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Precis: " Koxinga's Conquest of Taiwan in Global History: Reflections on the Occasion of the 350th Anniversary" (2012) by Tonio Andrade

In Tonio Andrade’s 2012 article, “Koxinga’s Conquest of Taiwan in Global History: Reflections on the Occasion of the 350th Anniversary”, one important argument to be made was quoted from Timothy Brook, 'The 17th century was a time of unprecedented intercultural communication: more people were in motion over longer distances and sojourning away from home for longer periods of time than at any other time in human history.’ This was an ‘Age of Partnership’ as Europeans sailed through Asia with Asian guides, and Asia, in turn, exchanged knowledge and technology with Europeans. This contact and movement between various people was the norm of this era. To this idea, Andrade establishes how nationalist views of Koxinga fail to realize that Koxinga was an embodiment of the fascinating globalizing world of the seventeenth century and that he won the war primarily because he was better at listening to people from the other side than were the Dutch. He supports this argument by giving a detailed account of Koxinga’s life such as being born in Japan, raised outside of traditional China, lived during a vibrant maritime in China’s history to a wealthy father who worked under the emblem of Santiago, spoke Portuguese, and used his knowledge on Japanese Samurai army tactics in modeling his fighting force. In this sense, this article proves significant to demonstrate how important world history movement is in understanding the political relations and events of the past, serving as an alternative to strictly nationalist and isolationist views.

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