Few cities in Asia have changed hands as often as Keelung. The Spanish arrived first among Europeans, building Fort San Salvador in 1626 as an outpost of their Manila-based empire, and settling the area with a remarkable mix of peoples: Fujianese traders, Christian Japanese exiles, Filipino laborers from Pampanga and Manila, Mexican mestizos and soldiers shipped across the Pacific via the Manila-Acapulco galleons. The Dutch East India Company seized the fort in 1642, shrunk it, and renamed it Fort Noort-Hollant. They held it until 1661. The Qing dynasty incorporated the area, opened it as a trading port in 1863, and watched it grow rich on coal and placer gold from the Keelung River drainage. Then came the French, who besieged Keelung for eight months during the Sino-French War of 1884-85. Liu Mingchuan recruited indigenous fighters to help hold the line. The French were repelled at Tamsui but pinned Keelung down until they finally withdrew.

One of Keelung's darkest episodes unfolded during the First Opium War. In September 1841, the British merchant ship Nerbudda wrecked near the port during a typhoon. Months later, the brig Ann met the same fate. Hundreds of survivors from both vessels were captured by Qing authorities and marched south. Two Chinese officials, Dahonga and Yao Ying, reported to the Daoguang Emperor that they had repelled a British attack - a complete fabrication. When the Royal Navy sloop HMS Nimrod arrived searching for survivors, the crew learned the prisoners had been transferred inland. Nimrod bombarded the port, destroying twenty-seven cannon, then returned to Hong Kong. The survivors never benefited from the rescue attempt. Over 130 from the Nerbudda and 54 from the Ann were executed by Chinese authorities in August 1842. The episode remains one of the most grim incidents of the Opium War era in East Asia.

Japan's acquisition of Taiwan after the 1895 Treaty of Shimonoseki transformed Keelung from a colonial trading post into a modern port city. The Japanese launched a five-phase harbor construction program, and by 1916 Keelung's trade volume surpassed both Tamsui and Kaohsiung. The city was upgraded from a town to a city in 1924. After Taiwan's handover to the Republic of China in 1945, Keelung rebuilt alongside the island's economic miracle. By 1984, the Port of Keelung was the seventh-largest container harbor in the world. The boom did not last forever. Geographic constraints and competition from larger ports eroded throughput through the 1990s, and Keelung reinvented itself as a cruise destination. By 2017, it had earned the title of Asia's best cruise home port. In 2024, the port recorded 331 cruise calls and served 787,000 passengers - a city learning to profit from the travelers it once profited from in cargo.

Every mid-summer, Keelung hosts one of Taiwan's oldest and largest Ghost Festivals, a tradition born not from religious scripture but from violence. In 1855, bitter clashes between rival settler clans claimed numerous lives before mediators brokered a truce. The surviving clans agreed to bury their dead together and channel their rivalries into competitive folk performances instead of bloodshed. Today the festival is the first folklore custom on Taiwan's national cultural heritage list, organized on a rotating basis by the city's fifteen major clan associations - each defined by shared surname. The rotation ensures every family takes its turn honoring the collective dead. Modern Keelung is quieter than its history suggests. With a population of 362,255 in 2023, it earned a more melancholy distinction in 2024: Taiwan's 'loneliest' city, with over 41 percent of its households comprising a single person living alone. The rain still falls. The port still operates. But the density of human connection has thinned.