Matsu Islands - History

History

Fujianese Mainlanders started migrating to the islands during the Yuan Dynasty. Most people on Matsu came from Houguan (侯官) (today Changle County (長樂縣 Diòng-lŏ̤h-gâing), Fujian).

Some crewmen of Zheng He temporarily stayed on the islands. In early Qing Dynasty, pirates gathered here and residents temporarily left.

In contrast to Taiwan and Penghu, the Matsu Islands were not ceded to the Empire of Japan via the 1895 Treaty of Shimonoseki. Neither were they occupied by Japan as in the case of Kinmen during World War II.

After the Kuomintang (KMT) retreated to Taiwan in 1949, the ROC retained the part of Lienchiang County offshore (and the entire Kinmen County as well).

The phrase "Quemoy and Matsu" became part of U.S. political language in the 1960 U.S. presidential election. During the debates, both candidates, Richard Nixon and John F. Kennedy, pledged to use U.S. forces if necessary to protect Taiwan from invasion by China, the mainland, which the U.S. did not at that time recognize as a legitimate government. But the two candidates had different opinions about whether to use U.S. forces to protect the ROC's forward positions, Quemoy and Matsu, as well. In fact, Senator Kennedy stated that these islands - as little as 5½ miles off the coast of China and as much as 106 miles from Taiwan - were strategically indefensible and were not essential to the defense of Taiwan. On the contrary, Vice President Nixon maintained that, since Quemoy and Matsu were in the "area of freedom," they should not be surrendered to the Communists as a matter of "principle."

In April 2003, the county government started considering changing the name to Matsu County to avoid confusion with the county of the same name on the mainland. Some locals opposed the name change because they felt it reflected a Democratic Progressive Party Taiwan Independence viewpoint.