Asian Art

Kingdom of Tungning

The Kingdom of Tungning, also known as Tywan, was a dynastic maritime state that ruled part of southwestern Taiwan and the Penghu islands between 1662 and 1683. It is the first predominantly ethnic Han state in the history of Taiwan. At its zenith, the kingdom's maritime power dominated varying extents of coastal regions in southeastern China and controlled the major sea lanes across both China Seas, and its vast trade network stretched from Japan to Southeast Asia. The kingdom was founded by Koxinga (Zheng Chenggong), a Southern Ming loyalist, who attacked the Dutch fortress in 1661 and expelled Dutch forces from Taiwan. He established the island as a military stronghold and aspired to restore the Ming dynasty in China, when the Ming remnants' rump state in southern China was progressively conquered by the Manchu-led Qing dynasty. The Zheng dynasty used the island of Taiwan as a military base for their Ming loyalist movement which aimed to reclaim China proper from the Manchus. Under Zheng rule, Taiwan underwent a process of Sinicization in an effort to consolidate the last stronghold of Han Chinese's resistance against the invading Manchus. Until its annexation by the Qing dynasty in 1683, the kingdom was ruled by Koxinga's heirs, the House of Koxinga, and the period of rule is sometimes referred to as the Koxinga dynasty, the Zheng dynasty, or Tungning/Dongning.

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See also

• ▸Hariti
• ▸Clayton and Bell
• ▸Anping Bridge

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Text from Wikipedia; plate via Wikimedia Commons. Text CC BY-SA 4.0; plate freely licensed (see Commons). Source record. Images and catalogue data are reproduced from open-access collections.