Koxinga Recovers Taiwan

Mainland residents began moving to Taiwan to farm in the Song and Yuan. In the late Ming, Yan Siqi, Zheng Zhilong and others recruited coastal Fujian residents to build settlements in Taiwan and open wasteland. In 1624 Dutch colonists, taking advantage of the Ming's decline, occupied southern Taiwan, built Fort Zeelandia and Fort Provintia and ruled it as a colony; in 1652 the anti-Dutch uprising led by Guo Huaiyi broke out. Zheng Chenggong (1624–1662), given name Sen, was from Nan'an, Fujian, born in Hirado, Japan, and son of Zheng Zhilong. After the fall of the Ming he gave up scholarship for soldiering and held out against the Qing on the Fujian coast, and was granted the imperial surname Zhu by the Southern Ming Longwu Emperor. After his failed northern expedition against Nanjing in 1659, he resolved to retake Taiwan as a base against the Qing. In 1661 he set out from Kinmen with 25,000 men and landed at Lu'ermen. His forces sank Dutch warships at sea and on land surrounded the Dutch in their two strongholds, Fort Provintia and Fort Zeelandia; the Dutch at Provintia soon surrendered. Zheng chose a long siege of Fort Zeelandia. In a letter to the Dutch governor he declared: "Taiwan is Chinese land, long occupied by your country; now that I have come to claim it, the land should return to me." In February 1662, after an eight-month siege, the Dutch governor Frederick Coyett was forced to surrender, and Taiwan, occupied by the Dutch for 38 years, returned to Chinese rule. Zheng set up Chengtian Prefecture and the two counties of Tianxing and Wannian on Taiwan, established military farming colonies and invited mainland settlers to open land, promoting the island's development. He died of illness that same year.