Contested colonial modernity: the controversy and political struggles surrounding the Kanan Taishū irrigation system, 1922-1937

This Master’s thesis, drawing on Japanese and Chinese news articles, travelogues, and pamphlets authored by activists on different ends of the Taiwanese political spectrum, examines the controversies and debates around the construction of the Kanan Taishū irrigation system as initiated by the Japanese colonial government in the 1920s and 30s. By looking at how Japanese colonizers and Taiwanese local elites each viewed and experienced the visions of modernity as embodied by the construction project differently, I argue that while the majority of Taiwanese local elites had criticized the project and the state’s colonial policies, they nevertheless tended to endorse on the discursive level Japanese visions of modernity as characterized by economic, scientific, and hygienic advances, with a small minority of Marxist and anarchist elite groups embracing alternative visions of colonial modernity in pursuit of distinctive political and economic agendas of their own. Studying this complex entanglement of discursive struggle is crucial to not only our discussion of Taiwanese politics from the colonial period through to the present day, but an understanding of how visions of colonial modernity was negotiated and contested in areas peripheral to the heart of the Japanese empire as well.

Name thesis:degree_name

M.A.

Level thesis:degree_level

Thesis

Discipline thesis:degree_discipline

E Asian Languages & Cultures

Grantor

University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign

Year dc:date

2022

Author dc:creator

• Jiang, Yuwei

Contributors dc:contributor

• Wilson, Roderick Ike
• Chow, Kai-Wing
• Shao, Dan

• Colonial Taiwan
• Kanan Taishū
• Irrigation
• Modernity

Statement dc:rights

• Copyright 2022 Yuwei Jiang

Language dc:language

en, eng

Handle dc:identifier

https://hdl.handle.net/2142/116114

OAI record oai:identifier

https://www.ideals.illinois.edu/oai-pmh?verb=GetRecord&metadataPrefix=etdms&identifier=oai%3Awww.ideals.illinois.edu%3A2142%2F116114