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Published online by Cambridge University Press: 17 February 2009
The ancestors of the contemporary Formosans abandoned the Chinese mainland with its poverty and inequalities, in the latter half of the sixteenth century, and emigrated to Formosa in order to open up and settle in new territory. Yet they have had little independence. The Dutch East India Company conquered Formosa and used it as a commercial base between 1624 and 1661; Koxinga and his supporters expelled the Dutch in 1661 and used Formosa as an anti-Manchu base until 1683; then the Manchus of the Ch'ing Dynasty gained control of Formosa until 1895; the island was ceded to the Japanese in 1895 and it was not until the collapse of Japan hi 1945 that the Chinese Nationalist Government was able to rule Formosa.
1 For details of the February 28 Rebellion, see Taiwan Chinglian, 02 1960, special edition.Google Scholar
2 A similar approach can be found among Fonnosans who remained in Japan after the war. They hated the Nationalists and wanted to rely on the Communists, using their faith in the “Fatherland's Communists” for moral support, as a means of escaping from their social isolation in Japan.
3 Ong was a reporter for Asahi before the war, escaped to Hong Kong after the February 28 Revolution, where he energetically worked for UN discussion of the Formosa problem. Died in Tokyo, 1951. Khu is secretary of the League for the Reliberation of Formosa; now active in Japan in writing and business. Ngou is a practising doctor in Yokohama, long worked with Thomas Liao as vice-president of the Provisional Government; resigned at the end of 1962, became chairman of the Democratic Independence Party. I was a teacher before the war in a Tainan high school; went to Japan via Hong Kong after the February 28 Revolution; am now a lecturer at Meiji University and do research on the Formosan language; organised the Formosan Association in 1960; am now its leading spokesman.
4 For a description of the moral conditions among discharged soldiers, see the Formosan Quarterly, Vol. 1, No. 4, 04 1963.Google Scholar
