An Analysis of the Mindset Behind the Oppression, Exploitation, and Forced Assimilation of the Taiwanese Aborigines
Over the course of history, humanity has sought to do away with our innate and cultural differences, and instead bring about conformity and sameness that is comfortable to those in power. In particular, ethnic groups in positions of power have often strived to achieve linguistic, religious, cultural, and ideological conformity amongst other ethnic groups, be those groups under their dominion or not. However, the extent to which these policies, official or otherwise, were enacted depended significantly on the amount of perceived differences between oppressor and oppressed. On the basis of these factors, colonial powers often created elaborate schemes of “civility” to classify the peoples they conquered, coming up with convoluted and often baseless pseudoscientific reasoning as for why certain peoples are superior to others. This essay will examine the ideas and methods behind the oppression, exploitation, and forced assimilation of the Taiwanese aborigines by the Han Chinese immigrants.
The Taiwanese aborigines, also known as Formosans, are a group of people who have lived in Taiwan for thousands of years before the Han Chinese came to settle there. They are an Austronesian people, and in fact, by many linguists, Taiwan is seen as the urheimat of the Austronesian languages, and thus of the Austronesian people. The Austronesian people also include many different peoples, from the Malays, Javanese, and Balinese, to the Malagasy in Madagascar and to the Hawaiians and Rapa Nui all the way at the other end of the world. Many prehistoric sites and cultures on the mainland of China have been putatively linked with the Austronesians, indicating links with China before their emigration to Taiwan. The linguistic diversity noted on the island is said to be higher than the diversity within the rest of the Austronesian family, with famous linguist Robert Blust (1999) listing nine of the ten branches to be within Taiwan itself. Currently, there are 16 government-recognized groups, with several more currently petitioning for recognition or having already gone extinct. The Formosans are so diverse amongst themselves that only through shared experiences and traumas brought by foreign powers have they formed a unified identity today.
During the initial contact period of Han Chinese from Fujian with the Taiwanese aborigines, to facilitate trade amongst the two, there were many merchants and fishermen who were conversant in some of the eastern Formosan languages. However, this was to be only a fleeting period of foreign practical interest in Formosan cultures. The first form of exploitation came with trade in deer meat and skins, where the Chinese traders bought the goods “for a trifle, because they have no knowledge of money” (Rubinstein 88). The Formosans had also grown dependent on the Chinese traders to provide them with salt, as they had no means or knowledge of salt production. The Chinese, wishing to maintain this dependency in their favor, imported salt from the Fujian coast instead of producing it on Taiwan, to prevent the Formosans from breaking their dependency. In fact, this dependency was used for further exploitation, where it was noted that the Chinese would force the Formosans to provide them with food, threatening to cut off their salt supply (Rubinstein 88). The ideas behind these behaviors stem from beliefs of the intellectual inferiority of the Formosans: that they knew less meant that others should exploit their lack of knowledge for personal gain. This mentality has been carried to today, with widespread belief that the Taiwanese aborigines are inherently less intelligent, and thus easier to take advantage of and exploit. In my conversation with two aboriginal activists, one Amis and one Puyuma, at Chiang Kai-shek Memorial Hall, the Amis activist related to me that there is significant discrimination in higher education today towards aborigines, with many believing them to speak poor Mandarin and to have lesser intellectual capabilities. The Puyuma activist argued that this was one of many reasons people still are less likely to admit to being aboriginal, as the stereotypes associated with it carried far-reaching impacts. She stated that the repeated discrimination was one factor explaining the low number of aboriginal students in tertiary education. Lower intelligence is perhaps the oldest and most ingrained stereotype the Formosans have had to endure, and one with the most devastating impact on their people.
Following the early period of trading for goods, the Formosans came under attack from the Dutch, with minor skirmishes evolving into conquest of village after village, with many being burned down by the Dutch in retaliation to any uprisings. Within thirty years, the Dutch had managed to subdue the vast majority of Formosan villages on the eastern plain between Tamsui and Fort Zeelandia. These people were then subject to brutal policies and crushing taxes, all devised by the Dutch to maximize their profit they could derive from the Formosans. Unfortunately, with the expulsion of the Dutch by Zheng Chenggong and the establishment of the Kingdom of Tungning, these policies were continued and standardized. Policies were implemented that placed lower taxes on newly reclaimed land, thus encouraging the Chinese farmers to obtain new land, land which would inevitably be aboriginal (Rubinstein 98). Through many tactics, particularly small skirmishes and attacks, the Formosans were mostly pushed up into the mountains, earning the name Gaoshanzu (高山族), while the Formosans who remained in the plains ended up intermarrying with the Han Chinese and acculturating quickly. The conflicts between the Han and the Formosans picked up significantly during Japanese rule, with a divide and conquer strategy playing the aborigines off the Han settlers to keep both occupied and unable to properly dispel the Japanese. The goal behind these conquests was to appropriate as much land from the aboriginals as possible, essentially to drive them out to make room for the Han. This, tying in the aforementioned belief of lower intelligence, combines to form a belief that the Formosans simply do not deserve the land if they are not capable of doing productive things with it, productive as seen through the Han mindset. Thus, instead of respecting their land as theirs, and the people as legitimate, the Dutch, the Chinese, and the Japanese took advantage of their weaker military strength to remove the people seen as undeserving of this fertile and productive land. In speaking with the two aboriginal activists, they stated that even with the recent gains in land designated as traditional, there is still much more land that should belong to them, and much more land that is being bought through means of corruption that rightfully belongs to them. Because the Formosans do not exploit the land to the level that multinational companies would, and thus cannot provide profits and wealth to Taiwan, governments of past and present have deemed them unworthy of their land, and sought long and hard to remove them of it.
Finally, the most direct and most “noble” method of civilizing the Formosans was through the education system. At first, the Dutch had tried strongly to instill Christianity and Christian values through schools set up for the Formosans. Though their reign was short, they were highly effective, and the majority of Taiwanese aborigines are still Christians to this day, having resisted efforts by later Chinese rulers to adopt Confucian and Buddhist ideals. Under Zheng Chenggong’s rule, the Dutch Christian schools were replaced with schools teaching Chinese (likely Hokkien), Confucian ideals and values, and most importantly, the Han way of life. These were instruments of change, intended to “civilize the savages” and to bring them into the fold of Chinese life. During this period, there were many terms in common usage to describe the level of acculturation a group has experienced, most particularly “raw savages” (生番) denoting minimal acculturation and a high level of hostility, to “cooked savages” (熟番) denoting high degrees of acculturation and submission to Chinese authority. The pejorative terms here showed illustrated the mindset held during the Qing dynasty that anyone could become civilized by adopting Confucian ideals, but that they would still be inferior to true Han Chinese (Dikötter 9). The Japanese period saw the conversion of these Confucian schools to schools that taught Japanese and the Japanese way of life to the Formosans. And finally, during the KMT Nationalist period, to properly stamp out the Japanese mark on Taiwan, the government replaced the Japanese schools with schools teaching Mandarin and KMT Nationalist ideology. Of all the regimes, the KMT regime was most dedicated to forcefully assimilating the Taiwanese aboriginals to a Han Chinese way. They strongly punished any speech that was not Mandarin, and even enforced the policy of having the Formosans adopt Han-style Chinese surnames, to fit with the Chinese cultural naming practices. The KMT government desired to be the most perfect Chinese state, preserving the culture of Beijing as properly and pristinely as possible, mostly to gain international legitimacy as the rightful rulers of China. To do this, they had to stamp out any differences in culture and behavior they could find on the island, and the most obvious target was the aborigines. The prejudices instilled during this period due to the oppression of any aboriginal expression of identity have had long-lasting impacts, the activists I interviewed explained. Even still today so many deny their heritage and identity, because the KMT government was so successful at instilling a sense of shame associated with being non-Chinese, and especially aboriginal.
As described above, there have three major factors that have shaped the experiences of the Formosans since the Dutch first set foot on the island: the belief that the Formosans were of lesser intellectual capabilities, their weaker military power, and the disrespect and invalidation of their beliefs, cultures, and way of life. These factors, most importantly the beliefs held by the immigrant groups, have drastically altered the lives of the Formosans, vanquishing them and diminishing their existence on their own land. Tackling the root issues and beliefs behind the oppression of these people will go a long way in redressing past grievances and addressing current issues.
Works Cited
Dikötter Frank. The Discourse of Race in Modern China. Oxford University Press, 2015.
Rubinstein, Murray A. Taiwan: a New History. M.E. Sharpe, 2007.
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