Ketagalan

Ketagalan refers here to the Indigenous communities of northern Taiwan, including settlements around the Taipei basin. Their history is visible in the distinct villages of Beitou, Qilian and Halapei, rather than in a single unified town. During the seventeenth century Beitou communities traded sulphur with outsiders and controlled access to deposits in the Datun Mountains. Spanish accounts described Beitou as wealthy in sulphur, while Dutch reports acknowledged the difficulty outsiders faced in taking control of production.

Qing settlement brought further changes to landholding. Indigenous owners leased land to newcomers, but mortgages, sales and related transactions gradually reduced their holdings. At Qilian, Chinese settlements appeared after 1718, and an eighteenth-century gazetteer still recorded Indigenous villages alongside them. In 1788 the government prohibited unauthorised sulphur extraction and employed people from Beitou, Jinbaoli and Maoshaoweng to guard the deposits. Local communities therefore remained participants in trade and administration even as colonisation transformed their lands.