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.