Negotiating colonialism in a Taiwanese sugar town

Abstract

This thesis examines how local people in Taiwan negotiated colonialism in the Japanese colonial period (1895-1945). This exploration is based on a case study of a small town - Kio-a-thau, a place where the Japanese established their first modem sugar refinery in Taiwan in 1901. The historical dimension of the thesis is the long-term colonial transformation of the town and its neighbouring areas, a process beginning in the eighteenth century, while the ethnographic dimension is the sugarcane workers, staff of Kio-a-thau Sugar Refinery, immigrants, women, and businessmen who contributed to the social transformation of Kio-a-thau. The aim of this thesis is to come to a more detailed knowledge and awareness of the social and cultural processes of the Japanese colonial period, a time that was an integral part of Taiwan's legacy. In tum, this increased awareness serves as a basis for a greater understanding of contemporary Taiwanese society. While acknowledging the agency of the colonial power in social transformations, the thesis seeks also to investigate the agency of local people in such developments. The theoretical focus on negotiations provides three important insights. First, the dichotomy of coloniser and colonised is challenged, and a detailed interaction between these two categories is clearly examined. Secondly, Taiwanese women's agency in their colonial encounters is reexamined. Thirdly, the discontinuity as well as continuity in history is highlighted. The specificity of Taiwanese society is illuminated in this social history, which shows through an examination of the Japanese colonial period that the Taiwanese people have different experiences of negotiating such external political, social, and cultural influences. To conclude, I suggest the coloniser and colonised model is simplistic and misleading. In theoretical terms, this conclusion implies a breakdown of the dichotomy.