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Taiwan in the Age of Discovery
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SAILING ONTO THE WORLD STAGE：THEMES IN TAIWAN LITERATURE
Taiwan in the Age of Discovery
⧉ Taioan Map by Joan Blaeu
（Photo by Wiki Commons）
The Taiwan Strait is a crucial waterway in international navigation. During the Age of Discovery, Taiwan became a focal point of European competition.
In 1624, the Dutch East India Company (VOC) colonized Taiwan and exported great quantities of deerskins and cane sugar. As Europeans' curiosity about oriental exoticism grew during the Age of Discovery, George Psalmanazar mixed stories told by missionaries and merchants to fabricate a description of Formosan customs and landscapes. His 1703 book, An Historical and Geographical Description of Formosa, an Island subject to the Emperor of Japan was wildly popular for some years before the hoax was exposed, causing quite a stir in Europe at the time. After the Qing Empire's defeat in the Second Opium War, they opened ports in Taiwan in the 1860s, attracting booming foreign trade.
Thanks to bustling maritime commerce and its strategic location, Taiwan has become a critical economic hub of the Western Pacific.
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