Chapter 5

The Fall of Spanish Taiwan

Why did Manila decide to withdraw support from Spanish Formosa? Dominican and Franciscan historians blame Don Sebastian Hurtado de Corcuera, the governor-general who made the decision, and more recent histories accept this explanation. Yet Corcuera was not the only one who felt that that the colony should be abandoned. The colony failed because it did not achieve its non-spiritual goals at a time when Manila's economy was in the doldrums. It failed as a bulwark against the Dutch, who could easily enforce blockades of Manila even after the Spanish established their post on Taiwan. And it failed to help the Manila trade: instead of using Formosa as a transshipment point for the China-Manila trade, it was cheaper to let Chinese traders come to Manila directly. Even when Dutch blockades prevented this, Macao made an equally good transshipment point. Therefore, little money was sent to Formosa to buy Chinese goods. García Romero wrote that during his rule as governor of Formosa many Chinese traders arrived in Jilong, but "because of [our] lack of money, they returned to China with large amounts of silks, rare velvets, and damasks."1 The Formosan colony did, to be sure, serve as a transit point for missionaries en route to and from China and Japan, and the Dominicans had notable successes converting the natives. But the fact remained that the colony drained Philippine coffers. When Manila's economy faltered in the 1630s and 1640s, Formosa was a prime candidate for downsizing.

A Burdensome Little Colony

In fact, many Spaniards had been against the colony from the beginning. The most cogent argument against the Taiwan colony was made by Doctor Don Juan Cevicos, a lobbyist for the City of Manila in the court of Philip IV. Shortly after the colony's founding, he wrote a prescient memorial to the king.2 He argued, first, that De Silva and his advisers had been mistaken in their belief that the Dutch thought of Tayouan as a post from which to destroy commerce between China and Manila. Rather, he argued, the Dutch intended to use Taiwan to trade between China and Japan, as the Portuguese were using Macao. Indeed, he pointed out, the Dutch were blockading Manila long before they took Formosa, and there was no reason to believe their blockades would expand because they had gained a post on Formosa. In fact, he argued, the Dutch knew that the most effective way to keep Chinese ships from going to Manila was not to try to stop them at their source but to stop them at their destination—that is, to blockade Manila rather than China. Spain's aim, he concluded, should not be to set up a rival outpost on Formosa. Instead, one should try to drive the Dutch from the island altogether. Cevicos also disagreed with proponents of Formosan colonization on another point. De Silva and others believed that an outpost on Formosa would allow them to protect Chinese cargo by purchasing it in Formosa and convoying it safely to Manila. Cevicos countered that such an undertaking was both expensive and ineffective, for the Dutch could simply move their blockade to Formosa. Cevico's analysis was spot on. As he predicted, the Spanish found it easier and cheaper to continue buying Chinese goods in Manila, with the Chinese as the primary carriers. The fortresses in Jilong and Danshui came to be viewed more and more as a drain on Manila's resources. By the mid-1630s, Manila had fewer resources to spare.3

The deterioration of Manila's economy in the 1630s had several causes. One was Dutch economic warfare: Dutch blockades prevented Chinese junks from docking in Manila and increased the prices the Spanish paid for their silk.4 Another was competition from the Dutch colony at Tayouan, which drew some of the trade that usually went to Manila.5 A third cause was related to the union of the crowns of Castile and Portugal in 1580, a development that made it possible for merchants from Macao to trade in the Philippines. On the one hand this was a blessing, for Macao served as a useful transshipment point for Chinese goods when the Dutch were blockading Manila. On the other hand, residents of Manila complained that Portuguese merchants charged higher prices for Chinese wares than did Chinese merchants. They also complained that the Portuguese had acquired a monopoly over the Manila trade: Because Macao was close to the source of Chinese silk goods sold in Manila, the Portuguese were able to purchase these goods first and then sell them for high prices in Manila.6 For these reasons, Chinese goods were more difficult to acquire and cost more after the Dutch arrived. Since Manila depended almost entirely on its position as a commercial intermediary between China and the New World, the scarcity and higher price of Chinese wares hurt Manilan economy.

But dislocations in trade from China were only part of the problem. Manila was also suffering from an economic downturn that affected all of the Spanish Empire during the mid-seventeenth century.7 According to tax receipts in Manila and Acapulco, the 1630s saw drastically lower silver flows across the Pacific.8 To be sure, smuggling was rampant, which has led many scholars to argue that, for the seventeenth century as a whole, silver and silk flows across the Pacific remained steady.9 Still, evidence suggests that in the 1630s and 1640s the amounts of silver arriving in Manila were indeed lower. The dearth of silver hurt the Manilan economy, and a wealth of anecdotal evidence indicates that the citizens of Manila were much less wealthy in the 1630s and 1640s than earlier in the century.10 More important, the government of Manila lost revenues, a situation that the viceroy of New Spain, who was in charge of the annual relief to the Philippines, found difficult to remedy. He could not send the money, men, and supplies requested by the governors-general in Manila.

At the same time that revenues fell, defense costs rose. Vast resources were devoted to fighting the Dutch, and Manila had to worry about protecting far more than just the Philippines and Taiwan. Because the king of Castile now wore the Portuguese crown, the governor-general of the Philippines was also responsible for protecting the Portuguese colonies, a huge swath of territory throughout maritime East and Southeast Asia. It was precisely the area that the Dutch East India Company was targeting in its bid to monopolize the East Indian spice trade. The Dutch concentrated ships in the Strait of Melaka to disrupt Portuguese trade to India. They moved aggressively in the Spice Islands, attacking Spanish garrisons that protected the Iberian clove trade and establishing fortresses in the Moluccas. They threatened Macao and established a post on Taiwan.11 The governor-general was charged with responding to this onslaught. Even when times were good, it was a formidable task. In 1627, for example, Manila launched an expensive expedition to dislodge the Dutch from Tayouan. Unfortunately for the Spanish, most of the fleet was forced to turn back because of typhoons. Two galleys reached the Penghu Islands and "were much welcomed" by the Chinese, who promised to help with ammunition and supplies, but the expedition failed in its overall aim. Nor were the Dutch the only enemies that Manila faced: there were also the powerful Islamic sultanates of Johor and Mindanao in the southern Philippines. The governor-general of the Philippines thus had a nearly impossible task: to coordinate a huge defense project with attenuated forces and a shrinking income.

It is no wonder that many governors-general viewed the Formosan colony as a waste of resources. Several had written to the king to suggest that forces be reduced or withdrawn, but Philip IV and his counselors were loath to retreat. Usually, they just asked for more information and left the decision for later.12 Governors-general generally sent the minimum relief possible and focused their attention elsewhere. But Don Sebastian Hurtado de Corcuera was different. When he became governor-general in 1635, he determined to use resources where they were most needed, and he judged the Formosan colony to be of the lowest priority. His reasoning bore a striking resemblance to that of Cevicos ten years earlier. In 1636, he wrote this in a letter to Philip IV: "That the enemy maintains a post [in Formosa] does not at all embarrass or hinder the Crown of Castile, for the Chinese do not fail to come in twenty-four hours to the forts of Your Majesty that are on this side of the sea [i.e., Manila], bringing the necessary merchandise and supplies. That island, Sire, is of very little use to your Majesty, and it serves only to consume a large part of the revenues."13

Without waiting to hear the king's response, Corcuera convened a war council to the participants of which he proposed the abandonment of Formosa or the withdrawal of some of its forces. Thanks to a long investigation (residencia) and trial after Corcuera left office in 1644, the minutes of the meeting are preserved. First, Corcuera outlined the case for withdrawal. The Formosan colony did not help the Spanish against the Dutch; it was a drain on resources, diverting not only money and soldiers but even the most basic necessities, such as yearly supplies of rice and meat; it was easier and cheaper to acquire Chinese goods from Chinese merchants who came to Manila or, if those goods needed to be protected, to use Macao rather than Formosa as a transshipment point. As for evangelism, he argued that most natives of Formosa were hostile to Christianity, and that those few who had become Christian might be brought to the Philippines and given land for farming.14 Of the twenty-odd members of the council, composed primarily of officials and military men, thirteen gave their opinion on the matter, and most agreed with Corcuera.15 As one member put it, "Having experienced the little or no fruit that has been drawn from the island [of Formosa] in the eleven years we have had it and the great expenses that His Majesty has had to expend to conserve it, and considering that there is a great dearth of money and soldiers here, it is imperative that the proposed withdrawal be carried out."16 Four disagreed, arguing that Spanish forces should remain in Formosa to protect the fragile Christian aboriginal communities. (In a letter to the king, Corcuera claimed that there was only one dissenter in the meeting, who, he insinuated, had a financial interest in the colony: "The Formosan colony has not been bad for the augmenting of his fortune."17) Nearly all members agreed, however, that, whatever the decision, the king should be advised before any action was taken.

But just days later, Corcuera wrote out an order to the governor of Formosa. First, he wrote, the governor must send a force of Spanish soldiers to punish the natives who had attacked the fortress of Danshui two years ago, "without pardoning anyone save women and children."18 Once this punishment had succeeded in making the aborigines aware that the abandonment of Danshui did not come from fear or any lack of manpower on the part of the Spaniards, the governor was to remove all artillery and soldiers from the Danshui fortress and dismantle it entirely, taking all men and munitions to the main fortress of Jilong. He was likewise to withdraw forces from other, smaller forts and send them back to Manila, leaving in Jilong only 125 Spanish soldiers and some native Philippine soldiers.

The governor of Jilong was reluctant to carry out Corcuera's order because he had just redone the Danshui fortress in stone (it had been made of wood).19 Therefore he appears not to have dismantled the Danshui fortress. But he did take some action, because Jesuit records show that on October 24, 1637, a ship from Formosa arrived in the Phillipines and "brought back most of the people in those forts. They say that the Franciscan friars are all going to China, as are all the Dominicans, except one who remained there [in Formosa]. It is reported that they are suffering famine and that no ships from China go there [to Formosa]."20 This was not enough for Corcuera, who angrily appointed a new governor. He repeated his orders: the Danshui fortress must be dismantled and all operations moved to Jilong.21 The new governor complied, except for following missionaries' advice to preserve a small redoubt that guarded an entrance to Jilong.22 According to some accounts, Corcuera later exiled him to Ternate for his disobedience.23 Corcuera sent another letter, ordering that still more forces be withdrawn from Formosa. He also reduced the number of relief expeditions that went from Manila to Formosa from two per year to one.

With the troops withdrawn, the fortresses dismantled, and the remaining forces retrenched in Jilong, Spain's authority in Formosa collapsed. The aborigines around Danshui believed, according to Dominican records, that the Spanish had left out of fear, "because those who had until then lived in a fortress of cane and wood now did not even dare to be in one of stone."24 The missionaries, who had lived outside the fortress and ventured far from military outposts, were now afraid to leave the fortress.25 The paths between Danshui and Jilong used to be safe to cross alone, but now they were dangerous even for groups of armed Spaniards. Fewer and fewer merchants came from China, and those who did found that the Spanish had no money to buy their wares.26

Those who remained in Formosa carried on. The governors used what little money remained to strengthen the fort of Jilong. (According to one source, it looked "more like a corral for cows than a fortress of His Majesty.")27 Missionaries sent letters to Manila to urge their comrades and leaders to lobby for Formosa. They did. Churchmen in Manila urged Corcuera to invest more in Formosa, but Corcuera refused. As a result, Manila was soon roiled by conflicts between civil and Church authorities. Corcuera's attitude toward the Formosan colony especially angered the provincial of the Dominican missions, Fr. Diego Aduarte, who had been to Formosa and saw the colony as a vital bridge to China and Japan. Their disagreements grew increasingly acrimonious; indeed, Corcuera added insult to injury by trying to use Formosa as a place of exile, appointing one of his enemies to a post there.28 The disputes spread to Taiwan, where some Dominicans and a Franciscan began building a stone house in Kimaurri, in direct defiance of Corcuera's orders. The governor of Formosa, following Corcuera's orders, forbade them to continue on the grounds that, if captured by the enemy, the building might be used against the Spanish. They refused, and the governor wrote to Corcuera: "I've had many troubles with these priests, for they told me that I was thwarting the Holy Mission work and that this is how the sect [seta] of Luther had begun."29 One missionary even went so far as to declare publicly that the governor was excommunicated.30

Siege

Meanwhile, Chinese merchants brought news of the Spanish withdrawal to the Dutch, telling them that the Spanish intended to abandon Formosa altogether and were merely waiting for permission from the king. The Dutch were growing interested in northern Taiwan because they had heard reports of gold mines in the northeast and felt they could not go prospecting until the Spanish had been removed.31 The company found out more about the Spanish situation by working through Chinese merchants. In April 1641, it allowed a Chinese merchant named Peco to send two junks from the Bay of Tayouan to Danshui to buy sulfur. The Dutch placed soldiers and a company official on the junks to make contact with the aborigines of Danshui. At the same time, a small group of Dutch soldiers reconnoitered the east coast of Taiwan and arrived within four Dutch miles (about thirty kilometers) of Jilong.32 The aborigines appear to have welcomed the Dutch, both those near Danshui and those on the east coast.33

In August 1641, a Dutch expedition sailed to the Bay of Jilong to study the Spaniards' situation and, if possible, capture the fortress. Warned by an aboriginal friend, the Spanish prepared for an attack. The Dutch soldiers landed on the shore of the bay across from the island. Since the Spanish governor had refused to allow aborigines to seek refuge in the fortress, many fled into the mountains. The Dutch had clearly profited from their earlier negotiations with the northern aborigines, because it was apparent that they had managed to gather allies. Accompanied by some five hundred northern aborigines, they entered Kimaurri without opposition. They spent the night there and the next morning climbed the hill behind the village and proceeded methodically to count the Spanish infantry by telescope, "seeing in this way everything that they wanted to."34 Some inhabitants of Kimaurri agreed to deliver to the Spanish governor a letter from the Dutch governor in Tayouan. The letter demanded that the Spanish turn the fortress over immediately "in order to avoid bloodshed."35 The Spanish governor responded with a defiant letter: "I am used to seeing armies of greater power, and I have fought against them at various times in Flanders and elsewhere, so Your Excellency need not bother with sending more such letters. Let each of us defend himself as he is able. We are Christian Spaniards, and God is our protector."36 The Dutch soldiers—there were 205—outnumbered the Spanish and had the support of hundreds of aborigines, but the Dutch commander realized he did not have enough cannons to mount a proper siege.37 The Dutch left, burning Kimaurri on the way, and "making fun of the Spanish, seeing that nobody came out against them."38

As the Spanish watched the Dutch depart, they were impressed by the number and orderliness of their enemies' aboriginal allies. "The enemy," wrote one, "convened the entire Danshui River and all the villages that are under their jurisdiction, which was a very large number of Indians, and, when from this fortress we saw them arrayed at intervals on the hills and beaches, we [realized] that they [the Indians] were an army."39 Indeed, on their way back from Jilong to southwestern Taiwan, the Dutch made an agreement with the "natives of Danshui," promising them protection against their enemies. Not long afterward, emissaries from Danshui went to the Dutch headquarters in Tayouan and, according to Dutch sources, officially handed over their lands to the Dutch, in the same manner that the villages of the southwestern plains had done in the 1630s.40 The balance of power had changed in Formosa. Without help from Manila, the Spanish had little means of withstanding a Dutch attack.

The Spanish celebrated the departure of the Dutch with a procession of thanksgiving. But the Dutch had already delivered a major blow to Spanish authority in Taiwan. By making peace with the aborigines in Danshui, the Dutch turned an area that had once been a central part of the pax hispanica into enemy territory for the Spanish. Moreover, by burning Kimaurri and mocking the Spanish beneath their very fortress, the Dutch had denigrated the Spaniards' military reputation, an attribute most necessary in the warlike world of seventeenth-century Formosa. The Spanish governor complained to Corcuera that he could no longer persuade the aborigines to cooperate even in small matters: "They are traitors and are risen against us, being of a nature that they only help those who vanquish them."41

The governor dispatched a special messenger to Manila to request reinforcements, but Corcuera sent a piddling response: two small vessels carrying twelve sailors and twenty soldiers. "The few men that I had," wrote the Spanish governor, "lost their courage, seeing such a [small] relief."42 The governor prepared for the inevitable Dutch attack. Against Corcuera's instructions, he ordered that a redoubt be rebuilt on the hill above the main fortress, knowing that if the Dutch were to fortify themselves there they could fire directly into the main Spanish fort. This redoubt, called La Retirada, was in turn defended by a fortification called the Mira, or "lookout point," which occupied the highest point on Jilong Island. If these fortifications could be manned, Jilong was eminently defensible, but the Spanish had only sixty soldiers and no prospect of further help.

One evening in early August 1642, a sampan landed in front of the Spanish fort. Its passengers hurried ashore to deliver a letter to a Chinese man sojourning there. The letter said that the Dutch had readied a large expedition against the Spanish fort. It advised the man to "go away at all events, since the enemy was coming, not as in the previous year, but with a much greater force; and therefore it seemed . . . that the Dutch would seize [Jilong] without fail."43 The Spanish prepared for a siege. Several days later, the Dutch arrived with four large ships, several smaller ones, and 369 Dutch soldiers.44

Knowing that the Dutch would try to land a force on Jilong Island in an effort to capture the hilltop positions, the Spanish attempted an attack on the Dutch landing party.45 Twelve Spanish soldiers, eight Pampangers, and thirty or forty aboriginal archers inflicted heavy damage on the landing soldiers, as "our men fired their guns at a crowd, and some used three balls at one shot; and the Indian bowmen, who were very skilful, also inflicted much damage on the Dutch, all the more as they came boldly on."46 The Dutch, however, maintained their discipline and forced the small force to retreat. They climbed the hill and captured the Mira. Then they trained their gun on La Retirada. The Spanish soldiers who defended it were few and lacked supplies, but they fought hard because they knew that if the Dutch captured the redoubt the Spanish were lost. But the Dutch were better equipped: "For every ten balls we shot," wrote one Spaniard later, "they responded with two hundred or more."47 Another wrote that the Dutch fired their guns "so incessantly that it seemed to be the Judgment Day; and they gave no respite to our men, who were few in number and worn out with fatigue."48 After four days of shooting, the Dutch battered the walls down and stormed the hill.

Having made themselves masters of the redoubt, the invaders aimed their cannon against the main fortress below and then sent a messenger with a white flag and a letter in Latin demanding surrender. According to some sources, the Spanish governor exclaimed that the messenger should be shot; according to others, he was overeager to capitulate. In any case, most of the Spanish knew that further fighting would not prevent the fortress from falling into Dutch hands. The governor offered his surrender. Now, only six days after the Dutch had arrived, the Spanish were marching out of their fortress, their drums beating and flags held high. The Dutch confiscated the Spanish arms and flags and ferried the Spanish troops first to Tayouan and then to Batavia, where the Dutch governor-general by all accounts treated them well. Most eventually made their way back to Manila, bringing along their Formosan wives and children.49

When they arrived in Manila they brought news about the Dutch colonies. Not only did the Dutch have far more men and ships than did the Spanish, but they also lived better: "As for provisions from Holanda—biscuit, pork, beef, wine, oil, vinegar, etc.—the amount that they have cannot be told or imagined; for of these articles alone they have enough for two or three years. I mention only the Castilian wine, of delicious quality, which they consume more freely than if they were in España; and when they go to draw it . . . they rinse the glasses with it, and waste it; and yet this goes on without causing a scarcity of it."50 The loss of Jilong to the Dutch signaled a change in the balance of power in the Far East. The Dutch East India Company had surpassed the Most Catholic Monarch.51

In the meantime, the Spanish quarreled about who deserved blame for the loss of Formosa. The Spanish governor who had surrendered to the Dutch was afraid he would be held responsible and refused to go back to Manila. But in the event, Corcuera received the lion's share of the blame. He had made powerful enemies in Manila. In 1644 his successor as governor-general had him locked up to stand trial for the loss of Formosa. The prosecution charged that he had ordered the destruction of the Danshui fortress and the redoubt (retirada) that protected the Jilong fortress, that he had withdrawn three of the four companies of soldiers that defended the colony, and, finally, that he had installed as its last governor an inferior soldier who could neither read nor write. These actions were, the prosecution alleged, "the total cause of the loss of the Isla Hermosa."52 Corcuera spent five years imprisoned in the Philippines as the trial dragged on. "A strange turn of fortune!" wrote a contemporary. "Don Sebastian [Corcuera] had been the most absolute and the most dreaded lord in the world."53

Although Corcuera was released and went on to become governor of Córdoba and the Canary Islands, historians continued to blame him for the defeat of Formosa. This is due primarily to the influence of the Dominican annalists, who decried the loss of the Formosan Christians.54 The first Dominican chronicles, written by Corcuera's enemy Diego de Aduarte, started the trend, which was later continued by the eighteenth-century historian Juan de la Concepción. The latter added a new charge: Corcuera was under the influence of the Jesuits, who wanted Formosa abandoned so they alone would have access to China.55 In the twentieth century, the Dominican geographer and historian José María Alvarez renewed the attack on Corcuera.56

But, as we have seen, the loss of Formosa had less to do with one specific individual than with general economic and political factors. To be sure, Corcuera gave the order to withdraw. But depression in the Spanish Empire and the surge of Dutch power in the East Indies made retrenchment necessary. Corcuera had to cut costs, and Formosa was the best candidate for downsizing. Indeed, most secular and military officials agreed with the decision. The savings from abandoning Taiwan may have helped Corcuera fund successful expeditions against Islamic sultanates in the southern Philippines.

But why did the Spanish not find other ways to make the colony of Formosa self-sufficient, or at least less dependent on aid from Manila? In 1633, missionary Jacinto Esquivel suggested that the Spanish invite Chinese or Japanese farmers to Formosa to farm the rich lands of the Danshui River. The aborigines themselves, he observed, were not good at farming and "plant only the amount they need to eat, and there are none who sell rice in quantities, only here and there a little bit [chicubitillo]."57 Chinese, on the other hand, were excellent agriculturists and could fill the area around Danshui with rich fields of rice and wheat. Esquivel knew from his Chinese contacts that the province of Fujian was filled with poor Chinese who, given proper encouragement, would have been delighted to come. Authorities in Manila did not heed his advice, but in southern Taiwan the Dutch were busy building a Chinese colony just as he had envisioned.

Notes: