Taipei

📖 History of Taipei

Before Chinese settlers arrived, the Taipei basin was the land of the Ketagalan, an Indigenous plains people. In the 17th century the Spanish and the Dutch fought over the north of the island: the Spanish built Fort Santo Domingo in Tamsui in 1628 and the Dutch rebuilt it in 1644. From 1709 Han settlers from southern Fujian arrived and founded towns such as Bangka (today Wanhua), where they built the Longshan Temple in 1738, and later Dadaocheng, which grew on tea exports through the port of Tamsui. In 1875 the Qing dynasty created the prefecture of Taipeh and walled a new city; of that wall only the North Gate survives in good condition. In 1894 Taipei became the capital of Taiwan Province. In 1895, after the Sino-Japanese War, Japan took the island, and the city, renamed Taihoku, was its colonial capital for 50 years: the Presidential Office Building, the Red House in Ximending and the Beitou public baths date from that period. In 1945 control passed to the Republic of China. In 1947 the February 28 Incident began in Taipei and ended in a crackdown across the whole island. In December 1949, defeated in the civil war, the Kuomintang government moved to Taiwan and declared Taipei the provisional capital. A long period of martial law followed (1949-1987). The city became a special municipality in 1967 and passed two million inhabitants in the mid-1970s. In 1990 student protests in the square of the Chiang Kai-shek Memorial pushed the transition to multiparty democracy. The metro opened in 1996 and Taipei 101 was inaugurated on 31 December 2004. Today Taipei is the seat of a popularly elected government and one of the densest cities in Asia.