Also I've read these histories a few times myself and found them well written.
After the middle of the 19th century, as the Great Powers gradually pushed their way into the Qing Empire by sea, Taiwan opened some of its ports to foreign trade in 1860. During the Opium War, the British fleet appeared off Taiwan several times from September 1841 in an attempt to occupy Keelung Harbor in the north and Wuchi Harbor in the central part of the west coast, but both failed, and this was the first armed invasion of Taiwan by the imperialist powers during the Qing Dynasty.
In 1874, Japan sent troops to the Hengchun Peninsula in response to the killing of Ryukyuans by the indigenous peoples of southern Taiwan, known as the "Mudansha Incident". This became a warning to the Qing court's previously passive management of Taiwan. On May 27th, 1874, after the Japanese invasion of Taiwan, the Qing court quickly dispatched Minister Shen Baozhen to Taiwan to handle the sea defense of Taiwan and other places as well as the affairs of other countries, to strengthen the defense force of Taiwan, and to innovate the administration of Taiwan and develop Taiwan with the policy of supplementing and strengthening. His successor, Ding Richang, the governor of Fujian, came to Taiwan in 1876 and continued to implement innovations. During his tenure, he set up the Bureau of Reclamation to encourage Fujian and Guangdong residents to come to Taiwan to reclaim the land, and started the mining industry, mining the Jijiang coal mine with machines, and setting up China's first self-built telegraph line at that time.
In 1884, the Ching-French War broke out between the Qing Empire and France over Vietnam, and the French army sent troops to the Penghu Islands and northern Taiwan, which led to Liu Ming-chuan being re-instated by the Qing court and sent to Taiwan. Liu Mingchuan was sent to Taiwan by the Qing court. Liu Mingchuan defeated the French army's plan to enter Taiwan many times while in Taiwan, and finally made the French army give up entering Taiwan in the great victory of Hufei. 1885, the Qing empire separated Taiwan from Fujian to set up Taiwan province, and Liu Mingchuan was appointed as the first governor of Taiwan. By 1891 Liu Mingchuan had set up defenses and organized armaments in Taiwan, and also developed and established many infrastructures in Taiwan. During his governorship, the first railroad from Keelung to Hsinchu was opened in Taiwan, and he also established a series of administrative institutions such as telegraph bureaus, coal bureaus, and railroad bureaus. However, Liu Ming-chuan's new policy did not take into account the integrity of the officials and the financial burden of Taiwan itself, which led to a substantial increase in the financial burden of Taiwan, the frequent corruption of Qing officials, as well as the people's revolt. 1889 Changhua had been because of the issue of the clearing of the field levy and the outbreak of the incident of the "fair king" Shi Jiudan.
Tang Ching-sung was appointed governor of Taiwan in December 1894; due to the Qing Dynasty's defeat in the Sino-Japanese War (July 25, 1894 - April 17, 1895), the Qing Dynasty signed the Treaty of Shimonoseki, which ceded sovereignty over Taiwan and Pescadores to the Japanese Empire, which was actively expanding its power abroad at the time. The Taiwanese established the Taiwan Democratic Nationality to fight against Japan, using the "Yellow Tiger Flag" with a blue ground and yellow tiger as the national flag, with Tang Jingsong as the Provisional President and Liu Yongfu as the General. In order to take over Taiwan, the Japanese army landed in Aodi (near San Diao Jiao, Gongliao District, New Taipei City) on May 29, 1895, and encountered the resistance of the regular army of the Taiwan Democratic Nationality (5 battalions of Dongjun and 20 battalions of Yueyong) and the volunteers in the "Bi-Wei War" (May 29 - November 18, 1895). The Taiwan Democratic Nationality resisted one by one, but due to the backwardness of the weapons and the lack of reinforcement, the Empire of Japan succeeded in its occupation of Taiwan by force.
From June 17, 1895, when the Governor-General of Taiwan held a "ceremony of commencement of government" in Taipei City, to April 28, 1952, when Japan's renunciation of Taiwan's sovereignty came into effect by the San Francisco Peace Treaty, the period of time during which Taiwan belonged to the Empire of Japan was about 57 years.
In the early days of the takeover of Taiwan by the Japanese Empire, local Taiwanese officials and gentry, such as Qiu Fengjia, resisted the cession of Japan and set up the "Taiwan Democratic State" in Taipei under the year code of "Yongqing", and elected the last governor of Taiwan, Tang Jingsong, as the president of Taiwan to resist the takeover of the Japanese army, but as a result of the Japanese army's landing in Xiamen, Tang immediately fled to Xiamen, and was succeeded as the president of the Taiwan Democratic State by Liu Yongfu in Tainan on June 26th. The defense of Taiwan was under the command of Minister of War Li Bingrui. In the following three months, a number of bloody battles took place between the Nationalist Army and the Japanese, resulting in the deaths of 14,000 Taiwanese soldiers, which is known as the "Yi-Wei War", and is also the largest war in Taiwan's history.
The Bi-Wei War originated when the Qing Empire lost the Sino-Japanese War (July 25, 1894-April 17, 1895) to the Japanese Empire, and signed the Treaty of Shimonoseki in Makan, Japan, on April 17, 1895, with one of the conditions of the treaty being the cession of Taiwan and Penghu. Japan then sent troops to Taiwan to take over the territory, but met with forceful resistance from the Taiwanese people. The war was centered on the island of Taiwan, and the Japanese invested more than 30,000 troops in the regular army, including the Konoha Shidan, while Taiwan's resistance mainly consisted of the anti-Japanese army formed by the Taiwanese people and other spontaneous groups; in total, there were more than 33,000 regular troops and 100,000 militia members. The Yi-Wei War was one of the largest wars that took place in Taiwan, with the widest area, the longest period of time, the largest number of participants, the most serious casualties, and the largest scale of the war, in which almost all the people took part, especially the Hakka people who were the most fierce and skillful in battle. However, the Japanese army came prepared, the gap between the superiority of weapons and equipment is too large, the Taiwanese resistance forces were ultimately defeated, since May 29th Japanese troops landed in Aodi, June 14th into Taipei, October 21st attacked Tainan to October 23rd control of all of Taiwan until the war lasted a total of about 5 months. Many Taiwanese businessmen, such as Koo Hsien-yung of Taipei City, chose to cooperate with the Japanese army in order to save their own properties, and even helped the Japanese army to clear the resistance in Taiwan by spying for them. On the other hand, many local gentry, such as the martyr Wu Tangxing of Miaoli, chose to fight to the death with the Japanese. Although Wu and his comrades died, they left behind a legacy that will be admired for generations to come.
After the initial resistance was settled, Japan set up the Governor-General of Taiwan as the supreme governor of colonial Taiwan, and set up the Taiwan Governor's Office as the supreme ruling body in Taiwan. In the early days, the Governor-General was a military man who suppressed the unrest in the area. In 1898, the Meiji government appointed Lieutenant General Gentaro Kodama, an army general, as the fourth Governor-General, and sent Shinpei Goto to be the civil affairs officer as an auxiliary, and from then on, Japan adopted a policy of both hard and soft governance. The Japanese adopted a police system and an armor system to manage Taiwan, and by the Taisho era, Taiwan's political situation had gradually stabilized.
In 1908, the longitudinal railroad was opened, shortening the time it used to take to travel between the north and south of Taiwan to just one day, and in 1919, Japan sent Kenjiro Nitta to be the first civilian governor of Taiwan, and began to build various infrastructural projects, such as running water, electricity, roads, railroads, medical care, and education. In order to promote the policy of "Agricultural Taiwan, Industrial Japan", Taiwanese farmers were encouraged to cultivate sugar cane and rice; and large-scale exploitation of Taiwan's natural resources, such as gold, copper, coal, forests, and salt, was carried out in order to supply Japan's industrial needs in the mainland. At the same time, Japan redrew Taiwan's administrative areas, carried out "urban correction" work on important cities, drew up urban plans, changed the townships and townships of the late Qing Dynasty in the style of Minnan, making the streets look more and more westernized or in the style of Minnan and Western style***, and planned roads and bridges, parks and green areas, water and sewerage, electrical engineering, health institutions, government offices and so on throughout the whole of Taiwan.
On the other hand, out of colonial policy considerations, Japan educated Taiwanese about their patriotism. Although there was no explicit restriction on Taiwanese natives in the education system, Taiwanese were still treated differently or discriminated against. The Japanese set up public schools and educational institutes for children in the mountainous areas, and elementary and public schools in the flatlands, and did not stipulate that Taiwanese could not go to elementary schools, but because of the high tuition fees of the elementary schools, most of the students were the children of the Japanese and the children of the rich families in Taiwan. But the Japanese rule era Taiwanese, in addition to receiving medical, agriculture and animal husbandry and other technical nature of higher education, there is no lack of Japanese rule era in the study of literature, law and outstanding achievements: such as the University of Taiwan, Dean of Literature Lin Mao-sheng, High Court of Justice, Wu Hong-qi, Hsinchu District Prosecutor's Office Prosecutor Wang Yulin (for the Taiwanese in the era of the Japanese rule of the first prosecutor), the Tainan City, a famous lawyer, such as Tang Dezhang, the government of the promotion of the popularization of Taiwan's education is also a credit to the government.
The resistance of the Han Chinese to the Japanese government was initially characterized by violent clashes of arms (e.g., the Miaoli Incident led by Luo Fuxing of the Hakka people and the Xilai-an Incident led by Yu Ching-fang), and was transformed into a social and political movement in the later stages due to the tragic loss of life and injuries. The anti-Japanese actions of the aboriginal people included the Wushe Incident led by Mona Rudao.
Since the 1920s, as Japan entered the era of "Taisho Democracy" and the influence of U.S. President Woodrow Wilson's advocacy of "self-determination of the nation" after the First World War, Taiwan's intellectuals also launched a series of campaigns calling for self-government and institutional reforms, which, combined with the occasional labor movement, were widely propagated to the private sector, such as the Taiwan Cultural Association and the Taiwanese People's Party. However, in the latter part of the period, the split between the left and the right and the intensified repression by the Japanese colonial government led to a gradual decline. The Golden Age of Japanese rule reached its peak at the Taiwan Exposition, when the expansion of railroad lines, the increase in rice and sugar production, and the popularization of postal and telecommunication services all led to the increase in population, the popularization of public schools and the complete implementation of foot release, the establishment of a modern hygienic environment, the development of a sense of punctuality and law-abidingness and the holding of Taiwan's first election. On April 10, 1930, the Canal and Wushantou Reservoir, planned and supervised by Hatta and I, were successfully opened to the public, becoming the third largest water conservancy project in the world and the first in Asia, and enabling as much as 150,000 acres of land in the Canaan Plain to have an abundance of water.
From Wikipedia
http://zh.wikipedia.org/wiki/%E8%87%BA%E7%81%A3#.E8.8D.B7.E8.A5.BF.E7.B5.B1.E6.B2.BB.E6.99.82.E6.9C.9F