Why go
Fort Zeelandia’s site at Anping, Japanese-era infrastructure and Taipei’s later memorial landscape belong to different chapters. A broad timeline helps visitors distinguish them instead of reading every old building as part of one colonial story. Tainan is especially useful for early maritime history; the capital tells much of the twentieth-century story.
The full story
People lived on the island long before written colonial records; archaeological evidence reaches back tens of thousands of years. Later farming communities are associated with the spread of Austronesian languages across a much wider maritime world. In the seventeenth century, Dutch traders built Fort Zeelandia at Tayouan, now Anping in Tainan. Spanish forces held northern ports for a shorter period. Zheng Chenggong, also known as Koxinga, expelled the Dutch in 1662, and Qing forces took control in 1683. Taiwan became a Japanese colony after the Qing defeat in 1895. Railways, public works and schools expanded, alongside coercion and resistance, including Indigenous uprisings. Japan’s surrender in 1945 brought Republic of China administration. The February 28 Incident of 1947 and subsequent repression remain central to postwar memory. After the government relocated to Taipei in 1949, martial law and one-party rule continued for decades. Its lifting in 1987 and later elections mark the shift to multiparty democracy. These changes are visible in the island’s forts, transport landscape, museums and memorials.