This painting from the eighteenth century shows aborigines milling and processing sugar. During the Dutch period, aborigines were not generally involved in sugar processing, but this print is important because it shows production techniques. On the left is a hut where two oxen drive a mill into which laborers feed raw sugar cane. Behind them is a small building in which the cane juice is processed into sugar. It is interesting to compare this mill to very similar mills on the other side of the world, in Brasil. Image is from the Fan she cai feng tu (番社采風圖 Genre Paintings of Taiwan Aborigines), used by permission of the Academia Sinica Institute of History and Phililogy. Source: Academia Sinica Institute of History and Philology Credit: From 六十七, 番社采風圖; published in 1998 by 杜正勝 for the Academia Sinica; more online at:

From How Taiwan became Chinese: Dutch, Spanish, and Han colonization in the seventeenth century by Tonio Andrade