page_title: Mining in Taiwan
section_title: History of mining
hierarchical_section_title: Mining in Taiwan / History of mining
caption_attribution_description: source Map of Coal Mines on Formosa Island in of Volume 2 of the Narrative of the Commodore Matthew Calbraith Perry's Expedition to Japan. This map comes from the official record: Hawks, Francis. (1856). Narrative of the Expedition of an American Squadron to the China Seas and Japan Performed in the Years 1852, 1853 and 1854 under the Command of Commodore M.C. Perry, United States Navy, Washington: A.O.P. Nicholson by order of Congress, 1856; originally published in Senate Executive Documents, No. 34 of 33rd Congress, 2nd Session.
context_page_description: Mining in Taiwan was once a great industry, especially for sulfur, clay, gold and coal. Nowadays, Taiwan lacks natural resources for mining and relies on imports to meet its demand for minerals. The current mining industries in Taiwan are of small and medium size in terms of exploited minerals and the scale of mining, mainly focusing on marble and limestone for cement, stone and craft industries and sand and gravel for construction industries. Mining activities in Taiwan are regulated by the Bureau of Mines of the Ministry of Economic Affairs.
context_section_description: Pre-colonization the indigenous people of Taiwan traded sulfur from deposits around volcanic vents to Chinese merchants visiting from the continent.
  Chinese mining and metallurgy followed the Hoklo, Hakka, and Han to Taiwan Island, particularly after the late Ming (16th & 17th centuries). Work was expanded under the Qing, but was limited by the occupation of the highlands by hostile native peoples.
  Under the consent of the Fujian officials, Yu Yonghe travelled to Taiwan following the explosion of the Fuzhou gunpowder stores in 1696 to mine sulfur. Yu's voyage began at the coast to Xiamen, crossing the Taiwan Strait and coming to a halt in Penghu before arriving in Tainan. Yu then journeyed northward to Tamsui and Beitou where he bought amorphous sulfur from local Aborigines for the making of pure sulfur. The expedition lasted ten months. This trip became the basis of one of the most important works about early Qing-era Taiwan, Small Sea Travel Diaries (裨海紀遊).
  As late as 1880, the only resources known to exist in economical quantities and locations were coal, sulphur, and petroleum, all in the volcanic northeastern third of the island. Mining was progressively developed by both the government and private sectors.
  After "Taiwan" (i.e. Tainan) and "Taashwi" (i.e. Tamsui) were opened to foreign commerce by the 1858 Treaties of Tianjin, foreign ships required those ports to maintain supplies of coal. This was provided from fields near Keelung and Tamsui, whose highly bituminous coal was fast-burning but nonetheless used by the warships of the Fuzhou Arsenal. The high demand led to rampant smuggling and theft, to the point where the Qing government temporarily banned the trade to rein in its ill effects. The Qing introduced modern coal mining to Taiwan in 1877, when they retained the British engineer Tyzack to open a 91 m (300 ft) shaft with modern machinery.
  Taiwan's heavy industry was developed by Japan both before and during the Second World War, but US bombing—particularly after the Taiwan Air Battle in October 1944 gave the Americans air supremacy—devastated mining production. Although overall industry had declined only 33% from 1937 levels by the war's end, coal production had fallen from 200,000 metric tons (197,000 long tons; 220,000 short tons) to 15,000 metric tons (14,800 long tons; 16,500 short tons), lower than the amount produced in the mid-1870s.
caption: Coal mining map in Keelung in 1856
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