East Asia - AD 1802 - WIP - [4983x6637] [OC]

Some notes in Taiwanese cities as this was quite an interesting time in Taiwanese history. Chinese settlement of Taiwan was pretty haphazard during the early-middle Qing when the entirety of Taiwan was governed as part of Fujian province, and a lot of place names involved Taiwanese Minnan and Hakka transliteration of indigenous names from the tribes in the area. Larger changes occurred towards the late 1870s-1880s when it was upgraded to a province outright and started having walled administrative cities known as fu.

  • Taipei didn’t exist as a municipality until late in the Qing period, like 1880s. It was previously a collection of small riverside settlements like Tamsui, Bangka (Wanhua), and Twatiutia (Dadaocheng) which didn’t really get going and merge until the late Qing and Japanese period.

  • New Taipei literally didn’t exist as an entity until 2010, when Taipei County (collection of towns making up the suburbs of Taipei) was reorganized into a special municipality. Taipei County didn’t exist until the ROC period post 1949.

  • the specific spelling and characters of Keelung would have been slightly different as something more similar to Kelang/Ke-lang, which itself was a Minnan transliteration of an indigenous word. The characters 基隆 would have been conferred in the late 1800s provincial upgrade.

  • Taoyuan (Tho-a-hng in Taiwanese Minnan) may have existed as a local name but it certainly wasn’t significant enough to be noted as a city. It only really became a city of note in the Japanese era.

  • Hsinchu was known as Zhuqian/Tek-kham and only became Hsinchu (lit. New Zhu(bamboo)) during late Qing reorganization in the 1880s.

  • interestingly Chiayi (Minnan: Kagi) was conferred as a name by the Qing emperor just a few decades before 1802 as a celebration of squashing the Lin Shuangwen rebellion. Prior to that it would have been known as Tirosen/Tsulosan, again a transliterated indigenous word.

  • Tainan as a name likely didn’t exist during this time, being known rather as Taiwan-fu or Anping

  • The name Kaohsiung could not have existed in 1802, as the current name comes as a post 1949 Mandarin graphic reading (高雄 Gaoxiong) of a Japanese transliteration (高雄 Takao) of a Minnan transliteration (打狗 Ta-kau) of a indigenous word (takao).

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