ABSTRACT
The frontier society was dynamic and full of action, reaction and interaction by the three actors in Qing Taiwan’s political scene – the government, the settlers and the aborigines. This chapter examines the Taiwanese aborigines’ reactions against land settlement and encroachment by Han settlers, and the government’s actions in dealing with such reactions. The aborigines actively participated in the frontier development – resisting Han encroachment, litigating for their land ownership and rent rights, and becoming adapted to Han culture, especially agricultural and commercial practices. However, pressed by expanding Han settlement, the aborigines retreated step by step. They first lost their land ownership, then much of their rent. Most aborigines became destitute, alough some of them adapted and became prosperous, and some moved to new settlements and flourished after they had lost their ancestral land. Taiwanese aborigines were fighting a battle that they could not win. The first Taiwan Governor Liu Mingchuan’s land tax reform in 1886–1890 were both the result of the acculturation after 200 years of settler-aborigine interaction, and a cause of further breakdown of aboriginal communities. This set aboriginal land rights on a new path of diminishment and alienation.
