Zeelandia and Provintia

The Dutch arrived in Taiwan some 26 years after they had established a settlement at the eastern point of Java, and the first thing they did was constructing a fort.

For the Dutch, the building of an overseas settlement was not an ad hoc endeavor, but rather a systematic, well-studied process. First, well-trained cartographers and engineers were dispatched to Batavia (present-day Jakarta), the VOC's center of operations in the East. The Governor-general of Batavia then sent these experts to various VOC bases in Asia, where they drew up maps and castle designs for use by Dutch settlers. Copies of their maps and designs were also sent to Batavia and to Amsterdam for the reference of those in the upper echelon of the Company.

The Dutch decided to build their fort on Tayouan, a sandy peninsula off the coast of Tainan, as the site would allow them access to supplies and reinforcements from Batavia in the event of a siege. However, the downside of this strategy was the fact that the peninsula lacked adequate sources of fresh water, necessitating regular water shipments from Taiwan. As a matter of fact, insufficient water supply was a determining factor in the eventual fall of the fort to the siege of Cheng Ch'eng-kung.

The fort, then called Zeelandia, is now known as the An-p'ing Ku-pao (安平?¤å ¡ or Old Castle of An-p'ing). In order to strengthen their control, the Dutch, in 1652, also established the town of Provintia across the harbor at a place known as Saccam (赤å?). The body of water separating these two settlements, known colloquially as the Tai-chiang inland sea, is actually little more than a lagoon. In 1823, a major storm forced large quantities of sand into the lagoon, forcing out the water and creating a contiguous landmass between the two forts.

The site of Provintia, known today as Ch'ih-k'an-lou (赤å?æ¨?, was purchased by the first Dutch Governor, Maarten Sonck, from the aborigines in the Sinkang (?°æ¸¯, present-day Hsin-shih ?°å?) area for the price of only fifteen pieces of trade cloth (cangan). Rumor has it, though, that the aborigines had traded the land with the Dutch for a piece of cow skin.

Fort Zeelandia was surrounded by three concentric layers of walls, and, for purpose of better defense, the four corners of the fort were built into protruding bastions. The rather imposing design was typical of modern European castles. Within the confines of the fort were residences of the officials, churches, barracks, and jailhouses, and without was the market town, the site that is today a tourist attraction known as "Taiwan's first street," or the oldest commercial street on the island. In between were the marketplace, the butcheries, the execution platform, weigh stations, and other places where people conducted their daily life.

A genre painting rendered on deerskin from the Museum of Ethnology, Berlin, shows Zeelandia in the foreground, the lagoon behind, and the main island of Taiwan in the distance, with the settlement of Provintia visible on the right, encircled by a bamboo palisade. The most obvious structure in the settlement is Fort Provintia, which overlooks a mostly Chinese populace, some of whom are riding horses or sedan chairs. Outside the stockade is the domain of the plains aborigines. The work shows them engaged in such activities as threshing rice, hunting, drinking alcohol, driving horse carts, and raising roofs ??all sources of valuable information for understanding the plains aborigines.

During their presence on Taiwan, the Dutch adopted a very interventionist policy, regulating the life of the residents and their rights. They established and publicized rules and laws concerning all aspects of life, including the levying of import and export tariffs, the sales of lands, the construction of houses, the organization of markets, the production of alcohol and sugar, gambling, dog breeding, the observation Sunday services, and the granting of permission to enter and dwell in aboriginal settlements. This governing practice was undoubtedly quite novel to the Chinese immigrants.