In the waves of global history and ethnic studies, the international academic community has gradually begun to pay attention to historical groups such as Inner Asia and maritime history, which have been overlooked by traditional Chinese historiography. At the same time, there is an effort to understand the history of China and Taiwan within the context of global history. Concurrently, the Taiwanese academic community, driven by the “New Historiography” movement, has further developed a bottom-up approach to writing a new social history, medical history, and gender history, building upon the robust framework of institutional history from the past. These emerging topics have attracted the interest of many scholars today.

The ethnic activities between the sixteenth and eighteenth centuries had a profound impact on culture, religion, society, and politics in China and East Asia, involving the participation of officials, Jesuits, Tibetan Buddhist monks, intellectuals, land and maritime merchant groups, and local populations. There remains much space for thorough exploration and reflection within these interactions.

Additionally, previous explorations of China’s relations with foreign regions often divided research areas into land and maritime domains, with little collaboration or discussion between the fields of land and ocean studies. Although current academic research on seventeenth-century Taiwan has expanded to include maritime history—examining the influence of Dutch and Spanish colonial powers on Taiwan and its connections to world history, as well as discussing the actions of the Zheng regime in the East Asian maritime region—there is still a scarcity of studies investigating the connections and relationships between Taiwan in the seventeenth century and the Ming and Qing empires in both terrestrial and maritime contexts.

Therefore, we are eager to engage in deep communication and exchange on this topic. Hosting an international academic conference will facilitate in-depth dialogue between the Taiwanese academic community and international researchers at the forefront of these studies. Simultaneously, we hope this discussion will extend to the East Asian maritime world and Inner Asia, broadening research perspectives and enriching the content of the studies.

This academic conference aims to invite scholars from Taiwan and abroad to explore the interactions between Inner Asia and maritime domains around the seventeenth century in areas such as art, material culture, Taiwan history, East Asian history, maritime world history, Ming and Qing history, Sino-foreign exchange history, Central Eurasian history, body studies, gender, life and medical studies, archaeology, and literature. This will be an important occasion to gather scholars from diverse academic fields, nationalities, and cultural backgrounds to share insights and experiences.