The island of Formosa may be the smallest of the major islands of the Philippine Republic, but it is no less unique than the others. With a diverse range of biomes and climes at the intersection of the Tropic of Cancer and its mountainous center, the island is home to many species of birds, plants, and animals, like the Formosan black bear and sika dear, that are unique to Formosa (the former especially making it a haven for bird researchers). One can in fact see the contrast from the tropical heat of the island's south, to the subtropical north, where the main city of Santa María[1] lies, to the coll temperate forests of the interior.
Formosa however, is also home to an assorted group of people that many linguists like Robert Blust regard as some of the earliest of the Austronesian languages, a group that has largely scattered from the island to the rest of the Philippine archipelago, and ultimately to the Malay Archipelago, the South Pacific, Madagascar, and beyond. Having lived on the island for at least 5,500 years, these peoples have lived out their lives relatively untouched, dwelling largely in the central mountains and on villages in the western alluvial plains. That is until, the Age of Exploration.
As European nations began expanding their reach across the rest of the world, the island became a strategic prize from which nations can control trade with the great Chinese empire as well as to the spice-rich sultanates of the south. The Dutch were the first to capitalize this, establishing a fort in the southwest in today's Nueva Almería [2] in an attempt to block Spanish and Portuguese trade to and from their ports in the Philippines and Macao respectively. In order to protect their bountiful trade routes, the Spanish would follow just two years later by establishing a series of forts in the north of the island, where the cities of Sanctissima Trinidad and Santo Domingo [3] still lie today.
The forts were small of course, undermanned compared to the Dutch operations, and might never have survived a campaign by the Dutch had the military commanders in Manila not saw the potential to further secure the rich Manila-Acapulco galleon trade by expelling the Dutch from the island. With the help of fresh troops and supplies constantly coming to the island, a swift campaign led by Sebastián Hurtado de Corcuera [4] would lay siege to Fort Zeelandia before finally falling in 1642. Spain's hold on Formosa would be tightly secure for the next three hundred years, but not before an incident in 1661 when Zheng Chenggong (better known to history as Koxinga) attempted to seize the island as a base for his band of Ming loyalists pining for the overthrow of the Manchu usurpers. They managed to take much of the relatively undefended southwest until Spanish reinforcements would finally drive them out. [5]
Meanwhile, the Formosan tribes of the mountains were relatively left undisturbed, despite attempts by the Spanish to convert them to Catholicism and thus civilize them. While the tribes of the plains like the Quetagalán, Siraya, and Taocas gradually assimillated to Spain's way of life, eventually abandoning their languages in favor of Spanish (and later Filipino [6]), those mountain tribes like the Amis, Atayal, Payuán, and Bunún continued to live out their lives as their ancestors once did.
However, by the turn of the 19th century, all was not well in the Spanish East Indies, which remained under Madrid's thumb even after the loss of most of their colonies in the Americas. But by the 1890s, stirrings of freedom began to emerge, which culminated in the Philippine Revolution and the declaration of independence on the twelfth of June 1898. By then, the United States, after the explosion of the
U.S.S. Maine led to armed conflict, sent Admiral George Dewey to assist the rebels in capturing Santa María, Tacao [7], and ultimately Manila. The resulting Treaty of Paris would see Spain lose all of its colonies, including all of the Spanish East Indies which would be handed over to the new Republic (save for Guam which was ceded to the U.S. ouright). [8] This would be followed by a seties of campaigns to "pacify" the mountainous east, ultimately bringing the last of the
Cordilleros under Philippine control.
Since then, things have largely quieted down across the island. In the years since the expulsion of the Dutch and the failure of Koxinga's invasion, the island's fate is firmly tied with the rest of the Philippine archipelago, with the vast majority of inhabitants being the descendants of immigrants from Luzon (particularly Ilocanos from the Cagayan valley) as well as the Chinese and European migrants throughout the centuries. Meanwhile, the Formosan tribes in the east are now agitating for increased protections for their unique cultures and political rights, something the national government in Manila is looking into.
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A few notes:
[1] Our world's Taipei City, Republic of China
[2] The fort in question is Fort Zeelandia (in this world, renamed Fort Nueva Almería after the Spanish takeover) in today's Tainan, ROC (in our world)
[3] Again, these were all Spanish ports and roughly correspond to our world's Tamsui and Keelung respectively.
[4] Both in our world and in this one, the governor of Spanish Philippines. In our world of course, he refused to reinforce the Spanish garrisons (and actually wound up court-martialed because of it), whereas in this world, he does.
[5] For all Koxinga's (ITW failed) bid to take Formosa, he did succeed (like in our world) in diverting resources away from conquering the Moro states in the south, ensuring their independence for the next three hundred years only to be crushed by the Americans (in our world) and the Republic (in this world).
[6] In this world, Filipino is actually a Spanish-based creole language that (in our world at least) takes much of its cues from the various dialects of Chavacano spoken in the archipelago (though our world's dialect of Ermita is largely used as the basis for the standard), though like Haitian Creole, it has a very simplified orthography largely based on the Abakada system, albeit with a few extra letters and acute accents. In terms of speakers, while the language itself is an official language alongside standard Spanish, almost all speakers largely speak it in informal contexts (though it has started to gain popularity from the late 20th century onwards).
[7] Our world's Kaohsiung City, ROC
[8] This is the reverse of our world's Treaty of Paris, where the U.S. kept the Philippines, Guam, and Puerto Rico and liberated Cuba. Meanwhile, the rest of the Spanish East Indies (present-day Palau, Micronesia, and the Northern Mariana Islands) would be sold to Germany, then to Japan, and ultimately the United States). In this world ofc, the U.S. just annexes Cuba and Puerto Rico (eventually becoming states), while freeing the Philippines under similar conditions it gave to the Cubans (such as a version of the Platt Amendment) in our world.
