate warlord whose mainland dreams had fractured, a final, sacred sanctuary for a fallen empire.
Vol. 2
In the early days of 1662, the air over Anping was thick with the acrid stench of gunpowder and the heavy, salty tang of the sea breeze. This massive brick fortress, once known to the Dutch as "Zeelandia," now flew the vibrant crimson banners of the Ming Dynasty’s Prince of Yanping.
Vol. 3
In the early summer of 1662, as the founding king, Zheng Koxinga, drew his last breath amidst frantic, agonizing cries inside Fort Zeelandia, the political climate across both sides of the Taiwan Strait plummeted to absolute freezing point. The sudden demise of the warlord did not merely leave behind an unsolidified overseas regime; it unleashed a devastating moral deadlock born from his own final, draconian decree of "honor-killing" his own family.
Vol. 4
Zheng Jing inherited the Kingdom of Tungning in the summer of 1662 amid circumstances that should have ended it. He was in Xiamen when word of his father's death arrived, and a faction in Taiwan had already proclaimed his uncle Zheng Xi regent. It took a brief but resolute expedition across the strait to reassert the succession before Zheng Jing could finally turn to the work of governing an island still raw from conquest. What followed was a near-two-decade reign (1662–1681) that, quietly and without the father's mythic stature, became the true founding era of an organized Taiwanese polity.
Vol. 5
In the year 1665, in the Ningnan Quarter of Tainan, the tropical sun pierced through the vibrant canopy of flamboyant trees, casting its warm glow upon the crimson walls of a newly constructed palace. This was the very first Confucian Temple in the history of Taiwan, destined to become the island’s highest institution of learning.
Vol. 6
In February 1662 the Dutch marched out of Fort Zeelandia and thirty-eight years of rule ended. Textbooks usually stop there. In fact they were gone for two years.
Vol. 7
Under Koxinga and Zheng Jing, Taiwan absorbed what was, for its time, a demographic flood. The 25,000 soldiers who crossed with Koxinga in 1661 did not leave; over the following two decades tens of thousands more Fujianese — some driven from the mainland by Qing coastal clearance policies, others drawn by the promise of land — made the eight-hour crossing from Xiamen or Quanzhou in shallow-draft junks. By the time the kingdom fell in 1683, the Han population of Taiwan had grown perhaps tenfold over what the Dutch had counted, and the island's ethnic map had been permanently redrawn.
Vol. 8
In the 1660s, the landscape of central Taiwan offered a stark contrast to the highly sinicized, scholarly atmosphere taking root in Tainan. This was a wild, untamed frontier nourished by the currents of the Dadu and Zhuoshui rivers.
Vol. 9
In the summer of 1670, a majestic vessel named The Experiment, flying the flag of the English East India Company, glided gracefully into Anping Harbor in Tainan. At that moment, Taiwan was suffocating under the harsh maritime embargo of the Qing Empire’s "Great Clearance" policy, which had severed almost all supplies and trade revenues from the Chinese mainland.
Vol. 10
In the winter of 1673, a political storm of cataclysmic proportions erupted across the half-shattered domain of the Qing Empire. Wu Sangui, the Prince of West-Pacification in Yunnan, Shang Zhixin in Guangdong, and Geng Jingzhong, the Prince of South-Pacification in Fujian, rose in open rebellion against the young Kangxi Emperor over his aggressive policies to dismantle their fiefdoms, a conflict known to history as the "Revolt of the Three Feudatories."
Vol. 11
In the deep twilight of an autumn day in 1681, inside the secluded inner chambers of the Anping Royal Palace in Tainan, a white-haired, grief-stricken matriarch wept softly, leaning on her maidservants for support. She was Lady Dong, the Grand Dowager consort of the founding king, Koxinga.
Vol. 12
In the golden autumn of September 1683, a suffocating silence fell over the sunset-drenched city of Tainan. The bustling ports of Erhulmen and Anping, once the vibrant crown jewels of the Age of Sail, were no longer filled with merchant vessels. Instead, the horizon was choked with the dense, looming fleet of the Qing Empire, their banners rippling ominously in the sea breeze.
Vol. 13
In the sweltering midsummer of 1683, the winds over the Taiwan Strait violently shifted. This was the ultimate showdown that would decide the fate of Taiwan, a clash filled with profound irony—a duel between former brothers-in-arms. Standing atop the flagship of a massive 200-ship fleet was Admiral Shi Lang, entrusted by the Kangxi Emperor with the supreme command of the Qing navy.
Vol. 14
In the sweltering midsummer of 1683, a suffocating aura of despair hung over the city of Tainan. Ominous news had traveled across the black waters of the strait—the main naval forces of the Zheng regime had been utterly obliterated at the Battle of Penghu, and the twelve-year-old puppet king, Zheng Keshuang, along with his ministers, had already resolved to tender their submission to the Qing Empire.
Vol. 15
The Kingdom of Tungning did not so much collapse as unravel from within. When Zheng Jing died of illness in March 1681, he was barely forty and the failed Fujian campaigns of the previous decade had drained both his treasury and his political capital. The succession was immediately contested. A palace faction led by the general Feng Xifan murdered Zheng Jing's designated heir, the competent and popular Zheng Kezang, within days of the king's death, and installed Kezang's twelve-year-old half-brother Zheng Keshuang on the throne. The coup fractured the court: loyalist officers defected, Chen Yonghua's reform apparatus went into eclipse, and intelligence of the disarray traveled quickly across the strait.
