Siege of Fort Zeelandia

After his Ming loyalist cause lost ground on the mainland, the commander Zheng Chenggong, known in the West as Koxinga, looked for a new base and chose the Dutch colony on Taiwan. In April 1661 his fleet crossed the strait and landed near the Dutch Fort Zeelandia, which stood on a sandbar by the harbour. The Dutch lost a naval engagement and a nearby fort, Fort Provintia, soon fell. Dutch accounts say deserters, among them a Chinese interpreter, advised Koxinga on how to attack, and a siege followed. After nine months, and with a relief fleet too small to help, Governor Frederick Coyett surrendered on 1 February 1662.

The surrender ended 38 years of Dutch rule on Taiwan. Historians debate how much the outcome depended on the deserters' advice, on divisions among the Dutch and on the simple weight of numbers. Koxinga is remembered very differently in different places: as a hero of resistance to foreign rule, as the founder of a state on Taiwan and in other versions as a pirate warlord. His family held the island until 1683. A principal Dutch account is by Coyett himself, so it is both detailed and a defence.