Opening of Treaty Ports

Following the Second Opium War, the Treaty of Tianjin (1858) and the Convention of Peking (1860) compelled the Qing to open Taiwan's ports to international trade — a turning point that would transform the island from an imperial backwater into a node of global commerce. Tamsui, Keelung, Anping, and Takao (present-day Kaohsiung) were designated as treaty ports, and by the 1860s foreign merchants, missionaries, and consular officials had established a permanent presence on Taiwan's shores.

The economic impact was swift and profound. Taiwan's tea — cultivated in the misty hills north of Taipei — became a prized export to the United States and Europe, rivaling the famous teas of Fujian. Camphor, essential for celluloid manufacturing and pharmaceutical production, made Taiwan one of the world's leading suppliers. Sugar continued its centuries-old role as a staple export to Japan and China. British trading houses such as Jardine, Matheson & Co. and Dent & Co. established operations, while John Dodd's pioneering direct export of Formosa Oolong to New York in 1869 opened an entirely new market. Alongside commerce, Presbyterian missionaries — notably George Leslie Mackay in the north and Thomas Barclay in the south — introduced modern hospitals, schools, and romanized writing systems for local languages.

This volume traces how the forced opening of Taiwan's ports drew the island into global networks of trade, religion, and diplomacy, fundamentally altering its economy, society, and relationship with the outside world in the decades before Japanese colonization.