too bad you didn't include the Tux logo while talking about the platforms, considering War Thunder runs natively on linux, which makes it automatically superior to the competition. :)
Some things not mentioned is that, before serving the Ming, Koxinga's father was a pirate lord who at one point served as a privateer for the Dutch. This gave him and the wider Zheng clan a more diverse pool of soldiers. When Koxinga landed with his army in Formosa, his army didn't include only Chinese soldiers, but also Japanese warriors (Koxinga was himself half-Japanese through his mother) and African muskateers (former Spanish slaves whom the Dutch freed, armed and trained, and later, during the Zheng clan's service to them, transferred some of them to the Zheng).
Is this like that fake African samurai that that white professor invented and was put into a video game? Unfortunately this has made it harder to believe other claims. That's why it's so harmful when "experts" lie to us to accomplish their woke political objectives.
Also many slaves of the Dutch also defected as well. You don't need to serve the Dutch to get mercenaries. Koxinga and his father's fleet were Chinese merchants from Fujian, merchants hire whoever could fight, and sailed all over the place, so it was always pretty diverse. They banded together to defend each other overseas or in other provinces, and when their businesses went sour they can become pirates, or they just become pirates to drive their competition overboard. They also defeated the Ming fleet and replaced them. Koxinga's troops and arms were funded by the Fujian merchants too.
That's really interesting. I know that the Tokugawa Japan supported Ming loyalists in various points of the civil war and the Jurchen/Manchu invasion, so the presence of some Japanese mercs or privateers, or mingling and intermarriage isn't surprising, I also know that privateers at the time were a really multiethnic bunch on all fronts - from the African coasts through the Atlantic and Mediterranean to the Pacific, but to think he'd use these connections to hire a bunch of absolutely random people from half of the world for the Formoza conquest is really wild.
20:06 dude imagine being the messenger, deliver your jolly missive, and half way through your way back you see your ship setting sail, leaving you behind in a damp besieged fort ridden with scurvy and diarrhea
there is an odd event held by the Tainan( Provintia ) government now. It's called Tainan 400. Because of Zeelandia was established in 1624 and it's 400 years ago now. and my university which is called Cheng Kung University named by Koxinga (Zheng Chenggong) is celebrating 400 years of Zeelandia now. History is such a strange thing.
@@Matt-oi3hk actually there is still a provinz in the netherlands called zeeland. that is actually the provinz with the most reclaimed land from the ocean. that is at least what i remeber visting the deltawerken as a child and beeing quite impressed by it. since i am german and not dutch i might be wrong. i only remeber seeing the construction but zee actually means ocean and land means country. mean more or less ocean country.
@@Matt-oi3hk Yeah no, Zeeland is a province in the Netherlands, New Zealand was discovered by the Dutch explorer Abel Tasman in 1642. Do they not teach you that in history class in school? We learn about the Dutch explorers in our history classes. Fort Zeelandia was named after the same province. We had a habit of naming new places after old places, just like the English did.
@@amduser86 while “See” is German for lake (DE “Mer” being EN sea), this is not the case in Dutch. The dutch word “zee” means sea (NL: “oceaan” being EN ocean and NL “meer” being EN lake). New Zealand is named after the dutch province. However, the Dutch originally gave it a latin name: Nova Zeelandia, though colloquially used the Dutch name Nieuw Zeeland. After the brits took over it was renamed New Zealand. I am not sure why the Brits went with “zea-” though. It’s an odd mix of Dutch (zee) and English (sea). Maybe old English spelling?
Failed Chinese rebels fleed often, given how many civil wars there were in China. They didn't always flee to Taiwan. Just to give another example, a group of rebels fled to what is now Vietnam. They were granted permission to stay by the Vietnamese emperor. It became Cho Lon - basically the Chinatown of Saigon.
The conquest of the Ming Dynasty by the Qing wasn't really a civil war. The invading Qing were Manchurians from what is now northeastern China, but they were a non Han, non Chinese people that were only partially sinicized at best in the 1600s. They didn't fully adopt the Chinese identity until much later.
@@Intranetusa to play devil's advocate, their leader Nurhaci, received a lot of honorifics by doing the Ming's bidding, adopting chinese culture, supressing mongol threats and such. They however soon realized that leaving so many chinese man and weapons under the hand of this Manchu warlord was a risky deal. He managed to unit all manchus and most mongols before pushing south. What most people dont know is that a large portion of his banner army was made of the garrison or a rebel Han general. Another little known fact is that Beijing and most of northern China felt in the hands of rebel peasant warlords first, not manchus, they simply took the cities from these thugs. So it was way more of a civil war than is often said.
@@Intranetusa The Qing were former vassals of the Ming, and their invasion of the Ming was under the pretense that they were totally going to restore the Ming after they defeated the rebels.
Both the Dutch and Chinese before: “They’re just undisciplined barbarians. How hard can fighting them be?” Both the Dutch and Chinese after: “Holy shit! They’re actually strong!”
No the Chinese had a much more accurate estimate of the Dutch strength. Chinese troops impression of the Dutch were that their ships were as strong as iron buckets, they were great marksmen, but inferior in melee to Chinese troops. One general remarked that the Europeans carried shorter weapons which were pointless in melee, noting their "soft sword" the rapier was garbage. The Dutch believed that Chinese troops were cowards and would flee on the scent of gunpowder... Which might have been true when putting down Chinese laborers that they refused to pay.
@@Blox117wasnt very impressive since they outnumbered us 7 to 1. And we were neutral so we never prepared. We also had ww1 weapons because nobody wanted to sell modern weapons to a neutral country
Taiwan is right next to mainland China. The Dutch only had a small detachment of men are are a small country halfway across the world. The Dutch were strong. If the Chinese lost with all of their advantages of being close to their homeland and outnumbering the Dutch there would be a problem.
Coyet remarked on the accuracy of Chinese cannon bombardment against Dutch gun emplacements on the fort. Furthermore, according to the soldier Albrecht Herport, who fought for the Dutch, the Chinese "know how to make very effective guns and cannons, so that it’s scarcely possible to find their equal elsewhere.” The dutch certainly learn a thing or two about Chinese fighting force. It should be mentioned tho, that koxinga is basically a pirate-rebel and not as well equiped as the official imperial Ming/Qing army
Interesting Factoid: Koxinga's ancestral name was Zheng Chenggong, the western rendering of Koxinga is based on the dialect pronunciation of his honorific *Kok-sèng-iâ* *国姓爷* lit. " Lord of the Imperial Surname" | "Lord of the Empire's Surname" because due to his loyalty to the (fallen) empire. Context: When Beijing fell the Ming remnants wrapped itself around the surviving imperial family members who became the emperors of Ming rump states in the south, and the South Ming Emperor awarded Zheng this honorific. Though Zheng's relation with his patron was very short it was a genius in branding and he made sure to identify himself as a poetic avenger of the fallen empire. Hence why his foreign western counterparts knew him by his title than his name.
Koxinga had never been called Tēnn Sîng-kong (鄭成功 or Zheng Chenggong in Mandarin) in his life. He was born Tagawa Fukumatsu to a Japanese mother. His actual given Chinese name was Tēnn Sim (鄭森). Sîng-kong was given to him along with the honorific of Kok-sìng-iâ, which means that name paired up with the imperial surname of the Ming dynasty. So it would either be Tsu Sîng-kong (朱成功) or Tēnn Sim (鄭森), but never Tēnn Sîng-kong (鄭成功). Koxinga himself would avoid actually writing or saying the imperial surname, so he would address himself as Kok-sìng Sîng-kong (國姓成功), and others would refer to him Kok-sìng-iâ (國姓爺). It was the Manchus who forced historians to refer to him as Tēnn Sîng-kong (鄭成功), stripping him off the imperial surname.
Not interesting but outstanding fact: Taiwan is not the homeland of Austronesian peoples! The real homeland of all Polynesians was Champa which were destroyed by albino asiatic Vietnamese settler colonialists. The Champa was a black Afrakan indigenous Asians who found the seafaring civilization of Atlantis that connected Kemet to Olmec across the Pacific. They were the first samurai and Shoguns of Japan as well. The original Japanese were a group of Black Chinese called Ainus
@@cudanmang_theog I would have no problem with that if it is supported by linguistic and archeological evidence. Since there is no evidence of any of what you said, and you tried to offer none of it, it's fiction rather than fact.
@@cudanmang_theog Champa was an Indian Brahmanic religion, and because of the massacres of Han towns, the Southern Dynasty (Liu Song) emperor sent an expeditionary army and fleet to destroy them in 440 AD. Most of the nobles and commoners died. In 600 AD, the Sui Dynasty completely wiped them out.
Butterfly effect; without the end of VOC presences, Koxinga may or may not have been at the right spot at the right time to get malaria or be in a condition to get deadly sick. We'll never know
The Ming loyalist remnants were a force to be reckoned with. Whether it’s Koxinga’s forces in the east or Li Dingguo’s forces in the west. Basically the diehards that survived the bloodiest battles with the Qing-Manchu forces and refused to surrender. The Dutch had great success against Chinese peasant rebellions with minimal losses but they clearly underestimated Koxinga and his forces when they arrived. To be fair however, Koxinga wouldn’t have taken a star fort by conventional means. It was effectively a stalemate until they bombarded that redoubt and held the high ground
"...until they bombarded that redoubt..." so until a very knowledgeable defender defected, then. lol Before that point, they weren't being the cleverest people with their battery positions.
@@matthewcarroll2533..indeed Koxinga’s army was not perfect. They clearly let their guard down when their own positions were exposed. I think the Dutch bombarded them with hundreds dead. Both sides underestimated each other. The Dutch to the Chinese in the field, and the Chinese on Dutch artillery. Each time they paid heavily to each other.
The Chinese were also malsupplied tho. Most of their mainland bases fell to the Manchus and they were in desperate need to establish a foothold as soon as possible so couldnt afford to lay years long sieges like the ones in the 30 years war videos.
Unfortunately, this was pre opium war china, the Ming and Qing dynasty (and let’s be honest for most of its history) didn’t view Europeans as equals, since they had much more territory, culture, and thought they were the actual “civilised ones” when in reality they were being outpaced in almost every aspect As a Chinese myself, a good chunk of our modern history is just embarrassing to read through, especially since most of its worst decisions were only made by a few old and overconfident (read ignorant) leaders. This whole trend of “too high and mighty to care and change” is crystallised with the failure of the 100 days reform, and the later boxer rebellion. When a new young emperor realised the precarious and backwards situation the Qing was in, he quickly tried to modernise, inviting liberal and western educated scholars, introducing somewhat liberal and progressive policies, and tried to modernise its armies with domestic modern military arms production, along with railroads, and copying western style formations and fighting (and you can guess how that ended) This was in essence, the Chinese version of the Meiji restoration, but due to extensive corruption, racism, entrenched thoughts of jingoism, and sheer ignorance of the world, it quickly failed as our most hated grandma in history launched a quick “coup” and took over for the young emperor, and she didn’t give up power until poop hit the fan many years later. Why the reformation utterly failed in China while succeeded brilliantly in Japan is in reality quite complex, but essentially the mixture of powerful traditionalist and ignorant leaders lead to almost no attempt to modernise or even change from their old ways. Japan got its ass handed to the Europeans and quickly learnt they needed to adapt or die, which they did in the Sengokujidai (their own crazy civil war), ending up with a constitutional monarchy and a sole focus on modernisation & industrialisation, leading to a proper honest to god strong Asian nation able to stand its own ground in the entire world stage despite their own problems The Qing on the other hand never truly learnt its lesson because treaty ports and the occasional border conflict wasn’t enough to shake awake the lazy bums of the filthy rich in the capital, and most of the country remained a rural backwater mess, its military and diplomatic power remained stagnant, and people remaining uneducated and delusional, especially the corrupt and inept higher ups (who you’d expect to be smarter, but good court politics and world politics unfortunately don’t mix, and our poor young emperor learnt that the hard way, he thought he was playing Vicky3 but he was in CK3) Karma eventually hit the aforementioned grandma, who believed in a band of strong looking Kung-Fu “monks” who allegedly trained their bodies to be "bulletproof". This was the start of the infamous "Boxers", and after they were enabled by said delusional grandma, started killing priests and tried to beat all foreigners out of China…… this led an eventual riot and siege of the diplomatic quarter in Beijing (aka Peking), and then an international collation to save their trapped people, leading to the fall of their capital, to whom they thought were mere “western barbarians”, when in reality they were the barbarians slaughtering innocents and fighting with outdated doctrine and equipment So all in all, if the Qing Chinese could learn, history would’ve gone very differently, but all we got in our timeline is a century of humiliation
This fort likely wasn't administered from the Netherlands though, but from the VOC's headquarter Asia in Batavia (modern-day Jakarta). Still a bit of distance though in the end.
@666Kaca No, Most Taiwanese today descend from immigrants who came from mainland China during the Qing Dynasty and early Republic of China period. Major migration waves occurred from the late 17th century during Qing rule and after 1949, following the Chinese Civil War.
Really interesting to see a video on a subject I am so familiar with. A few small corrections (more expansions) on the introduction to Dutch Formosa (not because it matters but because I have the knowledge and might as well share it). This comes from recent research on my part which is currently in peer-review, so you would not know it without having read the VOC archival sources. The first Dutch presence on the island was in 1623. As part of an attempted expansion into the Chinese trade, the Dutch took over an island between the mainland and Formosa called Penghu in 1622. This island was considered as part of China by the Ming dynasty so they were expelled in 1624 (which is when they relocated to Formosa). The person initially in charge of the operation, Cornelis Reijerszoon, had actually ordered the building of what would eventually become Zeelandia in 1623 because he was afraid of the Spanish flanking him by taking the bay first. The Dutch had considered Formosa before but dismissed it because the bay was too shallow (which would only worsen as the lagoon filled in over the years). Another small thing concerns Fort Provintia. It wasn't built soon after Zeelandia but in the 1650s (in response to those Chinese uprisings). Something called Provintia had existed in that location for a long time (being the thing built soon after Zeelandia), however, it wasn't a fort it was a small colony that was started by Reijerszoon's successor Sonck. Sonck and many other early governors really wanted to move their operations to Provintia because they considered the peninsula a terrible location for a fort. Zeelandia, not Provintia, was the much older fort. Personally, I disagree with Andrade's characterisation of Zeelandia. He describes it as this well-designed masterpiece but an examination of the its construction shows that it was entirely done by amateurs and had many flaws (the most obvious being the need for redoubt Utrecht to prevent an enemy from setting up on the dune it guarded to fire down into the fort). However, this wasn't the only one as the lower tier had to be built in the 1630s to protect the goods stored in the warehouses below the fort (since the floor plan of the upper tier was too small for such warehouses). This they only did after an attack by pirates forced them to partially tear down the warehouses and move the goods into the fort. Great video regardless. The siege of Zeelandia is such an interesting case study in colonial fortification. It is a shame it is not better known.
Thanks for sharing this info! If you have any links to share I would be greatly interested. I've been struggling to find information on Fort Zeelandia (except when I'm there).
@@Good3urmes Well, regardless of my disagreement with some of his positions, Tonio Andrade's work is probably the best published work (pretty much the only if you can only read English). If you can read Dutch there are more options. The diaries or 'dagregisters' are published online by the Huygens institute and are a decent source of information. Alternatively, you could look at the scans of the original document on the website of the Dutch National Archive, though that really requires experience with palaeography. You have been there? does that mean to the Zeelandia museum itself (or anping old fort as I believe it is called)? I intend to visit it in October when I am on Taiwan for a conference. I wasn't able to find out much about the contents of the museum without going there but I am extremely curious about what they know.
@@GerritXI Thanks for the recommendations and yes the fort and the museum at the site are a good spot to visit. It's crazy how much the geography in the old bay section of Tainan has changed since these events but I noticed a mound with a graveyard on it South-west of the fort and I'm curious to confirm if that was the site of the Utrecht redoubt. There is some great research being done on the site locally by Huang Enyu, Associate Professor, Department of Architecture, National Cheng Kung University in Tainan. Fort Provintia (or Chikan Tower now) is also worth a visit as some foundations, walls and doorways remain.
Great video! Here's a suggestion for a future video: siege of Diaoyu Fortress. The bloodiest siege in the Mongol conquest of China, a siege that cost Möngke Khan his life.
That was fantastic. I had no idea about this event. Love how you've put it together with clear graphics that move the narrative along. Well done. Definitely going to watch more.
Tit for tat- but it's a miracle that the Chinese even granted the Dutch safe passage at all. The Japanese who many centuries later overran the woefully unprepared colonial garrisons in South East Asia would not be so merciful.
@@WilliamLaurenson It was not really a complete safe passage, most of the women, including the teenage daughter of Antonius Hambroek, were sold as concubines by the Chinese to their soldiers...
@@GeorgeMonetHave no doubt that when you put modern people in a similar situation, pour rations, heat, thirst, diarrhea, smell, stress, shelling, shit everywhere all humanity and dignity will be gone just as much if not sooner.
this does ignore the decades of time when Formosa was a huge financial burden yet the VOC kept it up as the location was ideal, they had to contend with the austronesian tribes of which many if not all practiced headhunting as a rite of passage. there were friendlier tribes which saw the chinese smugglers and later europeans as usefull traders, most of these started out staying inside the villages of such tribes but the dutch did start their official endeavour with the building of a settlement in the northern side of the island. importantly they had wished to settle on an island much closer to the mainland intending to set up their version of Hong-kong or Macau but were adviced to settle on formosa instead as it "was not considdered part of Ming China" whilst the closer island was. (The Ming had a dynastic precedent to not seek maritime expansion but to instead focus on land in accordance to confusian doctrine they tended to dogmatically stick to these precedents (hence why the one Ming emperor that built the famed treasure fleet was followed by his own son who immediatly burned it down) the dutch tried to take the smaller island but were expelled by chinese forces, they then settled for formosa the colony was in fact incredibly costly to maintain for decades but the VOC maintained it was a worthwile venture. they mainly lacked colonists and to deal with this issue they tried to attract mainland farmers. the problem with this was that no Ming dynasty farmer could remain abroad for a period over 4 years or would lose all his property at home. The Dutch offered 4 year tax exemption to attract them. there were quite a few that made the venture and used their expertise to set up sugarcane and rice farms which initially produced only less valuable brown sugar. It would take until the start of the qing uprising and invasion that things changed, many chinese fled and many others took advantage of the ming bureaucracy having bigger issues than tracking their attendance. furthermore many were sent by Koxinga who probably wanted to pawn them off and thought these would be loyal to him should point come to shove (they weren't) long story short the Chinese on Formosa had no intention of going back asside from a minor rebellion earlier on, correspondence shows this as mainlanders urged their relatives to stay on the island as they themselves were by then hoping for the qing to go on and conquer their region so they would no longer be exploited by koxinga's soldiers. island chinese themselves urged family to go there and didn't want any side on the island. The Dutch did not have the numbers to govern the colony and play racial superiority games so the elite of the island included chinese. the austronesian tribes were loosely integrated, they were utilised to break the aforementioned minor revolt. one Dutch letter discussed how a chinese woman was struck with a cannonball on the beaches.
40 years earlier from this event, the Ming dynasty also had a war with the Dutch. The Ming was able to defeat dutch force and even captured their fort in the pescadores islands, forcing the dutch to flee to Taiwan. Please make a video about this earlier encounter and Chinese victory against the Dutch
0:38 - Historiography is the study of how history is told. So for example "this is how modern historiography re-evaluated the popular accounts of the siege of XYZ". But "Here's the *history* of the siege of XYZ".
This is what happens when everyone becomes an amateur expert on everything! I kinda wished TH-cam didn't showcase comments when you aren't fullscreen; because your comment popped up and now I don't want to watch the rest of the vide
Koxinga also started a complete new era of Taiwan After his conquest,Taiwan start to bond with China (because his grandchild surrendered to Qing) Before koxinga came to Taiwan,none of Chinese dynasties considered Taiwan as part of China If he never defeat dutch Taiwan probably would remained as Dutch colony until ww2 Without koxinga,there would be no Qing,Japanese,kmt rule of Taiwan So he basically created Taiwanese crisis today
Love from Taipei. I'll finish the latter half tonight, but I think it would be worth mentioning if in your premise, the Dutch fought the Spaniards who were based in northern Taiwan, close to today's Taipei. The Dutch were quite spread out at first and took them a while to figure out true intentions of Zheng, aka Koxinga(this actually based on Japanese translation of Zheng's imperial title). I truly appreciate this vid., and expect more of Taiwan's Early Modern struggles as a part of grand strategy so many empires fought over!
Oh, more really nice siege content? and even about Europe vs. china again? Consider me hyped! I think this time, it will be the Dutch who struggle, right?
Both sides struggled, at the end the Chinese force came on top. But it must be mentioned that it is not really Dutch vs China. More like Dutch vs a Chinese rebel pirate. Koxinga is not affiliated with the Imperial Chinese army. He is an independent pirate-rebel-warlord
My ancestor was one of Koxinga's officers who took a Dutch captive as concubine. My grandma had blonde hair, grayish green eyes and white skin. When I was a child, my hair was red, and kids in school used to call me "Orangutan" T_T
Interesting side note about why the Dutch musketeers were so effective; this siege was only a few decades after the military reforms of prince Maurice of Orange, who introduced combined arms methods, volley fire and a large increase in drilling and exercise to the Dutch army, in order to fight the Spanish. These reforms were a significant contribution to the development of early modern warfare. Great article to read on wikipedia for anyone interested.
I love seeing unusual match-ups like this one shown in detail on this channel. Clashes between radically different military systems like this are fascinating to study. I have one minor correction though: the Qing-Ming war cannot, in any way, be described as a civil war. It was a foreign invasion. Yes, there were large numbers of Chinese who defected to the Qing side, but that's as close as it gets to a civil war.
I mean, I guess once the Qing officially declared themselves the new Chinese emperor you could say it was a civil war. But before that point it was just an invasion.
I haven't liked your content in a long time, but this brings me back to those excellent videos about the 80 years war sieges. Dutch history is fascinating. So it's Chinese history. I'm begginig to enjoy this channel once again (i was one of the founding patreons). Keep up the good work.
Idk if it's worth it but can you cover the siege of Middelburg? I grew up there and always was impressed by how cool it looked and there was a 2 year long siege on it. Anyway if the story is boring as hell and not worth covering it's understandable if you don't, i love your content, cheers!
It was pretty cool visiting it, but there's a lot of modern buildings that come right up to it, and I think some land-reclamation took place? The fort itself was great to see, outside and inside. Also the Dutch are known as red-haired instead of blonde, not sure why but I think this Thomas Pedel kerel may have been responsible. Or... I guess the red hair is more striking in appearance and memorable.
Koxinga was a Chinese adventurer and privateer who bowed down to no one. He had a Dutch-Portuguese wife and his army was recruited not from just the Ming forces, but also the forces of Joseon Korea, the best archery sharpshooters the world had ever seen. He required everyone in the ranks to be able to aim a bow up to 200 yards away. The saga of Koxinga is literally the plot of The Expanse, but set in 1600s Asia. The Expanse may have been inspired partly by his story too. The Earth-Mars conflict and the rebel alliance is just too uncannily coincidential.
@@hyperboloid-g7q Yes. And he was very well known and a celebrity in Europe as well. A lot of western paintings and period mangas depicting him all in a positive light as he was the epitome of the rugged adventurer. Many other European naval powers wanted to do business with him and his fleet aided stranded Spanish and English ships as well. He was nonpolitical, helped those in need, and fought when it was necessary. The captain of the space frigate Rocinante in The Expanse was probably Koxinga in a past life LOL.
The fall of Zeelandia is rarely taught in Dutch schools.. I presume because of the humiliation. And all the while it contains such an important lesson: "Always pay your mercenaries". The VOC relied heavily on hired help in the form of German and Swiss and African soldiers. They turned coats as soon as a high roller rolls up. The same thing happened in most Dutch military defeats, all the way until the fall of Kabul.
It doesn't sound like a big humiliation to me, sounds a bit like you are projecting here... They walked away with their lives, probably killing tenfold of what they lost. I would say the Chinese warlord won a pyrrhic victory at best. Also Dutch or any European nations history is not only about what their country is doing all the time... We are also thought about the renaissance, enlightenment, ancient history, what other nations did, world wars, cold war, etc. In the greater scheme of things. The fall of Zeelandia isn't pivotal in Dutch history and it certainly isn't pivotal in human history... Compared to much more famous and pivotal battles like the fall of Constantinopel, Lepanto, Agincourt were nation and sometimes even age defining battles. The Dutch loosing Formosa is inconsequential to the balance of power. ALOT of separate battles and actions are not thought in school, that goes for any country and it's history... And in the many many many battles the Dutch have fought, lost and won Zeelandia isn't near the top 20... Choices have to be made and nations having troubles with mercenaries and not paying them has been a thing since warfare existed... Plenty of Roman, Greek, Persian, Ottoman, etc. examples that prove the same point or even better. If you want to teach about how dangerous mercenaries were or how important it was to pay your troops well, then you should teach about the Praetorian guard... In general people weren't as patriotic in those days as they are now. The entire idea of the nation state was born with Napoleon and it would still take another 50- 100 years for the effects to go in full swing. Do you think that the vast majority of the European population in the 1600's, who couldn't read and write and had to work VERY hard everyday to survive cared much about what their country was doing half a world away? 95% of human history is just people trying to survive and mind their own business
@@FragLord They did not walk away with their lives. All the hostaged Dutch were killed and they had to forego on all their wives and daughters, as these were either gifted as concubines to officers or sold.
@@YaoiMastah I think you haven't watched the video... The people in the fort were given safe conduct. I don't know about you, but usually wives and daughters don't fight in the army... And armies fight wars, not civilians...
Had Coyett held on for a few weeks longer, until Koxinga dies of malaria, history would have been very very different. It is also very odd that Koxinga's armies couldn't apply their experience fighting the Dutch to fighting against the Qing. Anyway, missed opportunity on all sides.
@@yohopirate Of course, but if Koxinga's army learned from their experience of attacking a bastion fort, and start building them in China, how would cavalry be an advantage for the Qing?
@@paiwanhan Build fortresses where? the idea of a fortress is that you place it in points of interest or strategically important places. i.e. all places where China already had forts. And you cant necessarily build a fort to attack a fort without calvery coming in.
@@TheMitchellExpress They could have built bastion forts in Amoy and Kimmen at least, and secure their home bases in mainland Asia. Also, Koxinga's son, Zheng Jing participated in the revolt of the three feudatories, he could have built some bastion forts to defend territories that he had gained.
for chinese names (and other names you may not know how to pronounce), you can use google translate to learn their pronunciation. however in the case of "koxinga", i'm not certain where the latin transliteration comes from (which i understand complicates this suggestion). in mandarin his name 國姓爺 is guó-xìng-yé, but in hokkien it is apparently kok-sèng-iâ. i'm sure the dutch pronounced it entirely differently from both, but probably not "ko jinga" 😅 i appreciate the content either way, i only suggest this as a way to elevate the quality ✌
Very nice video, first time I heard about it. Other history channels usually cover same and well known stuff, pleasant surprise to see something new and very interesting
There's a lot of misinformation here. 1) It's not a civil war. The Ming were invaded by its previous vassal state, the Jurchens who became the Manchu Qing Dynasty. They're not ethnically Han Chinese. 2) Koxinga was the son of a Chinese pirate (father) and a Japanese mother from one of the lesser Samurai clans. Koxinga commanded a mixed army of Ming loyalists, Ronins from his maternal side, and African gunners freed from the Portuguese by his father. 3) It's wrong to think Qing will support the Dutch so they can retain their colony. The Qing just want to be rid of the last Ming loyalists and then back-stab the Dutch. The Qing eventually got the Taiwan as the last remnants of Ming loyalists submitted to Qing rule in 1668. The Qing Imperial forces were more powerful than Koxinga's forces by a longshot.
Some minor correction: Fall of Ming Dynasty is directly caused by rampant peasant uprisings, one of which besieged and took the capital, and the last emperor committed self off out of humiliation. The manchus then entered China proper to mop up the scene and claim legitimacy. The Zheng regime last a while longer than 1668, in fact it last to 1683, when power struggles and succession crisis open up a chance for Qing to finish off the last Ming(-ish) remnants.
Wrong it was because of Sino-Josen war prior to the uprising and Qing started their campaign before the uprising. In fact during the Sino-Josen war, Qing have started their military campaign. @@lancerhalsey4816
I'm pretty sure everything Chinese in TW history book is greatly simplified, you know... I'm TAIWANESE not CHINESE stuff, even over 98% of your population are literallly Han Chinese who's ancestor came from Mainland not that long ago.
There was no "Dutch crown" in the seventeenth century. The United Provinces were a federal republic, which supplied one of the models for the later United States.
@@LeonardoFSI You do not write for yourself, and you certainly don't publish for yourself. You publish for your public. And the public of this series is people who don't yet know the history it is going to tell. You cannot assume that they know anything about a country that is, today, a monarchy.
Apparently the forces led by Koxinga were not initially aware of the critical importance of taking the elevated redoubts. After failing to capture Utrecht several times, they misinterpreted the redoubt as being simply the fort's first defensive line to the south. It was Hans Jurgen Radis who revealed the fort's vulnerability from that position and suggested effective means to capture it as shown in the video.
looking at a map of modern Taiwan and seeing where Fort Zeelandia was in Formosa compared to where Fort Provintia was on the "mainland"... it's mind blowing to see what humans are capable of when it comes to terraforming.
The Dutch lost New Amsterdam 2 years and 6 months after they lost this fort. The 1660’s were a losing battle time for the Dutch. I grew up in the Hudson valley and a lot of things were still named for the Dutch, I went to a school called Rombout and the creeks were all called kills. The Dutch left a lasting impact wherever they went
You clearly don't know much about the subject. New amsterdam was a useless trading post nothing comparable with what you see now. We actually took surinam and gave the English new amsterdam as pity because we had humiliated them in the second anglo dutch war.
@@drpepper3838 well I grew up near there and people I grew up with had Dutch names and ancestors going back to that time so it seemed important. Plus New York City has orange in it to represent its Dutch history. But losing Formosa and New Amsterdam within two years seems pretty bad.
@@drpepper3838 for me it might just feel like the Dutch fell off because they literally did near where I grew up but the overall Dutch empire wasn’t much worse for it.
@@Baelor-Breakspear The 1660s were actually the best years of the Dutch Golden Age. The Dutch controlled trade everywhere and humiliated England through war and France with diplomacy. Both New Amsterdam and Formosa were territories on the fringes of the Dutch trade empire. New Amsterdam was a shithole while Formosa also wasn't that valuable.
As always great video ❤ if you need suggestions maybe the suggestions if Graz of 1809, or maybe the siege of Cartagena de Indias in Colombia by the British
One guy dying really won't do much the guys under him could finally harvest the rice and potatoes they planted earlier by then. Koxinga had a son too, so they weren't lacking in leaders.
@@lolasdm6959the army would still be demoralised and dissorganised. This would mean that the army would retreat to reorganise giving the fort time to prepare again and giving the voc new hope to send help.
@@lolasdm6959 i don't think you understand. Its not a General swap, its the death of their divine ruler. The effect of such death was a huge drop in morality. Indoctrination existed back then. Morality was everything back then as withouth moral, the troops would stop fighting, maybe desert but likely just run away from the battle / siege.
13:00 I don't think that is true. Timed-fuse weaponry was common in East Asia at the time, and the Chinese, Korean, Japanese armies made great use of them via the means of mortars, grenades, fire arrows, landmines and naval mines, and such. Perhaps the Chinese troops under Koxinga simply were too slow to avoid the mortar bombs, due to their armour? Or maybe the Dutch were just so skilled that they were able to time the fuse correctly, inflicting much damage to the Chinese.
On a military prospective yeah thats kinda how it works. For example we don’t say that the Han Xiongnu war became brutal when the Xiongnu massacred Han villages but instead when the Han army fought back for example
to the europeans, it would definetly look like a civil war. Both are dynasties claiming China and to them, there is little to no difference whether either dynasty was Han Chinese or not.
It's complicated. By the time of the Manchu conquest, they had already been Sinicized to a great deal. The ruling Han did not consider them equals, but because the concept of "Chinese" identity is less ethnically based than it is ideologically-state based, it's important to remember that the Manchus only managed to enter the core of the Empire because they were let in and welcomed because they "were on the same side". Even after popular sentiment turned and they were considered betrayers, there were still many in the populace who accepted them as legitimate contenders to the throne.
@@white-noisemaker9554 Why were they considered to be on the same side. My understanding is that they had been e.g. raiding Korea before. During the Imjin War, the Jurchen offered assistance against the Japanese (because the Japanese had attacked them) but the Koreans and the Chinese refused.
This is a really biased and not very well researched documentary of the battle and history of the island. I'm from Taiwan, and I have walked the ruined stones of Zeelandia myself. I've studied the history of the battle, the fort, and of the people that lived there. You have deliberately painted the island as having been previously uninhabited, but there had been communities of Han, Fukien, and Hakka there for generations past living in tense peace amidst the native Taiwanese aboriginal tribes. You also neglect the absolute sense of pure hatred the aboriginals had for the Dutch and that while they had territorial disputes with the Chinese for ages, they despised the Dutch and as part of the cooperation with Koxinga, they demanded complete unrestricted warfare, execution, and mutilation of the Dutch in exchange for their assistance. The initial quarter and humane treatment the Chinese gave the Dutch prisoners angered the Aboriginals and caused them to question the dedication of Koxinga and his forces towards ejecting the Dutch presence. I noticed you also tended to hype up the prowess of the Dutch musketeers, but completely neglected to mention the Chinese had long since been familiarized with rocketry, artillery, landmines, and their own versions of firearms. While the majority of Koxinga's veteran troops were armed with traditional bows, crossbows, and polearms, he possessed a skilled and well-equipped core of riflemen, artillerists, and siege experts. In addition, you made no mention of the fact that Koxinga was primarily a naval commander and had a very potent fleet of combined firepower that inspired fear in even the Portuguese and Spanish admiralty of the time. I also made note that you continually referred to him as a mere 'warlord' and neglected to mention that he was an ennobled Prince and his very appellation of Koxinga is the title "Bearer of the Imperial Surname" granted by the Ming Emperor. The video's informational presentation is good, but unfortunately related everything from a very skewed perspective of making it seem like Koxinga and his forces were somehow primitive, while the truth is more that they were primarily a naval power force, and unused to the defenses of European land fortresses. Lastly, you really pushed the angle of "taking Dutch women as slaves and concubines" whereas there's a phrase still in use today amongst Taiwanese, called "Dutch Wives", that refers to taking a foreign woman as a wife into one's household, that has its roots in the disposition of the Dutch after their surrender. It's hardly as barbaric as you make it seem. A final comment I would like to make, is that while credit is given for trying, you really butchered the pronounciation of almost all of the Chinese names. I might encourage you to get assistance with how to Romanize and pronounce the important names of the participants and factions, such as the Qing Dynasty. You kept using a soft-G phonetic sound with that name, and it's a hard Ch-sound. It made me wince everytime you mangled the names. All in all, while I am gratified that you tried to educate people about a historical event in Asian-Pacific history often ignored by Western scholars, you had a very skewed presentation that was biased towards the Dutch perspective.
Fun fact: Koxinga was the revered title instead of the guy's real name which was zhèng chénggōng (郑成功). Koxinga（国姓爷）literally means "the Lord with the royal family name" and was given to him by the falling Ming Dynasty's emperor to hopefully buy loyalty and get some much needed help from this pirate turned strong warlord.
No wonder the Dutch were so cruel to the Chinese during the Chineezenmoord pogrom on Java in 1740. Apparently, the Dutch never forgot their loss of Taiwan to the Chinese. And when Chinese sugar workers in Batavia began to riot, they took their chance.
To be precise, it was lost to Chinese warlords. The emperor loyal to Zheng Chenggong had already been abducted by the Qing army, and the emperor's younger brother declared his succession in southwest China, but Zheng did not recognize the new emperor
@@willl237the Ming control in Manchuria was loose, and the Jurchens there were nomadic, had their own armies, had distinct cultural and were not Sinicized. They considered themselves to be separated with the rest of the Han population even after they conquered Ming, their nobles are not intermarrying with them.
@@lam1991hahaha sure but the qing dynasty is undeniably a chinese dynasty, qing readily adopted chinese culture and most manchurian nobles eventually lost their manchu language abilities towards the end. China is a multi ethnic empire, and chinese is a cultural concept, not just han
@@willl237that’s the modern day political landscape’s narrative. In the eyes of 🇨🇳, if we claim Qing to be “Chinese”, all its territory whether directly controlled or protectorate (Manchuria, Xinjiang, Tibet, Taiwan, etc.) is claimable under “historical pretense”. It’s the same when the Yuan and Qing emperors claim themselves Son of Heaven, it’s all about clout and legitimacy. But traditionally speaking both Yuan and Qing were considered foreign dynasties established by invaders.
Zeelandia, now funcions as a historical attrection, now sells "Koxinga's beer", which is basically normal canned beer with his paintings on it. people still buy it because Koxinga's original name, Chenggong, means "success". as a person studying for 6 years at an university there, i can confirm freshmen will try it in their first exam ever and felt as unsuccessful as they could ever be. there are also Koxinga's potato chip and more if you'd like.
Play War Thunder now with my link, and get a massive, free bonus pack including vehicles, boosters and more: playwt.link/sandrhomanhistory24
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Shill
I cant escape the snail anywhere
too bad you didn't include the Tux logo while talking about the platforms, considering War Thunder runs natively on linux, which makes it automatically superior to the competition. :)
hi sandrhoman can you do a video about the great siege of malta it also involved a siege of a star fortress called St Elmo
Some things not mentioned is that, before serving the Ming, Koxinga's father was a pirate lord who at one point served as a privateer for the Dutch. This gave him and the wider Zheng clan a more diverse pool of soldiers. When Koxinga landed with his army in Formosa, his army didn't include only Chinese soldiers, but also Japanese warriors (Koxinga was himself half-Japanese through his mother) and African muskateers (former Spanish slaves whom the Dutch freed, armed and trained, and later, during the Zheng clan's service to them, transferred some of them to the Zheng).
Is this like that fake African samurai that that white professor invented and was put into a video game? Unfortunately this has made it harder to believe other claims. That's why it's so harmful when "experts" lie to us to accomplish their woke political objectives.
The various dynamics of early modern southeast asia is super interesting like that.
Also many slaves of the Dutch also defected as well.
You don't need to serve the Dutch to get mercenaries. Koxinga and his father's fleet were Chinese merchants from Fujian, merchants hire whoever could fight, and sailed all over the place, so it was always pretty diverse. They banded together to defend each other overseas or in other provinces, and when their businesses went sour they can become pirates, or they just become pirates to drive their competition overboard. They also defeated the Ming fleet and replaced them. Koxinga's troops and arms were funded by the Fujian merchants too.
That's really interesting. I know that the Tokugawa Japan supported Ming loyalists in various points of the civil war and the Jurchen/Manchu invasion, so the presence of some Japanese mercs or privateers, or mingling and intermarriage isn't surprising, I also know that privateers at the time were a really multiethnic bunch on all fronts - from the African coasts through the Atlantic and Mediterranean to the Pacific, but to think he'd use these connections to hire a bunch of absolutely random people from half of the world for the Formoza conquest is really wild.
Whats your source for this information besides memory
Hector of Troy falling in battle due to an Achilles heel being hit is ironically fitting.
It's a weird level of ironic
This kind of thing is what keeps sailors superstitious.
They were kinda asking for it weren't they?
Haha, imagine the chinese junk being called Achilles
Achilles 2
Hektor: 0
thats not irony you drop kick
irony is when the outcome is the opposite of the intent
20:06 dude imagine being the messenger, deliver your jolly missive, and half way through your way back you see your ship setting sail, leaving you behind in a damp besieged fort ridden with scurvy and diarrhea
wc
there is an odd event held by the Tainan( Provintia ) government now. It's called Tainan 400. Because of Zeelandia was established in 1624 and it's 400 years ago now. and my university which is called Cheng Kung University named by Koxinga (Zheng Chenggong) is celebrating 400 years of Zeelandia now. History is such a strange thing.
@@Matt-oi3hk
actually there is still a provinz in the netherlands called zeeland. that is actually the provinz with the most reclaimed land from the ocean. that is at least what i remeber visting the deltawerken as a child and beeing quite impressed by it. since i am german and not dutch i might be wrong. i only remeber seeing the construction but zee actually means ocean and land means country. mean more or less ocean country.
@@Matt-oi3hk Yeah no, Zeeland is a province in the Netherlands, New Zealand was discovered by the Dutch explorer Abel Tasman in 1642. Do they not teach you that in history class in school? We learn about the Dutch explorers in our history classes.
Fort Zeelandia was named after the same province. We had a habit of naming new places after old places, just like the English did.
@@amduser86 The province with the most reclaimed land is actually Flevoland, which is almost entirely reclaimed land.
@@amduser86 while “See” is German for lake (DE “Mer” being EN sea), this is not the case in Dutch. The dutch word “zee” means sea (NL: “oceaan” being EN ocean and NL “meer” being EN lake).
New Zealand is named after the dutch province. However, the Dutch originally gave it a latin name: Nova Zeelandia, though colloquially used the Dutch name Nieuw Zeeland. After the brits took over it was renamed New Zealand.
I am not sure why the Brits went with “zea-” though. It’s an odd mix of Dutch (zee) and English (sea). Maybe old English spelling?
@@petertenthije in German : Der See - Lake, Die See - Ocean!
Had no clue there were multiple instances of the chinese fleeing to Taiwan after a civil war.
makes sense really, whats the biggest most defendable place when being pushed south by the winning other side of a war.
Failed Chinese rebels fleed often, given how many civil wars there were in China. They didn't always flee to Taiwan. Just to give another example, a group of rebels fled to what is now Vietnam. They were granted permission to stay by the Vietnamese emperor. It became Cho Lon - basically the Chinatown of Saigon.
The conquest of the Ming Dynasty by the Qing wasn't really a civil war. The invading Qing were Manchurians from what is now northeastern China, but they were a non Han, non Chinese people that were only partially sinicized at best in the 1600s. They didn't fully adopt the Chinese identity until much later.
@@Intranetusa to play devil's advocate, their leader Nurhaci, received a lot of honorifics by doing the Ming's bidding, adopting chinese culture, supressing mongol threats and such. They however soon realized that leaving so many chinese man and weapons under the hand of this Manchu warlord was a risky deal. He managed to unit all manchus and most mongols before pushing south. What most people dont know is that a large portion of his banner army was made of the garrison or a rebel Han general. Another little known fact is that Beijing and most of northern China felt in the hands of rebel peasant warlords first, not manchus, they simply took the cities from these thugs. So it was way more of a civil war than is often said.
@@Intranetusa The Qing were former vassals of the Ming, and their invasion of the Ming was under the pretense that they were totally going to restore the Ming after they defeated the rebels.
"Their arrows blocked the sun"
Sounds like the Dutch had to fight in the shade.
Both the Dutch and Chinese before: “They’re just undisciplined barbarians. How hard can fighting them be?”
Both the Dutch and Chinese after: “Holy shit! They’re actually strong!”
No the Chinese had a much more accurate estimate of the Dutch strength. Chinese troops impression of the Dutch were that their ships were as strong as iron buckets, they were great marksmen, but inferior in melee to Chinese troops. One general remarked that the Europeans carried shorter weapons which were pointless in melee, noting their "soft sword" the rapier was garbage.
The Dutch believed that Chinese troops were cowards and would flee on the scent of gunpowder... Which might have been true when putting down Chinese laborers that they refused to pay.
the japanese and germans sure steamrolled the dutch without problems
@@Blox117wasnt very impressive since they outnumbered us 7 to 1. And we were neutral so we never prepared. We also had ww1 weapons because nobody wanted to sell modern weapons to a neutral country
Taiwan is right next to mainland China. The Dutch only had a small detachment of men are are a small country halfway across the world. The Dutch were strong. If the Chinese lost with all of their advantages of being close to their homeland and outnumbering the Dutch there would be a problem.
Coyet remarked on the accuracy of Chinese cannon bombardment against Dutch gun emplacements on the fort.
Furthermore, according to the soldier Albrecht Herport, who fought for the Dutch, the Chinese "know how to make very effective guns and cannons, so that it’s scarcely possible to find their equal elsewhere.”
The dutch certainly learn a thing or two about Chinese fighting force. It should be mentioned tho, that koxinga is basically a pirate-rebel and not as well equiped as the official imperial Ming/Qing army
Interesting Factoid: Koxinga's ancestral name was Zheng Chenggong,
the western rendering of Koxinga is based on the dialect pronunciation of his honorific *Kok-sèng-iâ* *国姓爷* lit. " Lord of the Imperial Surname" | "Lord of the Empire's Surname" because due to his loyalty to the (fallen) empire.
Context: When Beijing fell the Ming remnants wrapped itself around the surviving imperial family members who became the emperors of Ming rump states in the south, and the South Ming Emperor awarded Zheng this honorific. Though Zheng's relation with his patron was very short it was a genius in branding and he made sure to identify himself as a poetic avenger of the fallen empire. Hence why his foreign western counterparts knew him by his title than his name.
Koxinga had never been called Tēnn Sîng-kong (鄭成功 or Zheng Chenggong in Mandarin) in his life. He was born Tagawa Fukumatsu to a Japanese mother. His actual given Chinese name was Tēnn Sim (鄭森). Sîng-kong was given to him along with the honorific of Kok-sìng-iâ, which means that name paired up with the imperial surname of the Ming dynasty. So it would either be Tsu Sîng-kong (朱成功) or Tēnn Sim (鄭森), but never Tēnn Sîng-kong (鄭成功). Koxinga himself would avoid actually writing or saying the imperial surname, so he would address himself as Kok-sìng Sîng-kong (國姓成功), and others would refer to him Kok-sìng-iâ (國姓爺). It was the Manchus who forced historians to refer to him as Tēnn Sîng-kong (鄭成功), stripping him off the imperial surname.
Not interesting but outstanding fact: Taiwan is not the homeland of Austronesian peoples! The real homeland of all Polynesians was Champa which were destroyed by albino asiatic Vietnamese settler colonialists. The Champa was a black Afrakan indigenous Asians who found the seafaring civilization of Atlantis that connected Kemet to Olmec across the Pacific. They were the first samurai and Shoguns of Japan as well. The original Japanese were a group of Black Chinese called Ainus
@@cudanmang_theog I would have no problem with that if it is supported by linguistic and archeological evidence. Since there is no evidence of any of what you said, and you tried to offer none of it, it's fiction rather than fact.
@@cudanmang_theog Champa was an Indian Brahmanic religion, and because of the massacres of Han towns, the Southern Dynasty (Liu Song) emperor sent an expeditionary army and fleet to destroy them in 440 AD. Most of the nobles and commoners died. In 600 AD, the Sui Dynasty completely wiped them out.
@@cudanmang_theog Aluminum foil for whole family! Aluminum foil for whole family! Only 23 cents a piece! Aluminum foil for whole family!
Imagine if that one guy didn't defect. The Dutch may have held out for a couple weeks more and their enemy commander would have died due to malaria.
makes no difference, they would still lose
@@Blox117 without a unifying lord, that could easily break the siege alone.
Butterfly effect; without the end of VOC presences, Koxinga may or may not have been at the right spot at the right time to get malaria or be in a condition to get deadly sick. We'll never know
@@trbry. Konxinga has a son which ruled for 20 more years so the Dutch might need to hang on for 2 more decades, good luck bro.
@@lolasdm6959 Spoken like someone who hasn't watched the siege of Malta yet
Koxinga was looking for a meal, a succulent Chinese meal. Is that a crime?
Most random reference ever.. Oh well, I suppose the chinese troops knew their judo well
Gentlemen, this is mercantilism manifest
Og corporatism@@thinkingboi9508
do not touch my penis
Get your hand off my bastion!
The Ming loyalist remnants were a force to be reckoned with. Whether it’s Koxinga’s forces in the east or Li Dingguo’s forces in the west. Basically the diehards that survived the bloodiest battles with the Qing-Manchu forces and refused to surrender. The Dutch had great success against Chinese peasant rebellions with minimal losses but they clearly underestimated Koxinga and his forces when they arrived. To be fair however, Koxinga wouldn’t have taken a star fort by conventional means. It was effectively a stalemate until they bombarded that redoubt and held the high ground
"...until they bombarded that redoubt..." so until a very knowledgeable defender defected, then. lol Before that point, they weren't being the cleverest people with their battery positions.
@@matthewcarroll2533..indeed Koxinga’s army was not perfect. They clearly let their guard down when their own positions were exposed. I think the Dutch bombarded them with hundreds dead. Both sides underestimated each other. The Dutch to the Chinese in the field, and the Chinese on Dutch artillery. Each time they paid heavily to each other.
my jaw dropped when that ship sailed away without the messenger. Can you imagine being that dude?
Even thuogh the Chinese won this was a very distant Dutch fort. The Chinese could have learned and adopted to avoid later disasters.
The Chinese were also malsupplied tho. Most of their mainland bases fell to the Manchus and they were in desperate need to establish a foothold as soon as possible so couldnt afford to lay years long sieges like the ones in the 30 years war videos.
Bro spoilers
Unfortunately, this was pre opium war china, the Ming and Qing dynasty (and let’s be honest for most of its history) didn’t view Europeans as equals, since they had much more territory, culture, and thought they were the actual “civilised ones” when in reality they were being outpaced in almost every aspect
As a Chinese myself, a good chunk of our modern history is just embarrassing to read through, especially since most of its worst decisions were only made by a few old and overconfident (read ignorant) leaders.
This whole trend of “too high and mighty to care and change” is crystallised with the failure of the 100 days reform, and the later boxer rebellion. When a new young emperor realised the precarious and backwards situation the Qing was in, he quickly tried to modernise, inviting liberal and western educated scholars, introducing somewhat liberal and progressive policies, and tried to modernise its armies with domestic modern military arms production, along with railroads, and copying western style formations and fighting (and you can guess how that ended)
This was in essence, the Chinese version of the Meiji restoration, but due to extensive corruption, racism, entrenched thoughts of jingoism, and sheer ignorance of the world, it quickly failed as our most hated grandma in history launched a quick “coup” and took over for the young emperor, and she didn’t give up power until poop hit the fan many years later.
Why the reformation utterly failed in China while succeeded brilliantly in Japan is in reality quite complex, but essentially the mixture of powerful traditionalist and ignorant leaders lead to almost no attempt to modernise or even change from their old ways. Japan got its ass handed to the Europeans and quickly learnt they needed to adapt or die, which they did in the Sengokujidai (their own crazy civil war), ending up with a constitutional monarchy and a sole focus on modernisation & industrialisation, leading to a proper honest to god strong Asian nation able to stand its own ground in the entire world stage despite their own problems
The Qing on the other hand never truly learnt its lesson because treaty ports and the occasional border conflict wasn’t enough to shake awake the lazy bums of the filthy rich in the capital, and most of the country remained a rural backwater mess, its military and diplomatic power remained stagnant, and people remaining uneducated and delusional, especially the corrupt and inept higher ups (who you’d expect to be smarter, but good court politics and world politics unfortunately don’t mix, and our poor young emperor learnt that the hard way, he thought he was playing Vicky3 but he was in CK3)
Karma eventually hit the aforementioned grandma, who believed in a band of strong looking Kung-Fu “monks” who allegedly trained their bodies to be "bulletproof". This was the start of the infamous "Boxers", and after they were enabled by said delusional grandma, started killing priests and tried to beat all foreigners out of China…… this led an eventual riot and siege of the diplomatic quarter in Beijing (aka Peking), and then an international collation to save their trapped people, leading to the fall of their capital, to whom they thought were mere “western barbarians”, when in reality they were the barbarians slaughtering innocents and fighting with outdated doctrine and equipment
So all in all, if the Qing Chinese could learn, history would’ve gone very differently, but all we got in our timeline is a century of humiliation
Oddly that’s exactly what happened in Iran with the last Shah. Tried to Europeanise, ended up being overthrown.
This fort likely wasn't administered from the Netherlands though, but from the VOC's headquarter Asia in Batavia (modern-day Jakarta). Still a bit of distance though in the end.
As a Taiwanese, I deeply appreciate this channel to tell the history of our land, which even our textbook didn't show us that detail.
Wait youre a descendant of one of the 800 000 survivors of the kuomintang campaign of eradicating the native taiwanese people?
@666Kaca No, Most Taiwanese today descend from immigrants who came from mainland China during the Qing Dynasty and early Republic of China period. Major migration waves occurred from the late 17th century during Qing rule and after 1949, following the Chinese Civil War.
@@shulintsou2302 ah so youre chinese. Taiwanese are native aborigines. Thanks for clarifying
@@666Kaca The most important thing is not being a filthy communist.
So you are Chinese. What is complicated 😂😂😂.
Oh right it's the failed state known as USA
Really interesting to see a video on a subject I am so familiar with. A few small corrections (more expansions) on the introduction to Dutch Formosa (not because it matters but because I have the knowledge and might as well share it). This comes from recent research on my part which is currently in peer-review, so you would not know it without having read the VOC archival sources.
The first Dutch presence on the island was in 1623. As part of an attempted expansion into the Chinese trade, the Dutch took over an island between the mainland and Formosa called Penghu in 1622. This island was considered as part of China by the Ming dynasty so they were expelled in 1624 (which is when they relocated to Formosa). The person initially in charge of the operation, Cornelis Reijerszoon, had actually ordered the building of what would eventually become Zeelandia in 1623 because he was afraid of the Spanish flanking him by taking the bay first. The Dutch had considered Formosa before but dismissed it because the bay was too shallow (which would only worsen as the lagoon filled in over the years).
Another small thing concerns Fort Provintia. It wasn't built soon after Zeelandia but in the 1650s (in response to those Chinese uprisings). Something called Provintia had existed in that location for a long time (being the thing built soon after Zeelandia), however, it wasn't a fort it was a small colony that was started by Reijerszoon's successor Sonck. Sonck and many other early governors really wanted to move their operations to Provintia because they considered the peninsula a terrible location for a fort. Zeelandia, not Provintia, was the much older fort.
Personally, I disagree with Andrade's characterisation of Zeelandia. He describes it as this well-designed masterpiece but an examination of the its construction shows that it was entirely done by amateurs and had many flaws (the most obvious being the need for redoubt Utrecht to prevent an enemy from setting up on the dune it guarded to fire down into the fort). However, this wasn't the only one as the lower tier had to be built in the 1630s to protect the goods stored in the warehouses below the fort (since the floor plan of the upper tier was too small for such warehouses). This they only did after an attack by pirates forced them to partially tear down the warehouses and move the goods into the fort.
Great video regardless. The siege of Zeelandia is such an interesting case study in colonial fortification. It is a shame it is not better known.
Yeah, the need for a disconnected redoubt on a nearby hill is a fail. Should have been included in the overall fort.
Thank you for the interesting additional info! Good luck on your peer review
Thanks for sharing this info! If you have any links to share I would be greatly interested. I've been struggling to find information on Fort Zeelandia (except when I'm there).
@@Good3urmes Well, regardless of my disagreement with some of his positions, Tonio Andrade's work is probably the best published work (pretty much the only if you can only read English). If you can read Dutch there are more options. The diaries or 'dagregisters' are published online by the Huygens institute and are a decent source of information. Alternatively, you could look at the scans of the original document on the website of the Dutch National Archive, though that really requires experience with palaeography.
You have been there? does that mean to the Zeelandia museum itself (or anping old fort as I believe it is called)? I intend to visit it in October when I am on Taiwan for a conference. I wasn't able to find out much about the contents of the museum without going there but I am extremely curious about what they know.
@@GerritXI Thanks for the recommendations and yes the fort and the museum at the site are a good spot to visit. It's crazy how much the geography in the old bay section of Tainan has changed since these events but I noticed a mound with a graveyard on it South-west of the fort and I'm curious to confirm if that was the site of the Utrecht redoubt.
There is some great research being done on the site locally by Huang Enyu, Associate Professor, Department of Architecture, National Cheng Kung University in Tainan.
Fort Provintia (or Chikan Tower now) is also worth a visit as some foundations, walls and doorways remain.
0:08 rip my chang homie
Oh god Chang!😞
@@chupacabra304 f
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As a Dutch guy, I’ll be visiting both these forts this year. Not a whole is left, especially of Zeelandia, but I’m hyped
Please don't bring an army
@@eduardomelo151 teehee, no promises
Great video!
Here's a suggestion for a future video: siege of Diaoyu Fortress.
The bloodiest siege in the Mongol conquest of China, a siege that cost Möngke Khan his life.
That was fantastic. I had no idea about this event.
Love how you've put it together with clear graphics that move the narrative along.
Well done. Definitely going to watch more.
"On a misty morning in 1661!"]
Sounds like an intro to a Sabaton song.
Nah, King Diamond. Very reminiscent of the start of Abigail
@@Styphonyeah
or an irish drinkin song
or both
@@ohhi5237Alestorm
The stories of torture during this siege are harrowing
Tit for tat- but it's a miracle that the Chinese even granted the Dutch safe passage at all. The Japanese who many centuries later overran the woefully unprepared colonial garrisons in South East Asia would not be so merciful.
Lets just focus on the human experience man, what these people experienced. @@WilliamLaurenson
@@WilliamLaurenson It was not really a complete safe passage, most of the women, including the teenage daughter of Antonius Hambroek, were sold as concubines by the Chinese to their soldiers...
This was the norm for the time period. People were terrible to each other.
@@GeorgeMonetHave no doubt that when you put modern people in a similar situation, pour rations, heat, thirst, diarrhea, smell, stress, shelling, shit everywhere all humanity and dignity will be gone just as much if not sooner.
this does ignore the decades of time when Formosa was a huge financial burden yet the VOC kept it up as the location was ideal, they had to contend with the austronesian tribes of which many if not all practiced headhunting as a rite of passage. there were friendlier tribes which saw the chinese smugglers and later europeans as usefull traders, most of these started out staying inside the villages of such tribes but the dutch did start their official endeavour with the building of a settlement in the northern side of the island.
importantly they had wished to settle on an island much closer to the mainland intending to set up their version of Hong-kong or Macau but were adviced to settle on formosa instead as it "was not considdered part of Ming China" whilst the closer island was. (The Ming had a dynastic precedent to not seek maritime expansion but to instead focus on land in accordance to confusian doctrine they tended to dogmatically stick to these precedents (hence why the one Ming emperor that built the famed treasure fleet was followed by his own son who immediatly burned it down)
the dutch tried to take the smaller island but were expelled by chinese forces, they then settled for formosa
the colony was in fact incredibly costly to maintain for decades but the VOC maintained it was a worthwile venture. they mainly lacked colonists and to deal with this issue they tried to attract mainland farmers. the problem with this was that no Ming dynasty farmer could remain abroad for a period over 4 years or would lose all his property at home. The Dutch offered 4 year tax exemption to attract them. there were quite a few that made the venture and used their expertise to set up sugarcane and rice farms which initially produced only less valuable brown sugar. It would take until the start of the qing uprising and invasion that things changed, many chinese fled and many others took advantage of the ming bureaucracy having bigger issues than tracking their attendance. furthermore many were sent by Koxinga who probably wanted to pawn them off and thought these would be loyal to him should point come to shove (they weren't)
long story short the Chinese on Formosa had no intention of going back asside from a minor rebellion earlier on, correspondence shows this as mainlanders urged their relatives to stay on the island as they themselves were by then hoping for the qing to go on and conquer their region so they would no longer be exploited by koxinga's soldiers. island chinese themselves urged family to go there and didn't want any side on the island.
The Dutch did not have the numbers to govern the colony and play racial superiority games so the elite of the island included chinese. the austronesian tribes were loosely integrated, they were utilised to break the aforementioned minor revolt. one Dutch letter discussed how a chinese woman was struck with a cannonball on the beaches.
Focusing on land was not a Confucian doctrine, it's just that expansion in any direction was no longer profitable.
40 years earlier from this event, the Ming dynasty also had a war with the Dutch. The Ming was able to defeat dutch force and even captured their fort in the pescadores islands, forcing the dutch to flee to Taiwan.
Please make a video about this earlier encounter and Chinese victory against the Dutch
Thank you so much for covering this piece of history - all the more so as I was asking for it in one of previous comments :) Much appreciated!
we did boys, we found old zeeland, middle zeeland and new zeeland
Blown away that this channel showed me something I did not know! Greetings from the Netherlands.
As a long term resident of Taiwan, i can really appreciate this account of the battle
0:38 - Historiography is the study of how history is told. So for example "this is how modern historiography re-evaluated the popular accounts of the siege of XYZ". But "Here's the *history* of the siege of XYZ".
This is what happens when everyone becomes an amateur expert on everything! I kinda wished TH-cam didn't showcase comments when you aren't fullscreen; because your comment popped up and now I don't want to watch the rest of the vide
Koxinga also started a complete new era of Taiwan
After his conquest,Taiwan start to bond with China (because his grandchild surrendered to Qing)
Before koxinga came to Taiwan,none of Chinese dynasties considered Taiwan as part of China
If he never defeat dutch
Taiwan probably would remained as Dutch colony until ww2
Without koxinga,there would be no Qing,Japanese,kmt rule of Taiwan
So he basically created Taiwanese crisis today
Those are quite some conclusions and stretches you’re making.
@@PhyrexJThe real stretch is China continuing to think Taiwan is part of their country. It is not.
CHINA : TAIWAN IS CHINESE SINCE ANCIENT TIMES !!!
The Dutch : oh yea ? so how come we were there first ?
@@Styphontaiwan believes china to be part of its land.
@@SeArCh4DrEaMz Dutch: Gets starved out
Wow quite early this time- love the videos, always happy to see a new one.
Love from Taipei. I'll finish the latter half tonight, but I think it would be worth mentioning if in your premise, the Dutch fought the Spaniards who were based in northern Taiwan, close to today's Taipei. The Dutch were quite spread out at first and took them a while to figure out true intentions of Zheng, aka Koxinga(this actually based on Japanese translation of Zheng's imperial title). I truly appreciate this vid., and expect more of Taiwan's Early Modern struggles as a part of grand strategy so many empires fought over!
Taiwan is my favorite chinese provience. Bubble tea is my favorite
love the ads every 3 mins. not obnoxious at all!
I have heard the western powers also struggled with chinese forts. Will you eventually cover one of their battles too?
Agreee
Oh, more really nice siege content? and even about Europe vs. china again? Consider me hyped!
I think this time, it will be the Dutch who struggle, right?
Both sides struggled, at the end the Chinese force came on top. But it must be mentioned that it is not really Dutch vs China. More like Dutch vs a Chinese rebel pirate. Koxinga is not affiliated with the Imperial Chinese army. He is an independent pirate-rebel-warlord
@@thesuperproify Also technically, it was a Dutch private company fighting, not the Dutch Republic.
@@kimashitawa8113 so its a private company vs pirate
@@thesuperproify Yes
@@thesuperproify实际上郑成功才是真正的中国人，你所说的帝国是清朝，很多中国人都讨厌清朝，因为他们是北方的蛮族，郑成功代表的才是现在中国90%的汉人群体。
I truly miss this style of simple but informative documentary. Thank you.
I love how the future Governor just nopes out without even waiting for the messenger.
My ancestor was one of Koxinga's officers who took a Dutch captive as concubine. My grandma had blonde hair, grayish green eyes and white skin. When I was a child, my hair was red, and kids in school used to call me "Orangutan" T_T
imagine willingly posting that your ancestor was a r*pist
Thats funny
thats messed up
So we are distant brothers 🙃
@@MegaWarrior777 Hahha yes, although mine was rather embarrassing 🙈 as my lineage was born out of sexual enslavement and that’s not ok.
Interesting side note about why the Dutch musketeers were so effective; this siege was only a few decades after the military reforms of prince Maurice of Orange, who introduced combined arms methods, volley fire and a large increase in drilling and exercise to the Dutch army, in order to fight the Spanish. These reforms were a significant contribution to the development of early modern warfare.
Great article to read on wikipedia for anyone interested.
I love seeing unusual match-ups like this one shown in detail on this channel. Clashes between radically different military systems like this are fascinating to study. I have one minor correction though: the Qing-Ming war cannot, in any way, be described as a civil war. It was a foreign invasion. Yes, there were large numbers of Chinese who defected to the Qing side, but that's as close as it gets to a civil war.
The Manchus were Ming subjects, no? so its a civil war.
I mean, I guess once the Qing officially declared themselves the new Chinese emperor you could say it was a civil war. But before that point it was just an invasion.
I haven't liked your content in a long time, but this brings me back to those excellent videos about the 80 years war sieges. Dutch history is fascinating. So it's Chinese history. I'm begginig to enjoy this channel once again (i was one of the founding patreons). Keep up the good work.
Love your Staggering Sieges series. Please do more!
Idk if it's worth it but can you cover the siege of Middelburg? I grew up there and always was impressed by how cool it looked and there was a 2 year long siege on it. Anyway if the story is boring as hell and not worth covering it's understandable if you don't, i love your content, cheers!
It was pretty cool visiting it, but there's a lot of modern buildings that come right up to it, and I think some land-reclamation took place? The fort itself was great to see, outside and inside. Also the Dutch are known as red-haired instead of blonde, not sure why but I think this Thomas Pedel kerel may have been responsible. Or... I guess the red hair is more striking in appearance and memorable.
Koxinga was a Chinese adventurer and privateer who bowed down to no one. He had a Dutch-Portuguese wife and his army was recruited not from just the Ming forces, but also the forces of Joseon Korea, the best archery sharpshooters the world had ever seen. He required everyone in the ranks to be able to aim a bow up to 200 yards away. The saga of Koxinga is literally the plot of The Expanse, but set in 1600s Asia. The Expanse may have been inspired partly by his story too. The Earth-Mars conflict and the rebel alliance is just too uncannily coincidential.
During Taiwan’s Japanese era, Koxinga was worshiped by the Japanese government because Koxinga was born in Japan to a Japanese mother.
all that to say in reality he was likely a brutal, vicious chinese warlord whom cared very little for the non-combatants he ruled over.
He had a white wife? Really??
@@hyperboloid-g7q Yes. And he was very well known and a celebrity in Europe as well. A lot of western paintings and period mangas depicting him all in a positive light as he was the epitome of the rugged adventurer. Many other European naval powers wanted to do business with him and his fleet aided stranded Spanish and English ships as well. He was nonpolitical, helped those in need, and fought when it was necessary. The captain of the space frigate Rocinante in The Expanse was probably Koxinga in a past life LOL.
No that’s what modern day populists likes to believe, he was a Ming loyalist
You can still visit the ruins of Fort Zeelandia in Tainan. It's a cool spot.
its still there but not in good condition
The fall of Zeelandia is rarely taught in Dutch schools.. I presume because of the humiliation. And all the while it contains such an important lesson: "Always pay your mercenaries".
The VOC relied heavily on hired help in the form of German and Swiss and African soldiers. They turned coats as soon as a high roller rolls up. The same thing happened in most Dutch military defeats, all the way until the fall of Kabul.
Heh, i saw you in Economy Explained's Videos about Indonesia
It doesn't sound like a big humiliation to me, sounds a bit like you are projecting here... They walked away with their lives, probably killing tenfold of what they lost. I would say the Chinese warlord won a pyrrhic victory at best.
Also Dutch or any European nations history is not only about what their country is doing all the time... We are also thought about the renaissance, enlightenment, ancient history, what other nations did, world wars, cold war, etc. In the greater scheme of things. The fall of Zeelandia isn't pivotal in Dutch history and it certainly isn't pivotal in human history... Compared to much more famous and pivotal battles like the fall of Constantinopel, Lepanto, Agincourt were nation and sometimes even age defining battles. The Dutch loosing Formosa is inconsequential to the balance of power.
ALOT of separate battles and actions are not thought in school, that goes for any country and it's history... And in the many many many battles the Dutch have fought, lost and won Zeelandia isn't near the top 20...
Choices have to be made and nations having troubles with mercenaries and not paying them has been a thing since warfare existed... Plenty of Roman, Greek, Persian, Ottoman, etc. examples that prove the same point or even better.
If you want to teach about how dangerous mercenaries were or how important it was to pay your troops well, then you should teach about the Praetorian guard...
In general people weren't as patriotic in those days as they are now. The entire idea of the nation state was born with Napoleon and it would still take another 50- 100 years for the effects to go in full swing. Do you think that the vast majority of the European population in the 1600's, who couldn't read and write and had to work VERY hard everyday to survive cared much about what their country was doing half a world away? 95% of human history is just people trying to survive and mind their own business
@@FragLord They did not walk away with their lives. All the hostaged Dutch were killed and they had to forego on all their wives and daughters, as these were either gifted as concubines to officers or sold.
@@YaoiMastah I think you haven't watched the video... The people in the fort were given safe conduct. I don't know about you, but usually wives and daughters don't fight in the army... And armies fight wars, not civilians...
walking out with banners high is not a humiliation, but nationalism is frowned upon in western countries.
I lived in Tainan in the 80s and rode my bike there many times .
awsome video ... Koxinga dying of Malaria just weeks later .. its like everyone lost here :o
His son took over and they kept holding out against the Qing for longer so technically Koxinga still won. But in the end it still fell to the Qing.
Exceptionally illustrated and narrated. Here's a like and subscription.
Had Coyett held on for a few weeks longer, until Koxinga dies of malaria, history would have been very very different. It is also very odd that Koxinga's armies couldn't apply their experience fighting the Dutch to fighting against the Qing. Anyway, missed opportunity on all sides.
The Qing have vastly superior cavalry
@@yohopirate Of course, but if Koxinga's army learned from their experience of attacking a bastion fort, and start building them in China, how would cavalry be an advantage for the Qing?
@@paiwanhan 清朝采取了海禁政策，将沿海地区的村庄强行往内部迁徙，导致郑成功无法招募新的军队，也无法建立据点。所以郑成功在打下台湾后，准备侵略欧洲殖民者的殖民地
@@paiwanhan Build fortresses where? the idea of a fortress is that you place it in points of interest or strategically important places. i.e. all places where China already had forts. And you cant necessarily build a fort to attack a fort without calvery coming in.
@@TheMitchellExpress They could have built bastion forts in Amoy and Kimmen at least, and secure their home bases in mainland Asia. Also, Koxinga's son, Zheng Jing participated in the revolt of the three feudatories, he could have built some bastion forts to defend territories that he had gained.
Man. You really are into 16th-17th centuries stuff ❤ Your videos are the best. Respect from Greece
Love these random history videos. I'm writing a light novel series and I like to learn about historical battles for reference.
What is your Light Novel's name ?
for chinese names (and other names you may not know how to pronounce), you can use google translate to learn their pronunciation. however in the case of "koxinga", i'm not certain where the latin transliteration comes from (which i understand complicates this suggestion). in mandarin his name 國姓爺 is guó-xìng-yé, but in hokkien it is apparently kok-sèng-iâ. i'm sure the dutch pronounced it entirely differently from both, but probably not "ko jinga" 😅
i appreciate the content either way, i only suggest this as a way to elevate the quality ✌
I didn't even know we (Dutchies) had a colony there in Taiwan.
This needs a Netflix movie or serie, it’s too good
SandRhoman have found the gold mine, sieges
Very nice video, first time I heard about it. Other history channels usually cover same and well known stuff, pleasant surprise to see something new and very interesting
There's a lot of misinformation here. 1) It's not a civil war. The Ming were invaded by its previous vassal state, the Jurchens who became the Manchu Qing Dynasty. They're not ethnically Han Chinese. 2) Koxinga was the son of a Chinese pirate (father) and a Japanese mother from one of the lesser Samurai clans. Koxinga commanded a mixed army of Ming loyalists, Ronins from his maternal side, and African gunners freed from the Portuguese by his father. 3) It's wrong to think Qing will support the Dutch so they can retain their colony. The Qing just want to be rid of the last Ming loyalists and then back-stab the Dutch. The Qing eventually got the Taiwan as the last remnants of Ming loyalists submitted to Qing rule in 1668. The Qing Imperial forces were more powerful than Koxinga's forces by a longshot.
Some minor correction:
Fall of Ming Dynasty is directly caused by rampant peasant uprisings, one of which besieged and took the capital, and the last emperor committed self off out of humiliation. The manchus then entered China proper to mop up the scene and claim legitimacy.
The Zheng regime last a while longer than 1668, in fact it last to 1683, when power struggles and succession crisis open up a chance for Qing to finish off the last Ming(-ish) remnants.
Wrong it was because of Sino-Josen war prior to the uprising and Qing started their campaign before the uprising. In fact during the Sino-Josen war, Qing have started their military campaign.
@@lancerhalsey4816
OH AWESOME! When I visited my little brother in Taiwan last October, I coy to look around Fort Zeelandia! IT's really cool!
cheers to all my fellow history lovers
Such an interesting historical battle, thanks for the video!
Commenting for the algorithm. Love your channel!
I wonder if you would make videos about the siege of Batavia the first and second in 1628 and 1629.
I have to say Taiwanese history textbook of this part is criminally simplified.
I'm pretty sure everything Chinese in TW history book is greatly simplified, you know... I'm TAIWANESE not CHINESE stuff, even over 98% of your population are literallly Han Chinese who's ancestor came from Mainland not that long ago.
因为这是台湾是中国的法理来源，绿营怎么可能教你们这些
Very interesting and no, so, well know part of the history.
I learn about Koxinga and his Siege of Zeelandia thanks to a Manhua. Yes a Manhua.
They build Zeelandia fortress but not the fortresses on Deers ear. There would be a whole line blocking an invasion from this side.
I'm very happy to see a channel with so many video's on dutch history! As a dutchmen!
There was no "Dutch crown" in the seventeenth century. The United Provinces were a federal republic, which supplied one of the models for the later United States.
Even more inexcusable they used slavery and mass murdered civilians so they could keep Indonesia poor and enrich themselves.
Thanks, I was gonna point that out too
The coat of arms of the Dutch Republic had a crown though
This was figure of speech, they have an entire series on the 80 years war ans are very aware that it was a republic.
@@LeonardoFSI You do not write for yourself, and you certainly don't publish for yourself. You publish for your public. And the public of this series is people who don't yet know the history it is going to tell. You cannot assume that they know anything about a country that is, today, a monarchy.
I really love the videos about asia! really interesting stuff thats need really covered anywhere else.
Apparently the forces led by Koxinga were not initially aware of the critical importance of taking the elevated redoubts. After failing to capture Utrecht several times, they misinterpreted the redoubt as being simply the fort's first defensive line to the south. It was Hans Jurgen Radis who revealed the fort's vulnerability from that position and suggested effective means to capture it as shown in the video.
looking at a map of modern Taiwan and seeing where Fort Zeelandia was in Formosa compared to where Fort Provintia was on the "mainland"... it's mind blowing to see what humans are capable of when it comes to terraforming.
The Dutch lost New Amsterdam 2 years and 6 months after they lost this fort. The 1660’s were a losing battle time for the Dutch. I grew up in the Hudson valley and a lot of things were still named for the Dutch, I went to a school called Rombout and the creeks were all called kills. The Dutch left a lasting impact wherever they went
You clearly don't know much about the subject. New amsterdam was a useless trading post nothing comparable with what you see now. We actually took surinam and gave the English new amsterdam as pity because we had humiliated them in the second anglo dutch war.
@@drpepper3838 well I grew up near there and people I grew up with had Dutch names and ancestors going back to that time so it seemed important. Plus New York City has orange in it to represent its Dutch history. But losing Formosa and New Amsterdam within two years seems pretty bad.
@@drpepper3838 for me it might just feel like the Dutch fell off because they literally did near where I grew up but the overall Dutch empire wasn’t much worse for it.
@@Baelor-Breakspear The 1660s were actually the best years of the Dutch Golden Age. The Dutch controlled trade everywhere and humiliated England through war and France with diplomacy.
Both New Amsterdam and Formosa were territories on the fringes of the Dutch trade empire. New Amsterdam was a shithole while Formosa also wasn't that valuable.
That's not how peace bargaining and international relations work bro, it wasn't a matter of pity, never is
As always great video ❤ if you need suggestions maybe the suggestions if Graz of 1809, or maybe the siege of Cartagena de Indias in Colombia by the British
So if only Dutch Knew... Few weeks would made such a difference lol
One guy dying really won't do much the guys under him could finally harvest the rice and potatoes they planted earlier by then. Koxinga had a son too, so they weren't lacking in leaders.
@@lolasdm6959the army would still be demoralised and dissorganised. This would mean that the army would retreat to reorganise giving the fort time to prepare again and giving the voc new hope to send help.
I don't think there will be much difference. Zheng Chenggong's government in exile has the standard feudal empire organization.
@@niemand1072 the army was moralized enough to hold the seige even when starving I think a general swap is fine
@@lolasdm6959 i don't think you understand. Its not a General swap, its the death of their divine ruler.
The effect of such death was a huge drop in morality. Indoctrination existed back then.
Morality was everything back then as withouth moral, the troops would stop fighting, maybe desert but likely just run away from the battle / siege.
Great videos as usual, my favorite channel when it comes to history on youtube, an hurrah for the algorithm :)
13:00 I don't think that is true. Timed-fuse weaponry was common in East Asia at the time, and the Chinese, Korean, Japanese armies made great use of them via the means of mortars, grenades, fire arrows, landmines and naval mines, and such. Perhaps the Chinese troops under Koxinga simply were too slow to avoid the mortar bombs, due to their armour? Or maybe the Dutch were just so skilled that they were able to time the fuse correctly, inflicting much damage to the Chinese.
当时欧洲人的火炮使用技术无疑要比中国人强，何况中国人在围攻坚固的堡垒。欧洲人的堡垒在当时中国人眼里是非常奇怪的，相比中国的城墙更难攻克，伤亡必然很大，
Wow, never new this conflict happened lol. Awesome video btw!
2:38 an error on the map. edit for you : Tsardom of Muscovy
Just a note for you, the Qing wasn't Qing yet when they were rolling down south to Ming.
You should use the term, "later Jin"
The battles between the chips and chunks must have been thrilling.
Hey SandRomanHistory, do you think you can make a playlist with all of your sieges and battles in chronological order? Thanks!
I like how the war only became "brutal" when the Dutch started going on the offense and not when the Chinese killed and raped the settlers.
On a military prospective yeah thats kinda how it works. For example we don’t say that the Han Xiongnu war became brutal when the Xiongnu massacred Han villages but instead when the Han army fought back for example
That does tend to be the way of it, aye. Tale as old as time, sad to say.
I love your staggering siege videos. I'm looking forward to this one.
4:05 Is it really accurate to call it a "civil war"? I thought it was more of a case of an outside power, i.e. the Jurchen/Manchu, conquering China.
Manchus were already sinicized for a long time by the end of the Ming so it's accurate to say the transition is a "civil war".
to the europeans, it would definetly look like a civil war. Both are dynasties claiming China and to them, there is little to no difference whether either dynasty was Han Chinese or not.
@@Schizz76 By that kind of logic, Willian the Conqueror's conquest of England would also be a civil war.
It's complicated. By the time of the Manchu conquest, they had already been Sinicized to a great deal. The ruling Han did not consider them equals, but because the concept of "Chinese" identity is less ethnically based than it is ideologically-state based, it's important to remember that the Manchus only managed to enter the core of the Empire because they were let in and welcomed because they "were on the same side". Even after popular sentiment turned and they were considered betrayers, there were still many in the populace who accepted them as legitimate contenders to the throne.
@@white-noisemaker9554 Why were they considered to be on the same side. My understanding is that they had been e.g. raiding Korea before. During the Imjin War, the Jurchen offered assistance against the Japanese (because the Japanese had attacked them) but the Koreans and the Chinese refused.
Excellent documentary. Thank you.
This is a really biased and not very well researched documentary of the battle and history of the island. I'm from Taiwan, and I have walked the ruined stones of Zeelandia myself. I've studied the history of the battle, the fort, and of the people that lived there.
You have deliberately painted the island as having been previously uninhabited, but there had been communities of Han, Fukien, and Hakka there for generations past living in tense peace amidst the native Taiwanese aboriginal tribes. You also neglect the absolute sense of pure hatred the aboriginals had for the Dutch and that while they had territorial disputes with the Chinese for ages, they despised the Dutch and as part of the cooperation with Koxinga, they demanded complete unrestricted warfare, execution, and mutilation of the Dutch in exchange for their assistance. The initial quarter and humane treatment the Chinese gave the Dutch prisoners angered the Aboriginals and caused them to question the dedication of Koxinga and his forces towards ejecting the Dutch presence.
I noticed you also tended to hype up the prowess of the Dutch musketeers, but completely neglected to mention the Chinese had long since been familiarized with rocketry, artillery, landmines, and their own versions of firearms. While the majority of Koxinga's veteran troops were armed with traditional bows, crossbows, and polearms, he possessed a skilled and well-equipped core of riflemen, artillerists, and siege experts.
In addition, you made no mention of the fact that Koxinga was primarily a naval commander and had a very potent fleet of combined firepower that inspired fear in even the Portuguese and Spanish admiralty of the time. I also made note that you continually referred to him as a mere 'warlord' and neglected to mention that he was an ennobled Prince and his very appellation of Koxinga is the title "Bearer of the Imperial Surname" granted by the Ming Emperor.
The video's informational presentation is good, but unfortunately related everything from a very skewed perspective of making it seem like Koxinga and his forces were somehow primitive, while the truth is more that they were primarily a naval power force, and unused to the defenses of European land fortresses.
Lastly, you really pushed the angle of "taking Dutch women as slaves and concubines" whereas there's a phrase still in use today amongst Taiwanese, called "Dutch Wives", that refers to taking a foreign woman as a wife into one's household, that has its roots in the disposition of the Dutch after their surrender. It's hardly as barbaric as you make it seem.
A final comment I would like to make, is that while credit is given for trying, you really butchered the pronounciation of almost all of the Chinese names. I might encourage you to get assistance with how to Romanize and pronounce the important names of the participants and factions, such as the Qing Dynasty. You kept using a soft-G phonetic sound with that name, and it's a hard Ch-sound. It made me wince everytime you mangled the names.
All in all, while I am gratified that you tried to educate people about a historical event in Asian-Pacific history often ignored by Western scholars, you had a very skewed presentation that was biased towards the Dutch perspective.
This would make a great wargame campaign. So many variations and options. It has got my imagination going! Thank you.
Europeans must take back those territories eventually.
Europe is destroying itself on the orders of its Jewish masters.
Fun fact: Koxinga was the revered title instead of the guy's real name which was zhèng chénggōng (郑成功). Koxinga（国姓爷）literally means "the Lord with the royal family name" and was given to him by the falling Ming Dynasty's emperor to hopefully buy loyalty and get some much needed help from this pirate turned strong warlord.
2:58 I have to say this will be really interesting.
The map is accurate!
你的畫師很優秀，畫出了真實的明代士兵甲胄
Once again the seething Mingster is outwitted by the Gigachad Euro Star Fortress.
A wonderful historical coverage episode about competition between Chinese empire troops and Eastern Dutch companies in Formosa island..
I'm enjoying this eastern expansion of your channel very much!
No wonder the Dutch were so cruel to the Chinese during the Chineezenmoord pogrom on Java in 1740. Apparently, the Dutch never forgot their loss of Taiwan to the Chinese. And when Chinese sugar workers in Batavia began to riot, they took their chance.
To be precise, it was lost to Chinese warlords. The emperor loyal to Zheng Chenggong had already been abducted by the Qing army, and the emperor's younger brother declared his succession in southwest China, but Zheng did not recognize the new emperor
It can't be spring if your heart is filled with past failures.
The Manchu invasion of Ming was not a civil war, it’s a foreign invasion.
manchus have been part of the chinese empire for hundreds of years before
@@willl237the Ming control in Manchuria was loose, and the Jurchens there were nomadic, had their own armies, had distinct cultural and were not Sinicized.
They considered themselves to be separated with the rest of the Han population even after they conquered Ming, their nobles are not intermarrying with them.
@@lam1991hahaha sure but the qing dynasty is undeniably a chinese dynasty, qing readily adopted chinese culture and most manchurian nobles eventually lost their manchu language abilities towards the end. China is a multi ethnic empire, and chinese is a cultural concept, not just han
@@lam1991hahaha plus yuan controlled manchuria and tang had a protectorate their
@@willl237that’s the modern day political landscape’s narrative. In the eyes of 🇨🇳, if we claim Qing to be “Chinese”, all its territory whether directly controlled or protectorate (Manchuria, Xinjiang, Tibet, Taiwan, etc.) is claimable under “historical pretense”. It’s the same when the Yuan and Qing emperors claim themselves Son of Heaven, it’s all about clout and legitimacy. But traditionally speaking both Yuan and Qing were considered foreign dynasties established by invaders.
Zeelandia, now funcions as a historical attrection, now sells "Koxinga's beer", which is basically normal canned beer with his paintings on it. people still buy it because Koxinga's original name, Chenggong, means "success". as a person studying for 6 years at an university there, i can confirm freshmen will try it in their first exam ever and felt as unsuccessful as they could ever be. there are also Koxinga's potato chip and more if you'd like.