The island of Taiwan, also commonly known as Formosa, was partly under colonial rule by the Dutch Republic from 1624 to 1662 and from 1664 to 1668. In the context of the Age of Discovery, the Dutch East India Company established its presence on Formosa to trade with the Ming Empire in neighbouring China and Tokugawa shogunate in Japan, and also to interdict Portuguese and Spanish trade and colonial activities in East Asia. The Dutch were not universally welcomed, and uprisings by both aborigines and recent Han arrivals were quelled by the Dutch military on more than one occasion. With the rise of the Qing dynasty in the early 17th century, the Dutch East India Company cut ties with the Ming dynasty and allied with the Qing instead, in exchange for the right to unfettered access to their trade and shipping routes. The colonial period was brought to an end after the 1662 siege of Fort Zeelandia by Koxinga's army who promptly dismantled the Dutch colony, expelled the Dutch and established the Ming loyalist, anti-Qing Kingdom of Tungning. History Background As late comers in sailing the seas of the world, the Netherlands and England came, at the beginning of the 17th century, inevitably in conflict with the forces of Spain and Portugal. In ideological terms, the conflict was expressed in the Iberian powers being Catholic, while during the commercial development of England and the Netherlands, both had separated their religious institutions from Papal Rome. The Dutch first attempted to trade with China in 1601 but were rebuffed by the Chinese authorities, who were already engaged in trade with the Portuguese at Macau from 1535. In a 1604 expedition from Batavia (the central base of the Dutch in Asia), Admiral Wybrand van Warwijk set out to attack Macau, but his force was waylaid by a typhoon, driving them to the Pescadores (Penghu), a group of islands west of Formosa (Taiwan). Once there, the admiral attempted to negotiate trade terms with the Chinese on the mainland, but was asked to pay an exorbitant fee for the privilege of an interview. Surrounded by a vastly superior Chinese fleet, he left without achieving any of his aims. The Dutch East India Company tried to use military force to make China open up a port in Fujian to trade and demanded that China expel the Portuguese, whom the Dutch were fighting in the Dutch–Portuguese War,