Person1624 – 1662

Zheng Chenggong (Koxinga)

Also called: Koxinga, Coxinga, Guoxingye

Leader of the Ming loyalist sea power that fought the Qing; born at Hirado in Japan, he drove the Dutch out of Taiwan in 1662 and made it his base

Born at Hirado to Zheng Zhilong, a merchant-pirate magnate, and a Japanese mother, he went to China at the age of seven. The Southern Ming Longwu Emperor granted him the imperial surname Zhu, hence the name Koxinga, “Lord of the Imperial Surname”. After his father surrendered to the Qing and his mother died in 1646 he fought on from Xiamen, and his attack on Nanjing in 1659 failed. Crossing to Taiwan in 1661, he drove out the Dutch the next year but died of illness the same year. In Japan he became the hero of Chikamatsu Monzaemon’s puppet play The Battles of Coxinga.

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1 related event

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1673 – 1683Kangxi Crushes the Three Feudatories and Takes Taiwanrelated figure
The Kangxi Emperor put down the Revolt of the Three Feudatories, begun by Wu Sangui and others in 1673, within eight years, and in 1683 took Taiwan from the Zheng regime, securing Qing rule over China.

People who appear alongside

Kangxi Emperor (Shengzu of Qing)1654 – 1722
Fourth Qing emperor (r. 1661–1722), who crushed the Three Feudatories, took Taiwan, signed the Treaty of Nerchinsk with Russia and brought Mongolia under Qing rule
Wu Sangui1612 – 1678
Ming general who opened the Shanhai Pass to the Qing in 1644, became a feudatory prince in Yunnan and launched the Revolt of the Three Feudatories in 1673

Themes this person appears in

Ming, Qing and Edo Japan1500 – 1800
The age when the Ming, shaken by northern raiders, southern pirates and the silver economy, fell to Li Zicheng’s rebels, and the Manchu Qing reached its greatest extent and prosperity under Kangxi, Yongzheng and Qianlong — as Japan was unified out of the Warring States into the Edo shogunate’s bakuhan order and closed country, and Joseon, after two great wars, met its neighbours through embassies to Edo and the Northern Learning