Abstract
From the standpoint of the VOC, the colony, Taiwan, as a trade hub between China, Japan and Southeast Asia, had not only to provide local administration with necessary resources to balance the sheet out but also to lessen the burden on cost of supply in transportation. For this purpose, the practice of taxing system was the main approach for the administration to exploit resources in Taiwan, whereas the Chinese immigrants were the economic foundation for this approach to achieve its goal. The demand of the colonial government and Chinese’s response to this demand, altogether, consist of the development of taxing system in Dutch Taiwan. This study mainly argues the development of taxing system and the following economic activities of Chinese immigrants. This study focuses on the period from 1624 to the middle 1640s, which was from the beginning of the Dutch Taiwan, to the times when the tax revenue receiving in Taiwan finally made huge contribution to the local administration financially, in order to explore how the colonial government, under the condition of insufficient resources in Taiwan, managed to enforce and, at the same time, adjust the colony policy to expand the tax revenue and to ensure every business under control. On the other hand, we wonder, as the subject of the taxing system, how the Chinese immigrants benefited from the policy of colonial government to make living in Taiwan. To demonstrate the development of taxing system in Dutch Taiwan from 1624 to the middles 1640s, this study uses the documents VOC left during the Dutch Taiwan period as the analyzing materials. This study will demonstrate how the taxing system enforced in Taiwan, on the one hand, withheld the operation of colonial authority and, on the other hand, shaped the early development patterns in Taiwan resources. The result of the interaction between was the formation of Chinese immigrant society in Taiwan.