ONE LAND · 11 ATLASES
History of Taiwan in maps
Taiwan as it appears in 11 interactive history atlases, from 1840 to 2000: Taiwan, Formosa. Each era below lists who ruled the land and when control changed, linked to the dated map that shows it.
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What was Taiwan before it was Taiwan? Below, every era of this land in the Maps of History atlases — who ruled it, what it was called, and when control changed — each line linked to the dated map that shows it. Modern borders stand in as an honest approximation; every atlas says so on the map itself.
Formosa (mod. Taiwan) · Mongol Empire
| Beyond the storm — the opening position |
MONGOL EMPIRE: EVERY CHAPTER AND MAP →
Taiwan (Qing; Japanese from 1895) · Industrial Revolution
| Colony or dependency — the opening position | |
| Colony or dependency |
INDUSTRIAL REVOLUTION: EVERY CHAPTER AND MAP →
Taiwan (Qing to 1895, then Japanese) · Meiji Japan and post-Soviet Russia
Taiwan was a frontier prefecture of the Qing empire until the Treaty of Shimonoseki ceded it to Japan in 1895. Its people resisted in the short-lived Republic of Formosa and in years of fighting in the hills. Japan’s first colony became a laboratory of colonial rule, with land surveys, railways, a large police force and state monopolies on camphor, opium and salt, and Japanese rule lasted fifty years.
| Independent neighbours — the opening position | |
| Meiji Japan and its empire |
MEIJI JAPAN AND POST-SOVIET RUSSIA: EVERY CHAPTER AND MAP →
Taiwan · WWI
| Entente-aligned & imperial territories — the opening position | |
| Entente-aligned & imperial territories |
Taiwan (Japanese colony to 1945) · Chinese Revolution
Ceded to Japan in 1895, Taiwan spends this atlas as a colony — railways, sugar, schools, assimilation campaigns — and returns to China in 1945 as a stranger. Nationalist takeover administration is rapacious enough to ignite the February 28th rising of 1947, suppressed with thousands killed: a memory that shapes the island’s politics still. In 1949 it becomes the republic’s ark — government, gold, museum and two million refugees — and the last blue on this map. Its later story, land reform and boom and democratization, is the era’s great counterfactual: what the mainland regime could do when severed from the interests that had owned it.
| The Empire of Japan & its puppets — the opening position | |
| The Republic of China — the government of the day |
CHINESE REVOLUTION: EVERY CHAPTER AND MAP →
Taiwan · Stalin’s Soviet Union
| Rivals & the Western bloc — the opening position |
STALIN’S SOVIET UNION: EVERY CHAPTER AND MAP →
Formosa (Japanese Taiwan) · Road to WW2
| The aggressors (Japan, Germany, Italy) — the opening position |
ROAD TO WW2: EVERY CHAPTER AND MAP →
Taiwan · WW2
| Axis powers — the opening position | |
| Western Allies |
Taiwan · Cold War
| US-aligned states — the opening position |
COLD WAR: EVERY CHAPTER AND MAP →
Taiwan · Refugee crises
| Western bloc or democracy — the opening position |
REFUGEE CRISES: EVERY CHAPTER AND MAP →
Taiwan (the Republic of China) · Mao’s China
Taiwan became the refuge of the Republic of China after 1949, when Chiang Kai-shek withdrew there with some two million soldiers and civilians. Defended by the American Seventh Fleet from 1950 and a defence treaty from 1954, it held China’s seat at the United Nations until October 1971. Under martial law, its own regime imprisoned and executed thousands of suspected enemies in the “White Terror”, even as its economy grew fast.
| Beijing’s adversaries — the opening position |
MAO’S CHINA: EVERY CHAPTER AND MAP →
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