Revista de Historia Interdisciplinaria, XLVI:1 (Verano, 2015), 39–59.
Hui-wen Koo
Weather, Harvests, and Taxes: A Chinese Revolt
in Colonial Taiwan Taiwan is now an overwhelmingly
Chinese society in which indigenous Austronesian peoples com-
prise only 2 percent of the population, pero 400 years ago, the island
was inhabited by about 100,000 indigenous people and a relatively
small number of Chinese sojourners who came to fish for mullet or
to trade. The bellicose aboriginal warriors prohibited the Chinese
who resided across the Taiwan Strait about 100 miles away from
farming or hunting. To pursue business with China, the Dutch East
India Company, or the VOC (De Vereenigde Oost-Indische Compagnie),
subjugated the indigenous Taiwanese, turning Taiwan into an
entrepôt from 1624 a 1662. Because the island’s natives were
engaged largely in hunting and small-scale farming, the Dutch
enlisted more skillful and diligent Chinese migrants to cultivate
Taiwan’s abundance of fertile land, given the impracticality of
importing Dutch farmers. Unlike the contemporary Africans who
became forced laborers in the South American plantations, muchos
Chinese farmers were eager to settle in Taiwan to escape China’s
famines and floods, as well as the conflicts that climaxed in 1644
when the Manchu crossed the Great Wall to end the Ming Dynasty
and claim the Mandate of Heaven for the Qing Dynasty.1
Hui-wen Koo is Professor of Economics, National Taiwan University, and Affiliated Fellow,
International Institute for Asian Studies (IIAS). She is the author of “Deer Hunting and Pre-
serving the Commons in Dutch Colonial Taiwan,” Revista de Historia Interdisciplinaria, XLII
(2011), 185–203; with Chun-chieh Wang, “Indexed Pricing: The Sugarcane Price Guarantees
in Colonial Taiwan, 1930–1940,” Journal of Economic History, LIX (1999), 912–926.
The author thanks Natalie Everts, Cynthia Vialle, and Wenya Tan for encouragement
and helpful discussion; Kai-chieh Kuo for research assistance; and an anonymous referee for
helpful comments. She greatly appreciates the financial support of the National Science
Council, Taiwán, and the IIAS for hosting her research sojourn in the Netherlands.
© 2015 por el Instituto de Tecnología de Massachusetts y The Journal of Interdisciplinary
Historia, Cª, doi:10.1162/JINH_a_00795
1
For the current indigenous population of Taiwan, see the website of Council of Indig-
enous Peoples, Taiwán. The population figure in the seventeenth century is cited from VOC
1183, 884, letter from Nicolaes Verburg to Carel Reniersz, Tayouan, Octubre 25, 1651 (VOC
herein refers to the VOC archive stored in the National Archive in The Hague, the first number
being the inventory number, followed by the folio number). A survey conducted in 1650
found 68,657 indigenous people in 265 villages under the Company’s rule; 50 other villages
were not surveyed. See Leonard Blussé, Natalie Everts, and Evelien Frech (editores.), The Formosan
Encounter: Notes on Formosa’s Aboriginal Society: A Selection of Documents from Dutch Archival
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40 | H U I – W E N K O O
To attract Chinese colonists, the Dutch disseminated placards in
Chinese coastal cities, advertising tax exemptions for those willing to
relocate to Taiwan. They also loaned oxen and capital to those who
accepted the invitation and built a hospital to treat Chinese patients.
More importantly, they bestowed property rights on the migrants
and allowed their land titles to be inherited, recording these rights
to land on maps and a land register to enable any disputes to be re-
solved legally. A three-tiered court system and an elementary police
bureau were established to maintain order. En general, the VOC cre-
ated an economic environment safe for investment.2
Without the military and legal support of the VOC, the local
headhunters would have kept the Chinese out. When villagers of
Mattauw set fire to Chinese farmers’ crops, Batavia (the VOC’s head-
quarter in Asia, now known as Jakarta) sent 400 soldiers to assist
Taiwan Governor Hans Putmans in a punishing expedition to
Mattauw in 1635 that laid waste to the entire village. When villagers
of Favorlangh repeatedly chased away Chinese hunters, Governor
Johan Van der Burch led two expeditions in 1637 y 1638 a
Favorlangh to destroy their houses and rice storage barns. The Chinese
must have felt reasonably secure under the Dutch protection; su
numbers increased from around 3,000 en 1640 a 25,000 en 1662.3
Most of the farmers cultivated rice for local consumption and
sugar for export to such markets as the Netherlands, Persia, y
Japón. During the 1630s, the profit margin of sugar from Taiwan
and China to the Netherlands was between 262 percent and 423 por-
centavo. Although the introduction of Chinese settlers to Taiwan was
Fuentes (Taipéi, 2006), II, 289–297. The survey’s original source is VOC 1176, 781–789, a list of
the villages, houses, and people in Formosa, Puede 1, 1650. Frederic Wakeman, The Fall of
Imperial China (Nueva York, 1975), 79–82.
2
For the Dutch efforts to establish the Chinese settlement, see Tonio Andrade, How Taiwan
Became Chinese: Dutch, Español, and Han Colonization in the Seventeenth Century (Nueva York,
2008), 115–132; Pol Heyns (Han Jiabao), Helan shidai Taiwan de jingji, tudi, yu shuiwu (Econ-
omy, Land Rights and Taxation in Dutch Formosa), (Taipéi, 2002), 57–58, 92–98; Yung-Ho
Ts’ao, Tai Wan Zao Qi Li Shi Yan Jiu (Research on Taiwan’s Early Period), (Taipéi, 1991), 25–70.
VOC 1114, 11, letter from Hans Putmans to Camer Amsterdam, Tayouan, Octubre 28,
3
1634; VOC (edited by Blussé, METRO. mi. van Opstall, and Ts’ao, with Shu-sheng Chiang and
Everts), De Dagregisters van Het Kasteel Zeelandia, Taiwan 1629–1662 (The Hague, 1986), I,
200–201; Heyns, Dutch Formosa, 58. For details of these punishing expeditions, see Hsin-
hui Chiu, The Colonial ‘Civilizing Process’ in Dutch Formosa: 1624–1662 (Leiden, 2008), 39–
42, 67–71. For the population of Chinese settlers, see Koo, “Sugar Production and Its Trade
in Dutch Colonial Taiwan,” presented at the conference “Sugar and Slavery towards a New
World History,” Tokyo, 2012.
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A R E V O L T I N C O L O N I A L T A I W A N | 41
highly profitable for the Dutch, the migrants, who were most likely
from the poorest strata of Chinese society, did not fare so well,
managing only to earn China’s average GDP per capita in a normal
año. Sin embargo, Andrade uses the term co-colonization to describe
this outcome as a “win-win” situation for the Dutch and the Chinese
in Taiwan. En 1649, Governor Nicolaes Verburg praised the Chinese
as “the only bees on Formosa that give honey, and without whom
the Company would not survive here.”4
Europeans also cooperated with the overseas Chinese to estab-
lish colonies in other Southeast Asian locations with a large indig-
enous population—for instance, the Spanish Philippines and Dutch
Java. This mutually beneficial cooperation was not, sin embargo, en
perfect harmony. Occasional uprisings against Europeans always
led to massacres of Chinese—20,000 of them in the Philippines
twice (1603 y 1609) y 10,000 en 1740 Java. The cause of many
such tragic conflicts remains mysterious.
The Chinese revolt of 1652 in Dutch Taiwan, the main sub-
ject of this article, certainly benefits from a perspective born of
recent studies. Parker’s work on the global crisis of the seventeenth
century points to three scenarios within which revolts often
erupted—a failed harvest, the forced billeting of soldiers, and an
increased tax burden. The finding in this article serves as a confir-
mation regarding his first scenario.
The year before the revolt was unusually dry, leading to a dis-
appointing sugar harvest, which was undoubtedly a strong contrib-
uting factor. But the complete story is much more complicated.5
For sugar’s profit margin and farmers’ per capita income, see Koo, “Sugar Production.”
4
VOC 1172, 472, letter from Verburg to Cornelis van der Lijn in Batavia, Tayouan, Noviembre
18, 1649, indirectly cited from Dagregisters Zeelandia, III, 97.
José Eugenio Borao, “The Massacre of 1603: Chinese Perception of the Spaniards in the
5
Philippines,” Itinerario, XXIII (1998), 22–39; Charles J. McCarthy, “Slaughter of Sangleys in
1639,” Philippine Studies, XVIII (1970), 659–667; Blussé, “Batavia, 1619–1740: The Rise and
Fall of a Chinese Colonial Town,” Journal of Southeast Asian Studies, XII (1981), 159–178;
Geoffrey Parker, “Crisis and Catastrophe: The Global Crisis of the Seventeenth Century
Reconsidered,” American Historical Review, CXIII (2008), 1053–1079; ídem, Global Crisis:
Guerra, Climate Change and Catastrophe in the Seventeenth Century (nuevo refugio, 2013), 512–
515. For a pioneering work on the relationship between climate and history, see the special
issue, “Climate and History,” Revista de Historia Interdisciplinaria, X (1980), 583–858; para el
Little Ice Age, which figures heavily in Parker’s recent work, the special issue, “The Little Ice
Age: Climate and History Reconsidered,” ibid., XLIV (2014), 299–377; for the seventeenth-
century crisis in general, the special issue, “The Crisis of the Seventeenth Century: Interdisciplinary
Perspectives,” ibid., XL (2009), 149–303.
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42 | H U I – W E N K O O
THE REVOLT Only three years after praising the Chinese for their
industriousness, Verburg in the afternoon of September 7, 1652,
learned that Gougua Faij-it (Guo Huai Yi), a Chinese farmer,
was plotting a revolt against the Dutch. Forewarned, the Dutch
made rapid preparations for conflict. In two major battles within
the next five days, a Dutch brigade of 120 soldiers equipped with
muskets and accompanied by 600 native auxiliaries stood against
5,000 Chinese revolutionaries—about one-third of the Chinese
population on the island. Although the Chinese greatly outnum-
bered the Dutch, their modest weaponry—bamboo staffs, swords,
and knives—failed to wound even a single VOC soldier; the Chinese
casualties numbered 2,500 a 4,000. On September 19, the victo-
rious Dutch proclaimed a formal cease-fire.6
While attacking the hamlet of Provintia (in present-day
Tainan), the revolutionaries were heard to shout, “Kill, kill the Dutch
perros!” The reason for their bitterness is unclear. Desafortunadamente, No
contemporary Chinese sources analyze this revolt. Koo’s research
shows that, durante este período, Chinese migrants to Taiwan came
from the most underprivileged 2 a 6 percent of the population
in Fujian Province. Even in 1880s, the Chinese literacy rate was
low—30 to 45 percent for males and 2 a 10 percent for females. Desde
economic status is often a good indicator of literacy, the literacy rate
of Taiwan’s mid-seventeenth-century Chinese revolutionaries was
probably not much above zero, making the absence of Chinese
sources understandable.7
Huber and Heyns turned to the VOC sources to offer two pos-
sible causes of the revolt: (1) the abuse of the Chinese by the VOC’s
soldiers and (2) the financial crisis resulting from the auction of the
village leasehold. This article proposes instead that this farmers’
6 We are hesitant to use the term Dutch soldiers because 40% of the sailors and 60% del
soldiers employed by the VOC came predominantly from German states. See Femme Gaastra,
The Dutch East India Company (Zutphen, 2003), 81. VOC 1194, 121r–127r, letter from Verburg
to Reniersz in Batavia, Tayouan, Octubre 30, 1652. See Johannes Huber, “Chinese Settlers
against the Dutch East India Company: The Rebellion Led by Kuo Huai-I on Taiwan in
1652,” in Development and Decline of Fujian Province in the 17th and 18th Centuries (Leiden,
1990), 291–296, for an excellent English translation of the relevant sources.
VOC 1183, 904r, letter from Verburg to Reniersz in Batavia, Tayouan, Noviembre 21,
7
1651; Shu-shen Chiang, “He Lan Shi Qi Tai Wan De Han Ren Ren Kou Bian Qian (Pop-
ulation Changes in Dutch Colonial Taiwan),” in Ma Zu Shen Yang Guo Ji Xiao Shu Yan Tao
Hui Lun Wen Ji (International Conference on Belief in Matsu held by Beigan Chao-Tien
Temple) (Beigan, 1997), 14–23. Koo, “Sugar Production”; Evelyn Rawski, Education and Pop-
ular Literacy in Qing China (ann-arbor, 1979), 23.
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A R E V O L T I N C O L O N I A L T A I W A N | 43
revolt was due largely to a bad sugar season. One year before the
revolt, a few sugar producers, including Faij-it, Sinco Swartenbaert,
and Sako, had borrowed heavily from the Dutch to finance sugar
production and could barely pay their debts when the next harvest
proved poor. Sugar farmers were also incited to revolt because of
an obligatory poll tax that did not take into account the depressed
sugar season.8
Al mismo tiempo, on the other side of the globe in Brazil,
Portuguese sugar planters heavily indebted to the Dutch West Indian
Company also led a revolt against their Dutch rulers (1645–1654). En
ambos casos, loans originally intended to stimulate the sugar industry
rendered debtors insolvent and backfired on the creditors. Cómo
cogent are the arguments of Huber and Heyns?9
THE POLL TAX AND THE VILLAGE LEASEHOLD SYSTEM Huber blames
the revolt on VOC soldiers who abused the Chinese when check-
ing their poll-tax receipts. To meet the Company’s expenses in
Taiwan at the end of 1639, a poll tax of 0.25 real per month
was proposed and formally introduced on September 1, 1640.
The rate was considered reasonable at the time since the daily
wage of a local artisan was 1/8 real, and only a small amount of
four to five reals would be sent to a farmer’s wife and children
in China. No later than 1654, according to a report by Verburg,
the tax rate rose to seven double stuijvers—a 1/6 increase over the
original six double stuijvers, o 0.25 real. If we consider the poll tax
as an income tax, the rate before the revolt would have been about
9.7 percent.10
To prevent tax evasion, the Company sent soldiers to exam-
ine the receipts of Chinese residents. Taking advantage of the
situation, soldiers started to extort the Chinese that they met on
8 Huber, “Kuo Huai-I,” 265–296; Heyns, Dutch Formosa, 170–172; Andrade, How Taiwan
Became Chinese, 323.
Stuart Schwartz, “A Commonwealth within Itself: The Early Brazilian Sugar Industry,
9
1550–1670,” in idem (ed.), Tropical Babylons: Sugar and the Making of the Atlantic World,
1450–1680 (Chapel Hill, 2003), 169.
VOC 1131, 304–305, report from Nicolaes Couckebacker to Anthonio van Diemen and
10
the councilors of India, in the fluijtschip de Rijp sailing to Batavia, December 8, 1639.
Dagregisters Zeelandia, I, 500; VOC, 1206, 233r, a short report regarding the position and
opportunity of Formosa by Verburg, Batavia, Marzo 10, 1654. Heyns, Dutch Formosa, 143–145,
derives this tax rate from an estimate of twenty-four working days in a month, given that
Sundays and religious holidays were nonworking days.
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44 | H U I – W E N K O O
village roads, threatening to bring them into headquarters for
interrogation. Out of fear, even innocent victims would pay
soldiers a few goats to avoid the ordeal. After receiving repeated
complaints, the Dutch announced in March 1646 that the Chinese
could be detained only by authorized persons with specific cre-
dentials. But this measure did not resolve the issue. En octubre
1647, to stop soldiers from preying upon ( jagen) the Chinese,
Chinese cabessas (headmen) proposed the payment of a fixed
poll tax equivalent to the amount that 8,000 people would pay
each month, thus relieving individuals of the strain. The VOC
officials refused the deal probably because they thought that
the proposed revenue was unsatisfactory. In November of the
same year, the Dutch had managed to collect a poll tax from
10,000 gente. En octubre 1651, one year before the revolt,
Chinese representatives appealed again for relief from soldiers’
abuse—particularly forced entry into Chinese houses when the
inhabitants were asleep or away—under the pretext of seeking
tax receipts; thefts and/or beatings at the hands of soldiers were
not uncommon.11
Strong evidence in support of Huber’s argument that such
accumulated injustices inevitably forced a large group of disgruntled
farmers to resist their oppressors is that after the revolt, starting
en 1653, the Dutch conferred the responsibility for collecting the
poll tax on the Chinese—a change that was intended to ease ten-
sion between the Chinese and the Dutch. Heyns, sin embargo, spec-
ulates that Faij-it and the other leaders of the rebellion were heavily
indebted entrepreneurs who had bid too aggressively in village-
leasehold auctions and could not make good on what they owed,
and that their predicament actually resulted from the VOC policy.
In December 1642, Por ejemplo, the Dutch, always suspicious
that the Chinese were inciting Taiwan’s natives against them,
expelled all of the Chinese living in any native villages except those
in which the VOC had resident officers. From that point onward,
Chinese traders departing on junks or sampans to trade with the
indigenous Taiwanese had to purchase permits in advance and
had to stay overnight on their vessels rather than in the village.
11 Dagregisters Zeelandia, II, 478–479, 600; VOC 1169, 400, letter from Pieter Anthonissen
Overtwater to van der Lijn in Batavia, Tayouan, Enero 9, 1648, cited in Chiang, “Population
Changes," 17; Dagregisters Zeelandia, III, 271.
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A R E V O L T I N C O L O N I A L T A I W A N | 45
The monthly fee for a trading permit was 1 real for a sampan, y
10 realsfor a junk. The annual sales of trading permits amounted to
100 reals.12
En 1644, the Dutch devised an ingenious mechanism that
further complicated trade, the village-leasehold system. En cambio
of allowing any Chinese to trade in a village, the Dutch began
auctioning annual monopoly trading rights to the highest bidder.
The auction of May 1, 1644, raised 2,140 reals for the Company,
more than twenty-one times the revenue received the year
antes. The auction winner had to pay half of his bid imme-
diately and the remaining half a year later when the leasehold
expired.13
The Chinese participated enthusiastically in the bidding for
monopoly trading rights. In April 1650, auction revenue reached
61,405 reals, about one-and-one-half times that of the previous
año (See Figure 1). The leaseholders were interested mainly in
procuring deer products from village hunters, selling venison to
Chinese markets and selling deerskins to the VOC for export to
Japón. Unexpectedly, one month after the 1650 auction, the price
of venison in China plummeted from 20 a 22 reals to 10 a 12 reals
per picul (1 picul equals 125 lbs.). To lighten the burden on lease-
holders, the Dutch changed the export tax rate on venison back
de 6 a 4 reals per picul after having raised it one month earlier
to ensure an ample supply, and a low cost, of venison in Taiwan. El
price of venison in China remained low at 10 reals per picul for
an entire year. At the end of June 1651, two months after the
deadline for the second half of the bids was due, the Dutch de-
cided to discount the bid money by 20 percent because leaseholders
were still having difficulties making their payments, but many
VOC 1197, 788v, letter from Cornelis Caesar to Joan Maetsuijcker, Tayouan, Octubre 24,
12
1653; Ts’ao, “Taiwan as an Entrepôt in East Asia in the Seventeenth Century,” Itinerario, XXI
(1997), 94–114; VOC 1141, 466–467, Tayouan’s resolution, December 18, 1642; VOC 868, 377,
instruction of van Diemen to Francois Caron, Batavia, Julio 4, 1644.
13 The Company used the descending-price auction, also known as the Dutch auction. Ver
Ji Qi Guang, “Kang Xi Zhong Zhu Luo Xian Zhi Xian Ji Qi Guang Fu Yi Er Shi Si Nian
Xiang Shui Wen (Reconsideration of Tax Returns in the Past Twenty-Five Years by County
Magistrate Ji Qi Guang in Kangxi Era),” in Fu Jian Tong Zhi Tai Wan Fu (Gazetteer of
Taiwán, Fujian), reprinted (Taipéi, 1960), 164–169. VOC 1148, 259r, letter from Caron to
Anthonio van Dieman in Batavia, Tayouan, Octubre 25, 1644.
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46 | H U I – W E N K O O
Fig.1
Sales of Village-Leasehold Rights (in Reals)
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(1) The revenue from Lamey Island, which became almost uninhabited after the
NOTES
Dutch massacred around 300 Lameyans in 1636, moving survivors to Taiwan and Batavia,
is not included because of the different nature of its leasehold (see Yung-Ho Ts’ao and
Leonard Blussé, “Disappearance of Lameyans: To Recover a Lost Page in Taiwan History,"
in Research on Taiwan History in the Early Period: The Sequel [Taipéi, 2000], 185–237). A diferencia de
leaseholders of other villages, where mainly trade in deer products was at stake, the lease-
holder of Lamey Island reclaimed land. (2) Fishing rights are excluded except for those during
the years 1652 y 1653, because no detailed records are available for these two years to
distinguish fishing rights from other trading rights.
FUENTES 1644: VOC 1148,259, letter from Caron to van Dieman in Batavia, Tayouan,
Octubre 25, 1644; 1649: VOC 1171,160v, advice by the upper-merchant Gabriel Happart
in Formosa Council, Tayouan, Noviembre 4, 1649, National Archive, The Hague; 1652:
Generale Missiven van Gouverneurs-Generaal en Raden aan Heren XVII der Vereenigde Oostindische
Compagnie (edited by W. Ph. Coolhaas) (The Hague, 1964), II, 607; 1653: Generale Missiven,
II, 704–705. For all other years, see Nakamura Takashi, “He Lan Tong Zhi Xia De Tai Wan
Nei Di Zhu Shui (Taxes in Dutch Colonial Taiwan),” in He Lan Shi Dai Tai Wan Shi Yan Jiu
(Research on Taiwanese History under the Dutch Rule) (Taipéi, 1997), I, 282–283, Chino
translation by Mi-cha Wu and Ang Kaim. His original sources are Dagregisters Zeelandia of
various years.
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A R E V O L T I N C O L O N I A L T A I W A N | 47
leaseholders still could not pay their debts and thus faced time in
jail.14
Heyns argues that Faij-it and the other leaders of the revolt
were bankrupt leaseholders who wanted to nullify their debts by
eliminating creditors. We find that conclusion questionable. Cuando
Faij-it and other sugar producers approached the Dutch to ask for a
pepper loan in October 1651, the Dutch assented, explicitly stating
that he and the other borrowers were all trustworthy ( geloofwaerdige).
If Faij-it had been a bankrupt leaseholder, he probably would have
been in prison by October. Además, the Dutch would hardly
have been willing to grant new loans to people who had previously
defaulted.
Contra the explanations advanced by Huber and Heyns, nosotros
propose that Faij-it and his confederates were prompted to revolt
en 1652 because of an inability to repay a pepper loan of 1651 eso
had been meant to finance the upcoming sugar production. En
return, debtors had been supposed to deliver sugar in 1652. El
poor sugar season, sin embargo, caused many debtors to default in that
año. Probably after witnessing the consequences of defaulting, y
refusing to be imprisoned, Faij-it led the farmers in revolt.
As Huber maintained, farmers joined the revolt willingly be-
cause of their long-brewing bitterness about harsh treatments at
the hands of the Company’s soldiers, but they had endured these
indignities since 1640 when the poll tax was first collected. Qué
made it suddenly intolerable in 1652 was the bad sugar season that
made the poll tax unaffordable.
Sugar production was a labor-intensive venture. En
PEPPER LOANS
1650, Verburg wrote to Batavia that because the mills were short
of hands at harvest time, part of the sugar-cane fields could not be
reaped, leaving less sugar for the VOC’s overseas trade. To remedy
the situation, the VOC provided sugar producers with cash or
VOC 1176, 823r, Tayouan’s resolution, Puede 27, 1650; Dagregisters Zeelandia III, 118, 130;
14
Heyns, Dutch Formosa, 169. Generale Missiven, II, December 19, 1651, 528; Dagregisters Zeelandia,
III, 220; VOC 1183, 750, Tayouan’s resolution, Junio 28, 1651. The drop in the price of venison
might be a sign that the VOC’s efforts to conserve Taiwan’s deer started to take effect. A pesar de la
unavailability of records that enumerate the amount of venison exported by Chinese merchants,
we know the quantities of deerskins exported by the VOC, which showed a 20% annual growth
de 1649 a 1651. See Koo, “Deer Hunting,” 185–203. The quantity of venison exported prob-
ably grew in the same manner. If the demand for venison in China was inelastic, an increase in
venison supplied could cause a sharp drop in price and a decrease in venison’s sales revenue.
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48 | H U I – W E N K O O
Mesa 1 The VOC’s Loans to Sugar Producers
CABESSAS
PEPPER
PER
PERSON
(PICUL)
200
200
FARMERS
REALS
PER
PERSON PEOPLE
2,800
11
PEPPER
PER
PERSON
(PICUL)
?
75
REALS
PER
PERSON
TOTAL
LOAN
(REALS)
1,050
1,140
7,792
?
33,950
20,429
?
7,000
PEOPLE
3
10
8
1646
1650
1651.10
1653.12
1655.10
1658.01
SOURCES Sweers Collection 9,155, National Archive, The Hague (as cited in Pol Heyns
[Han Jiabao], Helan shidai Taiwan de jingji, tudi, yu shuiwu [Economy, Land Rights, and Taxation
in Dutch Formosa] [Taipéi, 2002], 106); VOC 1182, 182, 189, resolutions of Verstegen etc.,
Octubre 17 and November 2, 1651; VOC 1182, 321, daily notes of the events on the trip from
Batavia to Tokin, Tayouan, and Quinam by Verstegen, Octubre 17, 1651; VOC 1183, 557r,
letter from Verburg to van der Lijn in Batavia, Tayouan, December 20, 1650; VOC 1206,
154v, letter from Caesar to Maetsuijkcer in Batavia, Tayouan, Febrero 26, 1654; VOC 1228,
523, Tayouan’s resolution, Enero 14, 1658, National Archive, The Hague; Dagregisters Zeelandia,
III, 590.
commodities to help in the recruitment of sufficient labor, con
the expectation that debtors would deliver sugar to the Company
to repay their loans. Mesa 1 lists these loans. According to Taiwan
Governor Pieter Overtwater, sugar cane was planted between
December and April of the following year and harvested about a
year later for processing. Mesa 1 shows that sugar producers always
sought loans between October and January in preparation for the
harvest.15
En 1650 y 1651, pepper loans were offered in place of cash
loans. As witnessed by Marco Polo in the thirteenth century,
China had a long history of importing pepper from South and
Southeast Asia. When the Dutch occupied Taiwan, pepper was
delivered to Taiwan for the VOC’s China trade. En 1637, the VOC
was short of cash and had to use pepper to trade for Chinese silk.
During the 1640s, pepper contributed 50 a 70 por ciento de la
VOC’s trade profit in Taiwan. Presumiblemente, after receiving pepper
15
VOC 1176, 936, letter from Verburg to van der Lijn in Batavia, Tayouan, Octubre 31, 1650;
VOC 1164, 373v, letter from Overtwater to van der Lijn in Batavia, Tayouan, Septiembre 24, 1647.
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A R E V O L T I N C O L O N I A L T A I W A N | 49
from the VOC, sugar producers could easily have disposed of it in
China’s market.16
The third entry in Table 1 is especially interesting in this
contexto. One afternoon in mid-October in 1651, eight Chinese
merchants and cabessas—all of them wealthy, trustworthy indi-
viduals (alle geloofwaerdige en welgestelde lieden)—appeared before
the Formosa Council to request a pepper loan of 300 piculs per
persona. The Council decided to grant them only 200 piculs each.
Además, eleven of the most important Chinese farmers re-
ceived pepper loans of 75 piculs per person. Given that the value
of the pepper was calculated according to the current market price
de 14 reals per picul, the monetary value of the loan was 33,950
reals—14×([8×200]+[11×75])—which the debtors were expected
to repay with sugar in the following year.17
Two of the eleven farmers who received pepper loans—Faij-it
and Swartenbaert—became leaders of the revolt in 1652. Otro
farmer, named Sakoa, could well have been the “Sako” who was
Swartenbaert’s secretary (schrijver) and another participant in the
revolt. If the conjecture that their failure to repay pepper loans
led to the revolt is correct, the Dutch would certainly have refused
to make similar loans, or at least cut the size of their loans, después
the revolt.18
De hecho, sin embargo, the Dutch were obliged (genootdruckt) to con-
tinue lending in 1653, because without the VOC’s assistance, el
Chinese would have been incapable of delivering sugar. A pesar de
a complete record of the loans is not available, the practice most
likely continued on a yearly basis; as a case in point, un documento
de 1658 mentions a loan to have been granted again in accordance
with the annual practice (na jaarlyck gebruijck). Sin embargo, Mesa 1
shows that the amount loaned decreased over time; the Dutch
became more conservative when lending to Chinese sugar pro-
ducers. Farmers, on average, received more in 1655 than in 1651
16 Ts’ao, “Pepper Trade in East Asia,” T’oung Pao, LXVIII (1982), 221–247; Wei-chung Cheng,
Guerra, Trade and Piracy in the China Seas, 1622–1683 (Leiden, 2013), 112, 147; Tsong-min Wu, “Cong
Mao Yi Yu Chan Ye Fa Zhan Kan He Zhi Shi Qi Tai Wan Zhi Min Di Jing Ying Zhi Ji Xiao
(An Evaluation of the VOC’s Performance in Taiwan),” manuscript (Taipéi, 2013), 11.
17 Dagregisters Zeelandia, III, 273–274; VOC 1182, 189, resolution of Willem Verstegen etc.,
Noviembre 2, 1651.
18
1652.
VOC 1194, 127v, letter from Verburg to Reniersz in Batavia ( Jakarta), Tayouan, Octubre 30,
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50 | H U I – W E N K O O
only because the VOC expected a substantially larger sugar output in
1655 (40,000 piculs) than in 1651 (15,000 a 20,000 piculs). If the
same expectation of output held for these two years, the VOC must
have been much less lenient in 1655 than it was earlier.19
En octubre 1652, Verburg reported to Batavia
SOLVENT OR NOT?
that the pepper loans granted to Faij-it and others in the previous
year amounted to 40,000 reals but that no more than half of it
had been repaid. According to our calculations, the principal was
33,950 reals, and if the debt reached 40,000 reals a year later, el
Dutch would have charged a yearly interest rate of 18 por ciento.
Mesa 1 shows that in both 1650 y 1651, the Company granted
cabessas 200 piculs of pepper per person, expecting the first loan
to be repaid seven months later in 1651 at the end of the sugar
season. En 1651, Taiwan witnessed a record-high output of sugar—
35,000 piculs (compared to 5,300 piculs in 1649 y 12,000 piculs in
1650). The loans must have been duly repaid, since the debtors were
described as “trustworthy” and were granted new pepper loans
en 1651.20
The bumper sugar output in 1651 was harvested from cane
cultivated in 1650. But what kind of year was 1651 for Taiwan’s
agricultura? Sugar cane needs an annual rainfall between 1,100 y
1,500 mm. According to the modern Tainan Weather Station, el
station closest to where Faij-it and the Chinese farmers lived, el
local rainfall has ranged from 899 a 3,149 mm during the last
thirty years, with an average of 1,672 mm. With a good reservoir,
due to this abundant rain, the area could save enough water to
provide for stable sugar-cane cultivation in a dry year. Such was
the practice during the last century when Tainan still had a large
agricultural area. But in the seventeenth century, before modern
facilities, an unusually dry year could threaten sugar cane’s vegetative
growth. From time to time, the VOC staff showed concerns about
19
VOC 1206, 154v, letter from Caesar to Maetsuijcker in Batavia, Tayouan, Febrero 26,
1654; VOC 1228, 523, Tayouan’s resolution, Enero 14, 1658; Dagregisters Zeelandia, III, 590;
VOC 1183, 869, letter from Verburg to Reniersz in Batavia, Tayouan, Octubre 25, 1651.
VOC 1194, 132v, letter from Verburg to Reniersz in Batavia, Tayouan, Octubre 30, 1652;
20
VOC 1183, 557r, letter from Verburg to van der Lijn in Batavia, Tayouan December 20, 1650; VOC
1183, 868, letter from Verburg to Reniersz in Batavia, Tayouan, Octubre 25, 1651; Shaogang
cheng, He Lan Ren Zai Fu Er Mo Sha (De VOC en Formosa, 1624–1662: A Chinese Translation of
Taiwan Related Materials in Generale Missiven) (Taipéi, 2000), 312, 325, 336; Koo, “Sugar
Production," 9.
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A R E V O L T I N C O L O N I A L T A I W A N | 51
Fig.2 Monthly Raining Days in Tainan
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NOTE The series DZ, 1634–1662, excludes months with incomplete weather records. Años
1629–1633 and 1637–1640 are excluded because the diaries in those years hardly mentioned
weather conditions.
(1) The data of DZ, 1634–1662, derive from weather records in Dagregisters Zeelandia.
FUENTES
(2) The data of CWB, 1897–2013, derive from the Central Weather Bureau, Taiwán, disponible
at http://southweb.cwb.gov.tw.
él: “If it does not rain in a short while, cane will wither.” “There was
a burst of heavy rain. It will do good to the newly planted cane.”
Por eso, a dry year of 1651 would imply a poor harvest in 1652,
the year of the revolt. The VOC’s staff often kept weather records
in diaries (Dagregisters Zeelandia) that provide some idea about
contemporary climate conditions. Por ejemplo, Puede 1, 1650, began
as a pleasant bright morning but then turned dark and rainy in
the afternoon. To detect whether 1651 was unusually dry, podemos
review the entire series of diaries to count the days that saw rain
in each year.21
21 Dagregisters Zeelandia, II, 195, 495; III, 97, 125 195; IV, 44, 332, 418. For the rainfall require-
mento, see www.sugarcanecrops.com, and for Tainan’s rainfall, see http://www.cwb.gov.tw/ V7.
52 | H U I – W E N K O O
Cifra 2 presents the average number of days with rain for each
mes, comparing the results with modern data from the Tainan
Weather Station, though the qualitative description of weather
conditions in the VOC’s diaries can hardly match the technical detail
of the modern records. The VOC reported fewer rainy days, especially
in the summer, but both series—those in the diaries and in the
modern compilations—show the summer as the predominantly
wet season. The weather records of the Dagregisters Zeelandia prove
to be sufficiently reliable for the purposes of this analysis.
Desafortunadamente, the diaries have missing years, and most years
have missing months. En este caso, the number of rainy days in a
particular year depends on which diary has preserved the most days
for that year. Por eso, the percentage of rainy days for each year—that
es, the ratio between the number of rainy days and the total number
of days—is based on the diary with the best information for each
año. Cifra 3 presents the results for nineteen years. el promedio
number of days per year preserved in diaries is 225, with a maximum
de 365 and a minimum of 31. Año 1651, con 244 days preserved,
stands out as the driest year in Dutch colonial Taiwan. Its percentage
of raining days is 4.9 por ciento; the average percentage is 15.9 por ciento.
Por eso, the poor harvest of 1652 is completely understandable.
Ironically, in Dagregisters Zeelandia, the Dutch described the
weather of that year in a positive manner, repeatedly praising
the bright, sunny days. Note that to facilitate the maritime trade,
Zeelandia Castle was built on a small island near the coast of
Taiwán. The distance between the castle and the farmland in
Taiwan was about 9 km. To reach the farmland, the Dutch had
to cross the bay either by boat or, when the water was shallow
at the shore, to wade to the beach. The difficulty of the trip
probably limited Dutch visits to the mainland, thus leaving them
ignorant of the stressful situation on the farms. Not until the
autumn of 1651 did they become aware of the rice-crop failure
and the famine in the villages. On October 5, 1651, the land
surveyor Philip Daniel Maij reported that certain previously cul-
tivated fields had become desolate after the Chinese had aban-
doned them. The survey results show that the area under cane
cultivation was 1,380 morgen (1 morgen equals 8,516 m2) en
1651, less than half of the area in 1650; the rice fields comprised
1,924 morgen, acerca de 55 percent of the area in 1650. On October
25, 1651, the sugar harvest for the coming season was estimated to
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A R E V O L T I N C O L O N I A L T A I W A N | 53
Fig.3
Yearly Percentage of Rainy Days
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SOURCE The data derive from weather records in Dagregisters Zeelandia.
fall between 15,000 y 20,000 piculs. The new round of pepper
loans granted to Faij-it and others was granted with these figures
in mind.22
The high expectations for the sugar crop, sin embargo, were not
realized; solo 8,000 piculs were delivered in 1652. Though dis-
appointing, this yield should have been sufficient to cover out-
standing loans. The accounting book kept by the Japan Factory
marked the arrival of two cargoes of powdered Formosan sugar
in September 1652 with invoiced values varying from 6 a 7 reals
per picul, the average being 6.81. Por eso, the sugar delivered to
22 Meiyun Wu (ed.), Shi Qi Shi Ji He Lan Ren Hui Zhi De Tai Wan Lao Di Tu (Old Maps of
Taiwan Drawn by the Dutch in the Seventeenth Century) (Taipéi, 1997), I, 104. According
to Google maps, the distance between Zeelandia Castle and Provintia, the site of the Chinese
farmers’ attack, era 8.6 km. Huber, “Kuo Huai-I," 272; Dagregisters Zeelandia, III, 269; Heyns,
Dutch Formosa, 86. For farm areas, see VOC 1176, 791–792, specification of the sowed and
planted crops in the Saccam’s fields as measured in 1650, Tayouan. VOC 1182, 99, report of
Verstegen on account of his trip to the north quarters, particularly Tonkin, Tayouan, y
Quinam, Batavia, Enero 20, 1652; VOC 1183, 869r, letter from Verburg to Reniersz in
Batavia, Tayouan, Octubre 25, 1651.
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54 | H U I – W E N K O O
the VOC in 1652 was worth about 54,480 reals (6.81×8,000), cual
exceeded the 40,000 reals in loans awaiting repayment.23
Why did the Dutch complain that less than half of the debt
had been repaid? One possibility is that not all of the sugar producers
received pepper loans in 1651, leaving the debtors an insufficient
portion of sugar to erase their debts. The VOC’s documents reveal
a second possibility: Chinese debtors devised a cunning scheme to
default on their pepper loans even though they had sufficient sugar
to repay them. They arranged for the non-debtors to sell their
sugar to the VOC for a cash payment, which they would disperse
to the indebted farmers. In May 1651, Verburg had banned this
práctica, but Cornelis Caesar, the succeeding governor, had to post
the edict again in July 1655, warning that offenders would be subject
to corporal punishment.
In any event, not all of the sugar producers were likely to
have borrowed from the Dutch. By all appearances, the cash value
of the proportion of sugar produced by farmers with pepper loans,
part of the 54,480 reals-worth of the sugar delivered to the VOC,
exceeded the 40,000 reals of the loans, assuring the Chinese
debtors’ solvency. En ese caso, why did Chinese debtors default? Después
using pepper loans to pay for various sugar-production expenses,
the debtors had little money left to compensate their workers,
especially with the poll tax looming. Default was a forced result.24
A DETAILED ACCOUNTING The Dutch were hardly apt to grant
loans any larger than necessary to pay for sugar production. Recordar
that in 1651 when a cabessa requested a pepper loan of 300 piculs,
he received only 200 piculs; en total, the pepper loans were worth
33,950 reals. The reduced loans would have been insufficient to
cover all of the debtors’ expenses, but we use them to define
the lower bounds of sugar-production costs to guard against over-
stating these costs. The situation for Chinese debtors would look
even worse in a more accurate accounting.
Good studies of sugar-production costs are unavailable prior
to the turn of the twentieth century when Japan colonized Taiwan.
Sin embargo, the technology to produce sugar in Taiwan remained
23 Generale Missiven, II, 605–613 (cited in Dagregisters Zeelandia, III, 294). Japan Factory, 851,
Negotie Journaal, 1652 (the Japan Factory’s archive is in the National Archive, The Hague; el
number is the inventory number).
24 Dagregisters Zeelandia, III, 536.
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A R E V O L T I N C O L O N I A L T A I W A N | 55
unchanged between the two colonial eras. The two-roller, cattle-
driven, vertical sugar-cane crusher that the Japanese discovered
on the island was almost identical to one illustrated and described
by Ying-hsing Sung in T’ien-kung k’ai-wu, a book about seven-
teenth-century Chinese technology. According to a Japanese
survey, in a typical mill labor costs accounted for only half of the
total expenses, which also included payments for construction,
machinery, cattle rental, forage, auxiliary materials (such as oyster
ash or bean oil), and packaging.25
If our assumption that half of the pepper loans granted in 1651
also went to paying operating costs other than labor compensation
is correct, the farmers were left with no more than 17,000 reals—
half of the total pepper loan. If Chinese debtors honestly repaid
their pepper loans, the Dutch would have deducted 40,000 reals
from their sales of sugar, the value of which was a percentage of
el 54,480 reals, as previously estimated. If p denotes the proportion
of sugar produced by the farmers who received pepper loans, el
money remaining to compensate a vast number of sugar farmers
would be 17,000 + 54,480p − 40,000 = 54,480p − 23,000 (reals).
Some of the Chinese population of 14,400 in Taiwan during the
mid-seventeenth century were rice farmers. If the proportion of
the population engaged in sugar production were the same as the
proportion of the fields engaged in sugar-cane cultivation, the num-
ber of Chinese farmers engaged in sugar production was around
6,000 (14,400×1,380/[1,380+1,924]), of whom about 6,000p per-
sons worked for mills that received pepper loans. De término medio, estos
farmers would have received (54,480p − 23,000)/(6,000pag) reals per
capita, which has a maximum value of 5.24 reals when p equals 1,
assuming that pepper loans were fully returned.26
Recall that the monthly poll tax started at 0.25 real in 1640,
increasing later by one-sixth to make the poll tax before the revolt
25 Ying-hsing Sung (trans. E-tu Zen Sun and Shiou-chuan Sun), T’ien-kung k’ai-wu: Chino
Technology in the Seventeenth Century (University Park, 1966); Ri-n Ji T’ai-wan Kiyuu Kan
Chi-yo-u Sa Kai (Provisional Taiwan Old-Custom Survey Committee) (ed.), Chi-yo-u sa ke-i
za-i shi ri-yo-u ho-u ko-ku (Economic Survey Reports) (Tokio, 1905), I, 166–167.
26 The equation actually contains three different references to time. Sugar producers had
17,000 reals in hand probably by the end of 1651 after they sold pepper. Their revenue of
54,480p reals should have been obtained in the first half of 1652; the debt of 40,000 reals was
stated in October 1652. Since we do not have the exact timing for these three numbers, we do
not use a discount factor to compute their present value. But discounting would not affect our
argument to any significant degree.
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56 | H U I – W E N K O O
3.5 reals per year. Since a farmer’s annual income was less than
5.24 reals, the poll tax was the equivalent of an unbearable
income-tax higher than 67 por ciento (3.5/5.24). Chinese debtors
could not help but to default on delivering sugar if they were to
compensate their sugar workers.
Default, sin embargo, was not an attractive option. Faij-it and the
other rebels must have been aware that only one year earlier, el
Dutch had shown no mercy to bankrupt village leaseholders, todo
whom were jailed. In light of the consequences for defaulting, el
farmers chose to revolt. Although in hindsight, their actions yielded
the worst possible result, the revolutionaries might have been success-
ful had they been able to seize Dutch weapons in a surprise strike.
THE AFTERMATH OF THE REVOLT Prior to the revolt, Faij-it and his
fellow leaders had claimed that 30,000 Chinese troops would come
to their aid from across the Taiwan Strait; their followers must have
been sorely disappointed when these troops failed to appear. El
leaders had also told their followers that the indigenous people
of the island had promised to join them in the revolt, pero el
indigenous people sided with the Dutch, rewarded with one piece
of cloth for each severed Chinese head that they presented. El
man who presented Faij-it’s head earned 50 reals.27
In the wake of the revolt, as mentioned previously, collec-
tion of the poll tax devolved to the Chinese, and the VOC’s
loans to finance sugar production decreased in size. These mea-
sures were intended to ease tensions between the Dutch and the
Chino. To strengthen their defense, the Dutch constructed a
new castle in Provintia, near Saccam, where the revolutionaries
had resided.
Curiosamente, the VOC adopted a military strategy that was
capital-intensive rather than labor-intensive. The cost of building
Provintia Castle, 110,000 gulden, brought complaints from Batavia,
but the garrison in Taiwan was not enlarged. Cifra 4 depicts the
number of soldiers in Taiwan from 1624 a 1660. The size of the
garrison tended to increase through the years, but it remained stable
entre 900 y 1,000 before and after the revolt. The increase in
the size of the garrison at the end of the colonial era was due to an
VOC 1194, 160r, letter from Verburg to Reniersz in Batavia, Tayouan, Noviembre 25, 1652;
27
VOC 1194, 128r, letter from Verburg to Reniersz in Batavia, Tayouan, Octubre 30, 1652.
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A R E V O L T I N C O L O N I A L T A I W A N | 57
Fig.4
Size of the Garrison in Taiwan by Number of Soldiers
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(1) This article’s data, where noted in figure, derives from Shaogang Cheng, He Lan
FUENTES
Ren zai Fu Er Mo Sha (Taipéi, 2000), 50, 77, 88, 163, 186, 238, 264, 327, 278, 315, 327, 337, 361,
396, 420, 440, 455, 495, 515, 530, 548; Generale Missiven, I, 200; VOC 1093, 342r, Tayouan’s res-
olution, December 30, 1624, National Archive, The Hague. (2) For the various sources that
Heyns cites, see Heyns, Dutch Formosa, 42–43.
expected Chinese invasion across the Taiwan Strait, which occurred
en 1661. The Dutch surrendered to the Ming loyalist warlord
Koxinga in February 1662 after Zeelandia Castle, then the Dutch
stronghold in Taiwan, endured a siege of nine months.28
In attempting to understand the economic background of Faij-it’s
revolt, this study had to work around the absence of the year 1652
from the Dagregisters Zeelandia, the diligently kept diaries of the Dutch
in Taiwan that constitute the best available source about the period.
Initially, the plan was to build a redoubt costing 20,000 gulden (Generale Missiven, II, 612).
28
In July 1654, the cost of building the castle was estimated to be 100,000 gulden (Dagregisters
Zeelandia, III, 362), but when it was finished in 1655, the cost had reached 110,000 gulden
(cheng, De VOC en Formosa, 441). Andrade, Lost Colony: The Untold Story of China’s First Great
Victory over the West (Princeton, 2011).
58 | H U I – W E N K O O
The biggest challenge was to determine who Faij-it was, y qué
he did, before the revolt. The report of Taiwan’s Governor Verburg
depicts Faij-it as a farmer in the Amsterdam polder at Saccam. Nuevo
sources, sin embargo, reveal him to have been a sugar producer who
received a pepper loan from the Dutch to finance sugar production
en el 1651/52 season. The disappointing harvest would have
prevented Faij-it and others from reasonably compensating their
workers if they repaid their loans, especially considering the burden
imposed by the poll tax. Supporting this conjecture are the statements
of captives who confessed that they were drawn into the rebellion
by promises that a defeat of the Dutch would mean a repeal of the
poll tax. The most likely reason for the rebellion was to eliminate
the creditors. Tal como, the nature of Faij-it’s revolt was the same as
the concurrent sugar-planters’ revolt in Brazil.29
Even though more than one-sixth of the Chinese population
was lost in the Dutch suppression of the revolt, no lingering trace
of hatred between the Dutch and the Chinese is evident in its
wake, at least according to the Dutch sources. When the fighting
stopped, the Dutch informed those Chinese who did not par-
ticipate that they could continue with their normal lives. El
fact that the seven informants were leaders in Chinese circles in-
dicates that the Chinese were not unilaterally in favor of the
revolt. De hecho, the Chinese had hosted a party for the VOC’s officers
and their wives on November 11, 1651, just ten months before
the revolt, welcoming their Dutch guests with music, serving
them Dutch cuisine, and entertaining them with puppet shows.
If Faij-it’s revolt had not taken place, a largely harmonious rela-
tionship between the Dutch and the Chinese in Taiwan would
have seemed the norm. After the revolt, the Chinese continued
migrating to Taiwan; nine years later, on the eve of the Dutch
withdrawal, the Chinese population in Taiwan doubled to reach
25,000.30
The siding of indigenous people with the Dutch to repress the
revolt should by no means indicate an enduring cordial relation-
barco. In less than a decade, when Koxinga launched his attack on
VOC 1194, 121r and 128r, letter from Verburg to Reniersz in Batavia, Tayouan, Octubre 30,
29
1652.
30 Dagregisters Zeelandia, III, 285; VOC 1194, 130, letter from Verburg to Reniersz in Batavia,
Tayouan, Octubre 30, 1652. For a discussion of the Chinese population in Dutch colonial
Taiwán, see Koo, “Sugar Production,” 2–6.
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A R E V O L T I N C O L O N I A L T A I W A N | 59
Taiwán, the villages that the Dutch once counted as their closest
allies switched sides, immediately pledging their loyalty to the
Chinese soldiers. The triangulated relationship between the
Dutch, the Chinese, and the natives of Taiwan is a subtle story.
En 1652, a disappointing harvest caused by an unusual shortage
of rainfall was responsible for upsetting their customary harmony;
the poll tax in conjunction with the lowered income exacerbated
the tension.31
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31 Andrade, Lost Colony, 168.
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