Formosa, called by the Chinese Taiwan, an island lying off the coast of the Chinese province of Fû-chien, from which it is separated by a strait from 90 to 220 miles wide. Formosa, which was ceded by China to Japan in 1895, is crossed by the meridian E. and the Tropic of Cancer, and has a maximum length of 235 miles, whilst its breadth varies from 70 to 90 miles. Area, 14,978 sq. m. Forming one link in the volcanic chain that extends from the Alentian Islands southwards to New Guinea, it constitutes the eastern escarpment of what was once the great Malayo-Chinese continent, and is connected by a submarine plateau with the Chinese mainland. The backbone of the island, extending north and south, is formed of a range of densely-wooded mountains, called by the Chinese Chu-Shan, which rise to upwards of 12,000 feet, the highest known peak, Mount Morrison, being given as 12,847 feet. Eastward of this range lies a narrow strip of mountainous country, presenting to the Pacific a precipitous cliff-wall with in many places a sheer descent of from 5000 to 7000 feet, whilst a very short distance farther east the floor of the ocean sinks to a great depth at an extremely steep gradient. The western side of the range consists of a single broad alluvial plain, stretching from north to south of the island, seamed by innumerable water channels, and terminating at the coast-line in mud flats and sand-banks. Yet on this side of the island the land is rapidly encroaching upon the sea, as the consequence of the gradual elevation of the western seaboard and the deposition in and around the embouchures of the rivers of the large amount of sediment brought down by them from the mountains. This latter process is primarily due to the heavy rainfall of the northern, central, and eastern portions of the island, where the rain-clouds of the north-east monsoon, after crossing the warm Kioso or Japanese Gulf Stream, on coming in contact with the mountain barrier of the island become chilled and discharge their contents in rains of excessive violence. Apart from this heavy rainfall, the climate is not exceptional, the insular position ensuring a modification of the heat by sea-breezes. The mean of summer is to F.; of winter, to . Malarial fever is, however, prevalent in the north, and violent typhoons are very common at certain seasons.
The island is famous for the rich luxuriance of its vegetation, many of our hothouse plants growing wild on the mountain slopes and in the valleys, such as orchids, azaleas, lilies, rhododendrons, and convolvulus; besides which there is a wealthy profusion of ferns, tree-ferns, camphor and teak trees, pines, firs, wild fig-trees, liquidambar, bananas, bamboos, and palms. 'Rice paper' is prepared from the pith of a tree peculiar to Formosa. Of animal life it is noticeable that there are at least forty-three species of birds peculiar to the island, that insects are scarce, and that noxious wild animals are few, but that fish are plentiful in the waters round the coast. The principal products of commercial importance are tea, sugar, coal, turmeric, rice, sweet potatoes, ground-nuts, bamboos and rattan, grasses, tobacco, timber, the fruit lung-ngan, and sesamum-seed. In the south the staple crops are sugar and turmeric; and in the north tea. The exports and imports have fluctuated vastly owing to political troubles, but the resources of the island are well known to the Japanese, and are being systematically developed since the annexation. Upwards of 30,000 tons of coal have been shipped in a year, 20,000 lb. of tea, and sugar to the value of £270,000. Sulphur, iron, and petroleum also exist, but are not worked to any extent. Camphor and indigo used to be exported to a large value; but though there is still no lack of camphor, the trade in it fell almost entirely off owing to Chinese governmental interference. The imports consist principally of opium, cotton and woollen piece goods, and lead. A very large proportion of the shipping trade is carried on by means of native junks, which ply to and from the mainland; the rest is in the hands of Europeans trading with the open ports of Taiwan and Takow on the south-west, and Tamsui and Kelung on the north. None of these, however, have good harbours, the entrance to each of them being greatly impeded by bars or sand-banks. Besides this great drawback, the island suffers from deficient means of communication, although since 1887 telegraph lines have connected Tamsui with Fû-chow, with Kelung, and with Taiwan and its port Anping, and with the Pescadores Islands, a group, with 8000 inhabitants and two excellent harbours, lying some 20 to 25 miles west of Formosa. A railway was constructed in 1888-90 to connect Kelung with Twatutia, the centre of the tea district.
The inhabitants, estimated to number about three millions, consist of Chinese settlers, some Japanese, and the aborigines. Respecting the ethnological origin of these latter there exists some duality; they seem to consist of several different tribes, mainly of Malayan and Negrito descent. The Chinese distribute them into three classes, Pepohwan, a race of civilised and sinicised agriculturists; Sekhiwan, settled tribes who acknowledge Chinese rule; and Chinhwan, the untamed savages of the mountains, who wage fierce and unceasing warfare against the Chinese immigrants. The administrative headquarters were formerly at Taiwan, but on the constitution of the island into an independent province of the Chinese empire in 1887—it had formerly been incorporated with Fû-chien on the mainland—they were transferred to Tai-peï or Bangka. The island was known to the Chinese before the Christian era, but does not seem to have seriously attracted their attention until the year 605 or 606 A. D. In the 14th century they established several colonies in Formosa, which, however, were withdrawn in the middle of the 17th century. Although Portuguese and Spanish navigators began to visit the island a century earlier, the first European people to establish themselves on it were the Dutch, who in 1624 built Fort Zealandia, near the modern Taiwan. They were, however, expelled in 1661 by a Chinese adventurer, Kosinga, who retained possession of the island for twenty-two years. Some years later a regular Chinese colonisation of the western half of the island was carried through, the colonists coming principally from Fû-chien and Kwang-tung. Subsequently the island became notorious for the piracy of its inhabitants and the ill-treatment they inflicted upon navigators who chanced to be wrecked on their coasts. Accordingly in 1874 the Japanese invaded Formosa; but on the Chinese undertaking to check the evils complained of they withdrew.
Ten years later the French, during their contest with China in Tongking, held for a time the coal districts of Kelung. The occupation by the Japanese troops did not take place without opposition from the natives and Chinese 'Black flags.' But the Japanese were practically in full possession of the island before the end of 1895, and set themselves at once to the work of reorganisation.
See, besides the older authorities, Guillemand, Cruise of the Marchesa (1886); Terrien de Lacouperie, in Jour. Roy. Asiatic Soc. for 1887; Girard de Rialle, in Revue d'Anthropologie for 1885; G. Taylor, in Proc. Roy. Geog. Soc. for 1889; articles in the Roy. Scot. Geog. Mag. by Colquhoun (1887) and Dodd (1895); and Imbault-Huard, L'Île Formosa (1893). The Historical and Geographical Description of Formosa (1704), by George Psalmanazar (q.v.), is a tissue of inventions.