子曰以不教民戰是謂棄之。
The Master said: “To lead people to war without teaching them is to throw them away.”
With Zheng Kezang, Zheng Jing, and most of the state apparatus having deparated for the New World, life on Taiwan degenerated into a state of benign anarchy. Though Feng Xifan, Zheng Jing's chief minister, was nominally in charge, in practice he exercised very little authority outside of the palace grounds. His authority had been undercut from the start when Zheng Jing chose to take his youngest son, Zheng Keshuang, who was married to Feng's daughter, with him on the second voyage. Feng had been hoping to use the youngest Zheng as a puppet king and bargaining chip with the Manchus. With this possibility blocked off, he was left stewing and largely powerless. In the end, the third expedition to the New World thus proved to be something of a desultory affair. Leaving port in the spring of 1682, the passengers were an odd mix of trading families hoping to get out of Taiwan while the getting was good and malcontents whom Feng Xifan hoped to get as far away as possible. Only four junks left Anping Harbor that year. The third expedition was at a further disadvantage – none of the crew were among those who had been to the New World and returned. They were thus relying solely on second-hand reports. This had not prevented the first expedition from finding the New World. The third expedition would be less lucky. While it is clear that they passed by the east coast of Japan, due to surviving records from coastal watchtowers, none of the four ships arrived in the New World. It was long assumed that the four junks had simply sunk at sea due to stormy weather. However, the recent discovery by archaeologists of the Dharma Initiative on Khvostof Island in the Aleutians perhaps gives us a different ending to this tragedy. Frozen spars appearing to be from a ship with Chinese writing carved into them as well as human remains were found on the island, likely indicating that at least one of the ships, blown off course, arrived at the desolate island only for the passengers to succumb due to lack of food. While conspiracy theorists have had a field day with the inscriptions, which reference a mysterious “smoke monster” and warn repeatedly of unnamed “others,” we need subscribe to no such flights of fancy. The travelers got lost, and they died of starvation.
While the third voyage ended in tragedy, the fourth ended with the highest percentage of ships surviving out of any of the four expeditions. Launched in the spring of 1683, it took place in an atmosphere of panic, for it was clear that the long-awaited Manchu invasion of Taiwan was now finally at hand. The remaining Zheng loyalists, including our forlorn viceroy Feng Xifan, as well as all those fearing reprisals by the invading Manchu forces, crowded on nine great junks and set sail in early April. More would have joined them, but there was not enough food available to supply any other ships. Eight of the nine ships, containing more than thirteen hundred travelers, arrived safely at Fuming Bay as the summer of 1683 drew to a close. The fourth expedition also brought to an end the first wave of Chinese settlement in the New World. Slightly more than five thousand souls had survived the Pacific crossing and were now engaged in a struggle to carve out a new life for themselves in Ningjing. While their great experiment had just begun, back on Taiwan, an entirely different kind of new era was about to start.
The Manchu armada, commanded by Admiral Shi Lang, left port from Quanzhou in Fujian Province in early July of 1683. No expense had been spared in preparing the invasion force, which consisted of hundreds of ships and at least twenty thousand men. All were surprised to realize that, in fact, Taiwan could have been conquered by three men in a rowboat. Though the Qing were aware that the Zheng regime was in the process of disintegration – a steady stream of defectors and discontented former Zheng partisans coming back across the Taiwan Strait made that fact clear enough – they were completely unaware of the fact that the Zheng regime had decamped to the other side of the world. Shi Lang and his armada became aware of this when they stormed the garrison of Penghu in the Pescadores Islands, the gateway to Taiwan, only to realize that there was no garrison on Penghu. The fortifications were completely vacant. So too, when the armada arrived in Anping Harbor and demanded the town's surrender, were they surprised to realize that there was literally no governing authority to offer surrender to them. For all intents and purposes, Taiwan fell to the Qing Dynasty without a shot fired in anger. As they attempted to ascertain what, exactly, had happened, Shi Lang and his subordinates heard all manner of outrageous stories regarding the Zhengs and where they had fled to. Some said Luzon, some said Japan, some said a strange land beyond the sea, while others maintained that Zheng Jing had departed for the moon. Either way, it was clear beyond the shadow of a doubt that there was no more threat from Taiwan. The Ming loyalists had dispersed or departed or maybe had just died. The final challenge to Manchu supremacy had been removed, and the Qing Dynasty was now unrivaled in its ascendance. So, they took a last look around at Taiwan, got back on their ships, and left.
The Qing decision to abandon Taiwan – to leave it un-garrisoned, not to attempt to administer it or bring it into the empire – seems outrageously negligent from a modern perspective. In the context of the times, though, it was a prudent and sensible move (1). Taiwan had never been administered by any Chinese dynasty. In the eyes of the Qing court, it was a grubby wilderness full of savages, and occupying the island would be a massive waste of men and money. Taiwan was such an inhospitable wasteland, said many officials, that the Zheng rebels had been forced to abandon it after scarcely twenty years there in exile. Surely such a miserable mudball deserved to remain outside the imperial domain, for it had nothing to offer the great Qing Empire.
While this was the majority view at court, there were dissenters. Shi Lang penned a series of strongly-worded memorials arguing for the necessity of occupying Taiwan. He argued that not only was Taiwan a worthwhile prize in its own right, but also that to occupy it was to deny it to future enemies who could use it as a base from which to attack the mainland (2). As usual, it was the young but vigorous Kangxi Emperor who had the final word in the debate. He came down firmly on the side of abandoning Taiwan, saying famously that, “By acquiring it one gains nothing, and by not having it one gives up nothing” (得之所無加，不得無所捐 ). The Qing troops repatriated those Han Chinese settlers in Taiwan who wished to return to the mainland and were willing to swear an oath of allegiance to the Manchus. An imperial edict was issued barring any subject of the Qing Dynasty from sailing to Taiwan on pain of death. Then the armada left, taking with it Chinese control over Taiwan. What seemed at the time to be a fairly minor decision had consequences that ultimately reverberated around the world. Indeed, the Manchu armada had scarcely left port on their way back to the mainland when the great Scramble for Taiwan began . . .
NOTES
1- A debate regarding whether to keep or abandon Taiwan occurred OTL as well after the successful Manchu invasion of Taiwan. Obviously, they decided to keep it in real life.
2- Wow, how prescient! It's worth noting that Shi Lang made these points only because he was hoping to be granted Taiwan as essentially a private fief, so he's throwing any “keep it!” argument he can at the wall hoping it will stick.
NEXT- we're going back to the other side of the Pacific for a look at the California colony through the end of 1683 and the arrival of the fourth and final expedition from Taiwan. That will bring Part 1 of the timeline to an end. As always, thanks for reading.
- there are about 3,800 colonists in California. There will be a third and fourth expedition, each of which will be smaller than the first two. This is due to the lack of a functioning government on Taiwan after the removal of much of the bureaucracy in the second expedition, which hampers organizational efforts. There will be roughly 5,000 colonists at the end of 1683, when the flow will be cut off after the Manchu invasion of Taiwan.
