As is the case with many of China's ports, Xiamen has a relatively short but interesting history. It was founded in the mid-fourteenth century and grew in stature under the Ming dynasty, becoming a thriving port by the seventeenth century, influenced by a steady and rather secretive succession of Portuguese, Spanish and Dutch fortune-hunters. When invading Manchu armies poured down from the north in the seventeenth century, driving out the Ming, Xiamen became a centre of resistance for the old regime. The pirate and self-styled Prince Koxinga (also known as Zheng Chenggong ), heavily romanticized by later writers, led the resistance before being driven out to set up his last stronghold in Taiwan where he eventually died, before Taiwan too was captured by the Manchus.

A couple of hundred years later the British arrived, increasing trade and establishing their nerve centre on the nearby island of Gulangyu; the manoeuvre was formalized with the Treaty of Nanjing in 1842. By the turn of the century, Xiamen, with its off-shore foreigners, had become a relatively prosperous community, supported partly by a steady turnover in trade and by the trickle of wealth back from the city's emigrants, who over the centuries had continued to swell in numbers. This happy state of affairs continued until the Japanese invasion at the beginning of World War II.

The end of the war did not bring with it a return to the good old days, however. The arrival of the Communists in 1949, and the final escape to Taiwan by Chiang Kaishek with the remains of his Nationalist armies, saw total chaos around Xiamen, with thousands of people streaming to escape the Communist advance in boats across the straits. In the following years the threat of war was constant, as mainland armies manoeuvred in preparation for the final assault on Taiwan, and more immediately, on the smaller islands of Jinmen and Mazu (known to the West as Quemoy and Matsu) which lie only just off the mainland, within sight of Xiamen.

Today the wheel of history has come full circle. Although Jinmen and Mazu are still in the hands of the Nationalists, the threat of conflict with Taiwan has been replaced by the promise of colossal economic advantage. In the early 1980s Xiamen was declared one of China's first Special Economic Zones and, like Shenzhen on the border with Hong Kong, the city has entered a period of unprecedented boom.