TAIWAN -GUO HUAIYI FARMER REBELLION ON 1652 SEPTEMBER 7- 4000 FARMERS WERE KILLED BY THE DUTCH

    TAIWAN -GUO HUAIYI FARMER REBELLION

        ON 1652 SEPTEMBER 7

    4000 FARMERS WERE KILLED BY THE DUTCH - 

September 7, 1652: The Guo Huaiyi Rebellion begins. Dutch Formosa refers to the Dutch colonial period of Formosa, what is known today as Taiwan. The name Formosa means “Beautiful Island” and the paradise is located off the southeast coast of mainland China. 

Guo Huaiyi Rebellion 郭懷一事件
Date 7–11 September 1652 Location present-day Tainan, Taiwan Result Dutch victory, slaughter of rebels
Belligerents
Guo Huaiyi's peasant army	Dutch East India Company Aboriginal Taiwanese
Strength
15,000	1,000 Dutch soldiers 5,000 Formosan allies
Casualties and losses
c.4,000 killed	8 Dutchmen, unknown number (likely small) of Formosan allies

[show] v t e Dutchcolonial campaigns

The island is 245 miles long and 89 miles wide. There is evidence of human settlement dating back 30,000 years. About 4,000 years ago, farmers came from China to the island and these immigrants are believed to be the ancestors of today’s indigenous people.

The Dutch arrived in Formosa in 1624 during their Age of Exploration. The Dutch attempted to trade with China in 1601, unsuccessfully, since the Chinese were already trading with the Portuguese. The Dutch attacked the Portuguese, again unsuccessfully. 

Since they were unable to get a foothold on mainland China, the Dutch settled on Formosa. They began to take control of the land and punish natives who resisted. Their control grew and the Dutch gained allegiance of the natives, sometimes out of fear of the consequences should the natives resist.

Other European nations were also expanding trade routes and the Dutch had to contend with them as well. After ousting the Spanish, their own power base was improved. 





By 1643, the Dutch were encouraging the Chinese to come to the island. The Chinese arrived and worked hard only to find excessive taxation and licensing fees taking their earned monies. Corruption among the Dutch also angered the Chinese farmers.

Guo Huaiyi was a sugarcane farmer and militia leader. He and his followers stormed Fort Provintia, protected only by a bamboo wall. 

The attackers were armed with bamboo spears, but still managed a rout. The Dutch fled and took refuge in the stable, the safest building in the compound. Many Dutch were captured and killed before finding refuge. 

The next morning, 120 Dutch musketeers came to rescue their trapped countrymen. On September 11, the two sides clashed in the countryside and the rebellion was quashed by the superiorly armed Dutch. Remnants of the rebel army were killed, often by natives who had sided with the Dutch.







The following morning a company of 120 Dutch musketeers came to the rescue of their trapped countrymen, firing steadily into the besieging rebel forces and breaking them.[1] Governor Nicolas Verburg then sent messengers to summon aboriginal allies to the aid of the Dutch, to which the natives responded in their thousands. 

On September 11 the Dutch learned that the rebels had massed just north of the principal Dutch settlement of Tayouan. Sending a large force of Dutch soldiers and aboriginal warriors, they met the rebels that day in battle and emerged victorious, mainly due to the superior weaponry of the Europeans.[4]


Guo Huaiyi himself being shot, then decapitated, with his head displayed on a spike as a warning.[1] In total some 4,000 Chinese were killed during the five-day uprising

Multiple Aboriginal villages in frontier areas rebelled against the Dutch in the 1650s due to oppression like when the Dutch ordered aboriginal women for sex, deer pelts, and rice be given to them from aborigines in the Taipei basin in Wu-lao-wan village which sparked a rebellion 

in December 1652 at the same time as the Chinese rebellion. The Wu-lao-wan beheaded two Dutch translators, and in a subsequent fight with 30 Wu-lao-wan two Dutch people died, but after an embargo of salt and iron the Wu-lao-wan were forced to sue for peace in February 1653.[5










However, the Taiwanese Aboriginal tribes who were previously allied with the Dutch against the Chinese during the Guo Huaiyi Rebellion in 1652 turned against the Dutch during the later Siege of Fort Zeelandia and defected to Koxinga's Chinese forces.

[6] The Aboriginals (Formosans) of Sincan defected to Koxinga after he offered them amnesty, the Sincan Aboriginals then proceeded to work for the Chinese and behead Dutch people in executions, the frontier aboriginals in the mountains and plains also surrendered and defected to the Chinese on May 17, 1661, celebrating their freedom from compulsory education under the Dutch rule by hunting down Dutch people and beheading them and trashing their Christian school textbooks

No matter that patriotism is too often the refuge of scoundrels. Dissent, rebellion, and all-around hell-raising remain the true duty of patriots. – Barbara Ehrenreich