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In 1590, Portuguese explorers passed an island off the Southeast coast of China and named it Formosa Island, which translates to beautiful island. When the Dutch East Indies company arrived, they called the island Taoyuan, meaning terrace bay. This name evolved into Taiwan. -
During the Dutch occupation of Taiwan from 1624-1662, they brought Chinese laborers to the island to work on sugar plantations and rice fields. The Chinese frequently worked and then returned to China with money for their families. The Chinese that stayed married the indigenous population and the Taiwanese were born. There are still famous Dutch forts in Tainan and Danshui.
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Cession of Taiwan (1895)
The First Sino-Japanese War broke out between Qing dynasty China and Japan in 1894 following a dispute over the sovereignty of Korea. Following its defeat, China ceded the islands of Taiwan and Penghu to Japan in the Treaty of Shimonoseki, signed on April 17, 1895. -
The February 28 incident, also rendered as the February 28 massacre,[1][2] 228 incident,[3] or 228 massacre[3] (from Chinese: 二二八事件; pinyin: Èr’èrbā shìjiàn), was an anti-government uprising in Taiwan that was violently suppressed by the Kuomintang-led Republic of China government, which killed thousands of civilians beginning on February 28, 1947. -
From 1946-1949, the Chinese Revolution took place. In China, it is officially known as the War of Liberation. The Communist army led by Mao Zedong was fighting the Nationalist party. On October 1, 1949, Mao established the People’s Republic of China and Chiang Kai-shek fled to Taiwan with over 2 million troops and Nationalist loyalists.
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The USA offered $1.5 billion dollars to help develop Taiwan to become an industrial nation
