Eastern Taiwan historical timeline

The east was the last part of Taiwan to come under outside control, and that lateness explains a great deal about it.

The Austronesian homeland

Taiwan has been inhabited for thousands of years, and the consensus among linguists is that the island is the origin point of the Austronesian expansion — the greatest maritime dispersal in human history, carrying related languages from here to Madagascar, Hawaii, Easter Island and New Zealand. The east preserves the deepest linguistic branches.

Beyond the frontier

Dutch and Qing authority reached the western plain but not across the mountains. For two centuries the east was formally outside administration and indigenous communities governed themselves, trading over the passes but not ruled.

The Mudan Incident and after

The killing of shipwrecked Ryukyuan sailors in 1871 and the Japanese punitive expedition that followed in 1874 exposed the Qing claim to the whole island as hollow. Peking responded by pushing roads across the mountains and encouraging Han settlement, which brought the east into the state for the first time.

Japanese rule

After 1895 the Japanese built the railway down the rift valley, opened sugar and camphor operations, and moved Japanese farming colonists into the valley — villages like Fengtian still show the grid layout. They also fought a series of campaigns against the Truku, culminating in a major expedition in 1914.

The twentieth century

Taroko became a national park in 1986; the Central Cross-Island Highway through the gorge was built in the 1950s by veterans, at considerable cost in lives. Green Island held a prison for political detainees through the martial law decades, now a human rights memorial park.