Northern Taiwan historical timeline

Northern Taiwan’s history is one of repeated arrivals, each of which left something still visible.

Before the colonists

The basin and the northern coast were the territory of the Ketagalan people, with Atayal communities in the mountains behind. Place names across Taipei — Beitou among them — are Ketagalan words, and Beitou means witch.

Spanish and Dutch

The Spanish built a fort at Keelung in 1626 and another at Tamsui, seeking a trading position toward China and Japan. The Dutch, already established in the south, drove them out in 1642 and held the north until they in turn were expelled by Koxinga in 1662. Fort San Domingo at Tamsui still stands, rebuilt by the Dutch and later used as a British consulate.

Qing settlement

Large-scale Han Chinese settlement from Fujian came in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries, and the tea and camphor trade made Dadaocheng a wealthy merchant quarter. Taipei became the provincial capital in 1885.

Japanese rule

Taiwan was ceded to Japan in 1895 after the First Sino-Japanese War, and the fifty years that followed reshaped the north more than any other period. The Japanese built the railway, the port at Keelung, the hot-spring resorts at Beitou, the civic buildings still in use as the presidential office and the university, and imposed an administrative order that Taiwan largely retained.

After 1945

The Republic of China took over in 1945; the 228 Incident of 1947, a violent suppression of protest, opened four decades of martial law. The Nationalist government moved to Taipei in 1949 with the imperial art collection and around two million people. Martial law ended in 1987 and democratic elections followed from the 1990s.