The pre-history of Taiwan can be traced back 50,000-30,000 years. At that time, the island and the mainland were linked, and thus archaeologists generally agree that the paleolithic cultures discovered on Taiwan are related to those found on the mainland. By the end of the last glacier epoch around 18,000-10,000 years ago, the island was separated from mainland. The archaeological findings indicated that different groups of people moved to Taiwan from the southeast coast of mainland and from Southeast Asia in different times and created the neolithic cultures and metal cultures on the island.

A large gap exists between the pre-history and the history of Taiwan, to the best of our knowledge, as the earliest Chinese records related to the Penghu islands (Pescadores) date from around the twelfth century and those related to the island of Taiwan only from the seventeenth century. From the seventeenth century on, Han Chinese gradually immigrated, linking Taiwan culturally to the mainland, even while various aboriginal cultures were also maintained. Moreover, due to its location, Taiwan became a key transit node during the great development of sailing navigation. The Portuguese praised the island as “Ilha Formosa” (beautiful island) in the sixteenth century when they sailed nearby. The Dutch landed on the island in the south in 1624 and the Spanish in the north in 1626, but the Dutch drove them out in 1642. Twenty years later, Chinese took over the island from the Dutch in 1662. Taiwan came under the rule of the Qing Empire in 1683, and was ceded to Japan after its defeat in the 1894-95 Sino-Japanese War. In consequence, Taiwan was subjected to Japanese colonial rule for 50 years, but was returned to the Republic of China in 1945, after Japan’s defeat in the Second World War. In 1949, the Nationalists (Guomindang) evacuated the mainland and reestablished the government of the Republic of China on Taiwan.

Recovering from the war, great efforts were made to develop Taiwan’s economy and in recent years, much emphasis has been placed on the development of democracy. The Martial Law was lifted in 1987, and the first general election of the president took place in 1996. Four years later, Chen Shui-bian of the Democratic Progressive Party was elected president in 2000 and thus the Guomindang’s 51 years of rule was interrupted and a new epoch of political party rotation emerged on Taiwan.