Because of its strategic location as an island off the coast of East Asia, the inhabitants of Taiwan have a long history of various sorts of maritime activities. Taiwanese society initiated this seafaring in the form of a constantly re-shaping process in waves of maritime interactions in the era of Early Modern globalization. Therefore, these maritime contacts can be defined within the global historical context and hence shed a light on Taiwanese history in relation to water and the people’s livelihood. Currently our research is focusing on the history of the overseas Chinese, European expansion, the Indigenous Taiwanese people and Southeast Asia, while attempting to integrate these studies into the framework of geo-politics, human geography and archelogy.

Taiwan is an island off the southeastern coast of continental East Asia, and also belongs to one of the members of insular Northeast/Southeast Asia. Due to the geopolitically strategic location of the island, the inhabitants of Taiwan have a long history of various sorts of maritime interactions with neighboring places. Since the era of Early Modern globalization, Taiwanese society has initiated this seafaring in the form of a constantly re-shaping process in waves of maritime interactions. These maritime contacts are within the global historical context and hence shed a light on Taiwanese history in relation to sea and the people’s livelihood. Our current research is focusing on the history of the overseas Chinese, the European maritime expansion, the Indigenous Taiwanese people (Formosan Austronesians) in the context of Taiwan in relation to Southeast Asia in general. We also attempt to develop the research results by proposing the explanatory framework of geo-politics, historical geography and historical archaeology.