Koxinga (Zheng Chenggong)

Biography

Born in Hirado, Japan, to a Chinese pirate-merchant father and a Japanese mother, Zheng Chenggong — known to Europeans as 'Koxinga' from the honorific Guoxingye ('Lord of the Imperial Surname') — became the most formidable Ming loyalist commander. Educated at the Imperial Academy in Nanjing, he was presented to the Southern Ming court, where the emperor granted him the imperial surname Zhu, the highest honor a subject could receive. After the fall of the Southern Ming courts, Koxinga built a maritime empire along the southeast coast, raiding Qing shipping and even launching an amphibious assault up the Yangtze that reached the walls of Nanjing before being repulsed. Driven from the mainland by the Qing's devastatingly effective coastal evacuation policy, which depopulated a ten-mile strip of coastline to deny him supplies, Koxinga turned to Taiwan. In 1661 he landed 25,000 troops and laid siege to the Dutch fortress of Fort Zeelandia. After nine months, the Dutch surrendered, and Koxinga expelled them from the island. He established the Kingdom of Tungning as the last Ming loyalist state, but died just months later in June 1662, reportedly of malaria or madness, at the age of thirty-seven. He is venerated as a national hero in both China and Taiwan.

Key Battles