Taiwan becomes a european settler colony

[Strategos' Risk]

My father's side is like all Taipei, I believe. So perhaps not. But it's not a very big island. Let's just tell each other, random strangers on the internet, the results of genealogical tests if either of us take them, okay?

I don't know anything about my alleged ancestor except my full-blooded Han mother says that my eyebrows look European. I need DNA evidence dammit.

 

[Color-Copycat]

The strange thing about these iffy family records is that its a bit counter-intuitive to the whole Confucian obsession with intricate family trees and detailed record-keeping of ancestral information. For example, my father's family has been dirt poor for as long as anyone can remember, yet they can accurately trace their lineage back to the 17th century when they first immigrated from the mainland to one of those little islands in the straits (don't remember which one). They have volumes and volumes of detailed recountings of the lives of individual ancestors, etc, etc. Admittedly it's all variations on blacksmith-fisherman-farmer-insert boring occupation here, but it's incredibly well-kept.

Whereas on my mother's side, where they have the craziest stories about being descended from aborigines and Dutch people, there's nothing substantial.

edit: lol, I get the same shit about my nose. "Oh, son, your nose looks so European! See, I always said we had Dutch blood!"

 

[Julius Vogel]

The Maoris like to say hello. They're not dead nor near dead.

Well, they were for a long period thought to be practically at death's door. Or at least that was the main settler narrative until after WW2

So far as I can tell, the Maori took till about the WW2 area to really recover from colonisation and their demographic and language renaissance started a decade or two after the War finished, along with the general post war boom. The European Settler population and the Maori populations now are pretty mixed as well, so most Maori have reasonably recent European ancestry (and almost certainly will have early settlement era European ancestry from the Whalers)

 

[jackalope]

I didn't get it from here, but it does back me up in a way.

http://eh.net/encyclopedia/article/olds.taiwan.economic.history

A good link/excellent references for an internet source. If it is true of the early pre Dutch years having a few dozen to hundred Japanese element, then, wow, a great many people now in Taiwan really do have some Nippon blood from that time. Interesting we never hear of it. It was the era of Japanese trading in other countries barred from ever returning home at penalty of death, setting up colonies in Malaya, etc which lasted till WWII culture intact, Koxinga being half Japanese, too. I retract my guess. If you ever find the figure relating to the Japanese 1895-1945 mixed marriages, feel free to send.

Doing another search mentions that in years about 1100 AD/CE bands of Japanese conquer portions of Taiwan, or "1400s From this century onward, Japan regards eastern half of Taiwan as Japanese.
." Wonder what that is all about? Extremely mountainous areas as the eastern half exists are hard to conquer. Probably the coastal plain near Hualien, if true. Doesn't seem to be AH, though the author writes a present day one. Nothing wrong found with the chronology, but no references listed either: http://www.spythrillers.com/thunderfiles/chrontaiwan.html

 

[jackalope]

Here is an Aborigine/Japanese marriage book (only about 200K pop in '45): http://dspace.lafayette.edu/handle/10385/57


An interesting part is page 325 where it states "The participants themselves, Japanese males and Atayal women, however, ended up divorced, abandoned, dead or disgraced as a result of the 'political-marriage' policy." Pg 343 has the problem of the Japanese government dealing with the widespread practice of multiple wifes/concubines to individual Japanese men, and a couple pages before that of resentment for native men, and that some uprisings were blamed specifically of illicit relations with Japanese circa 1910. One of a few examples, Pg. 350 To reestablish control, the Nantou district head of Aborigine Affairs sent Shimoyama to run things, after ordering him to marry Pixo Doleh, the daughter of Malepa's headman. (a good many of these sound a bit like Alexander the Great's forced marriages). The conclusion on page 352 indicates both sham and attentive results were the result from the Japanese government shot gun approach to marriage as a political solution, and the negative effects even with successful marriages caused problems that were never solved, although all of this is outside the POD for this thread.

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[Finn]

You could probably get it up to South African levels of white people, but not North American or Australian levels.

 

[kasumigenx]

Reviving this thread.

 

[Pachac]

You could probably get it up to South African levels of white people, but not North American or Australian levels.

Why not? The Bantu were farmers and Herders and the only reason the Boers were able to settle in the Highveld was because the Mfecane thinned the numbers of tribes in the region.

In contrast Taiwan is full of mainly hunter-gatherers.

 

[kasumigenx]

Why not? The Bantu were farmers and Herders and the only reason the Boers were able to settle in the Highveld was because the Mfecane thinned the numbers of tribes in the region.

In contrast Taiwan is full of mainly hunter-gatherers.

I agree on that..

 

[elkarlo]

To be honest, I am still surprised at how little interest there was in Taiwan, all the way to the 1600's. Simply baffling that the Chinese only took it to spite the Dutch.

Also the Japanese should have invaded it before Korea, if they were ever serious about invading China.

 

[elkarlo]

This isn't quite true. The Chinese weren't present on Taiwan in any appreciable number until the Dutch established a colony. The Chinese government itself wasn't even really aware of Taiwan until pretty late into the Ming dynasty. Most of the Taiwanese population is descended from the aborigines in the maternal line since most of the settlers from China were male and unable to bring families over. Aborigines may only represent 2% of the population today, but that doesn't take into account the unrecognized tribes (which would almost double the present population of aborigines) or people with a quarter or less aboriginal ancestry.

Also, low population density is a little misleading. While populations were rather low, the plains tribes lived in villages of up to a thousand or so and villages were often clustered with large distances between clusters of villages. The area where the Dutch settled was fairly heavily populated already by the Siraya. Later Chinese migration absorbed the plains tribes into the population.

I think the low pop density thing come from later. When the tribes were living in the east, which are SUPER mountainous and get rather cold. It's hard to live there, so of course the pop was pretty low.

 

[elkarlo]

My father's side is like all Taipei, I believe. So perhaps not. But it's not a very big island. Let's just tell each other, random strangers on the internet, the results of genealogical tests if either of us take them, okay?

I don't know anything about my alleged ancestor except my full-blooded Han mother says that my eyebrows look European. I need DNA evidence dammit.

That is kinda interesting. I have seen some of the Natives in taiwan, some look Indonesian, while others look rather Eurasian. Wonder how many Euros went rouge and became pirates and settled on Taiwan? be interesting to see the genetic impact. My fiance is from Sendai, and somehow she has slightly brown hair. Wonder how that happened. Wish there was a test for it.

 

[mosodake]

edit: lol, I get the same shit about my nose. "Oh, son, your nose looks so European! See, I always said we had Dutch blood!"

Haha, I get that about my beard cause like half of it is red.

Why not? The Bantu were farmers and Herders and the only reason the Boers were able to settle in the Highveld was because the Mfecane thinned the numbers of tribes in the region.

In contrast Taiwan is full of mainly hunter-gatherers.

I believe all the Taiwanese tribes did quite a bit of farming along with hunting/gathering. The degree of dependency on farming for food varied with the tribe, but millet played a central role in their cultures with the exception of the Tao, where taro is the staple crop.

I think the low pop density thing come from later. When the tribes were living in the east, which are SUPER mountainous and get rather cold. It's hard to live there, so of course the pop was pretty low.

No, the aboriginal population was always pretty low despite the abundant natural resources, ample room, and agriculture. While their technology was certainly able to feed a larger population, there were often cultural restrictions in place that limited population growth.

 

[elkarlo]

No, the aboriginal population was always pretty low despite the abundant natural resources, ample room, and agriculture. While their technology was certainly able to feed a larger population, there were often cultural restrictions in place that limited population growth.

Wow, that's really odd. How was Taiwan, so close to China, so backwards? even the Phil had some serious rice farming tech. Why did the culture on Taiwan lag so hard?

 

[kasumigenx]

Wow, that's really odd. How was Taiwan, so close to China, so backwards? even the Phil had some serious rice farming tech. Why did the culture on Taiwan lag so hard?

Even the people in what is known now as Luzon had their own heirarchy of rulers and society(The ruling class there did not like China and had problems with their Jihadi neighbor, Brunei and Majapahit, I think they should had stayed more close with Sri Vijaya and it's successor Malacca for protection) the same was for Zhuangs they had this kind of heirarchy, the same is for Hainanese, Taiwan was left out.

 

[kasumigenx]

Haha, I get that about my beard cause like half of it is red.


I believe all the Taiwanese tribes did quite a bit of farming along with hunting/gathering. The degree of dependency on farming for food varied with the tribe, but millet played a central role in their cultures with the exception of the Tao, where taro is the staple crop.


No, the aboriginal population was always pretty low despite the abundant natural resources, ample room, and agriculture. While their technology was certainly able to feed a larger population, there were often cultural restrictions in place that limited population growth.

I can say the same for Inuits.

 

[mosodake]

Wow, that's really odd. How was Taiwan, so close to China, so backwards? even the Phil had some serious rice farming tech. Why did the culture on Taiwan lag so hard?

Technologically speaking, Taiwan did not really lag behind parts of the Philippines or Indonesia. It had rice and millet farming systems as well as primitive iron smelting IIRC. It was more the culture that held the population back from growing and the lack of influence from foreign cultures. According to Dutch reports of the Siraya and other plains tribes, the women were not allowed to bear children until their late 20s or early 30s. Boys were not allowed to marry until they were considered men, which often meant conducting a successful headhunting raid on a neighboring tribe. After the Dutch and first waves of migration from China came, the population on Taiwan exploded. Since the majority of settlers to Taiwan were male, the population growth probably came from intermarriage and disruption of traditional cultural values.

 

[eschaton]

I'm thinking that if a European power held onto Taiwan for any period of time, it would alter the racial dynamics considerably, but not in the way people think.

Basically, I think the Dutch (and later, perhaps the British, or someone else) would want to do everything they could to keep Taiwan out of the Chinese sphere. This would probably entail some level of white settlement, but quite likely a lot movement of laborers from elsewhere in Asia. Establishing plantations which drew on a mixture of Indians, Malays, Javanese, and a smattering of African slaves, perhaps, would make for a highly diverse populace which wouldn't want to be part of China, but also wouldn't be a good fit anywhere else.

The end result would essentially be a giant Trinidad, Suriname, or Mauritius - a veritable constellation of races, with numerous examples of admixture. Europeans might leave at de-colonization, but could also stick around and remain the economic elite. The lingua franca would probably be a European tongue or some creole derivative, although it's unlikely Christianity would develop into the overwhelmingly dominant religion, given such a heavy leavening of Muslims and Hindus.

 

[elkarlo]

Technologically speaking, Taiwan did not really lag behind parts of the Philippines or Indonesia. It had rice and millet farming systems as well as primitive iron smelting IIRC. It was more the culture that held the population back from growing and the lack of influence from foreign cultures. According to Dutch reports of the Siraya and other plains tribes, the women were not allowed to bear children until their late 20s or early 30s. Boys were not allowed to marry until they were considered men, which often meant conducting a successful headhunting raid on a neighboring tribe. After the Dutch and first waves of migration from China came, the population on Taiwan exploded. Since the majority of settlers to Taiwan were male, the population growth probably came from intermarriage and disruption of traditional cultural values.

wow, that is really strange. Not sure how that came about. Seems rather a random development.

 

[jackalope]

Establishing plantations which drew on a mixture of Indians, Malays, Javanese, and a smattering of African slaves, perhaps, would make for a highly diverse populace which wouldn't want to be part of China, but also wouldn't be a good fit anywhere else.

The lingua franca would probably be a European tongue or some creole derivative, although it's unlikely Christianity would develop into the overwhelmingly dominant religion, given such a heavy leavening of Muslims and Hindus.

During the Dutch period, three Black slaves escaped and holed up in a cave in this island off Taiwan when an attempt to steal a dingy boat from some English ship (I think it was English) and take it back to Africa. The English decided not to go into the cave, and instead built a fire to kill the occupants that way. This site calls it Black Ghost Cave:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lamay_Island

To the Dutch interests:
Chinese are a) available b)close c) industrious
but are also a) unreliable b) rebelious c) want to own at least some of the land

My guess is instead of Javanese, a reliable group would be the Malluccas, who were even from those days heavily Christian and just as close. All would be less than the Chinese for a days work, and none would want to be slaves. Making a one year stay is a possible way for most of the Chinese to be muted, with a favored few having a few acres.