Rahul Mehta Gandhinagar LsCandidate

Visualize War:

Deep inside a limestone cave on a small island off Taiwan, hundreds of people are trapped behind a wall of smoke that Dutch soldiers refuse to let clear.

The island is Lamey, home to a small community that had killed two separate crews of Dutch sailors shipwrecked on its reefs in 1622 and 1631.

By 1636 the Dutch East India Company decides the killings demand a final reckoning.

Company soldiers, working with local allies, surround the island and drive its remaining inhabitants into a cave system used as a last refuge.

Rather than storm the cave, the Dutch seal its openings and set pans of burning pitch and sulphur to burn at the entrances.

Toxic fumes pour into the cave for eight straight days while soldiers stand guard outside.

When they finally go in, they find roughly three hundred men, women, and children dead of suffocation.

Another three hundred and twenty three islanders are captured alive and taken away as slaves to Company outposts in Taiwan and Batavia.

Captured women and children are distributed into Dutch households as servants, and some of the women are later married to Dutch settlers.

The island's population never recovers from the campaign, and Dutch records show it steadily emptying over the following years.

By 1645 only thirteen inhabitants remain, and a Company merchant arranges to remove even them, leaving Lamey Island without its original people.

#DutchEastIndiaCompany #Taiwan #ColonialHistory