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August 28, 1624 - Koxinga

Koxinga occupies an ambiguous place in history — celebrated as a loyalist and liberator in some traditions, yet his campaigns left considerable destruction across coastal China and culminated in the forcible expulsion of an established colonial power from Taiwan. His resistance to the Qing conquest was sustained over years of military operations that ravaged coastal populations, including a failed assault on Nanjing in 1659 that ended in severe losses on all sides. The Kingdom of Tungning he founded persisted for two decades after his death, making his conquest of Taiwan one of the more consequential military actions of the 17th-century Pacific world.

From Wikipedia

Koxinga

Zheng Chenggong (Chinese: 鄭成功; pinyin: Zhèng Chénggōng; Pe̍h-ōe-jī: Tēⁿ Sêng-kong; Tâi-lô: Tēnn Sîng-kong; 27 August 1624 – 23 June 1662), born Zheng Sen (鄭森) and better known internationally by his honorific title Koxinga (國姓爺), was a Southern Ming general who resisted the Qing conquest of China in the 17th century and expelled the Dutch from Taiwan, founding the Kingdom of Tungning.

Born in Japan to a Chinese father and a Japanese mother, Zheng rose through the Ming court via the imperial examinations and was serving as a Guozijian scholar in Nanjing when Beijing fell to rebels in 1644. He swore allegiance to Longwu Emperor, who favored and granted him the royal surname Zhu in 1645, a name he proudly used instead of his native Zheng surname for the rest of his life, hence popularizing his aforementioned honorific name. He was made the Prince of Yanping (延平王) by the Yongli Emperor in 1655 for his stern loyalty and numerous anti-Qing campaigns. He was best known for defeating the Dutch East India Company's colonial state on Taiwan, who had been harassing and raiding his maritime supply lines, at the Siege of Fort Zeelandia in 1662 and established a dynastic state on the island that continued to exist until 1683. After defeating the Dutch, he died suddenly in 1662 while planning to invade Luzon in retaliation for the Fourth Sangley Massacre committed by Spanish colonists in the Philippines.

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