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Customer Reviews (9)

Fluid and riveting
I've never read a better history to acquaint myself with the island of my birth."Forbidden Nation" made me understand I am Taiwanese, even if my father had come from the mainland to the island as a refugee student after WWII.A fascinating guide to a contentious people whose character and fate are largely shaped by the island's position at the crossroad of cultures.

Lots of detail, but 2004 election beware...
The book has a lot of detail, but it surprised me to see that there was quite a bit of detail on the 2004 presidential election for a Western author. Take this part of the book with a grain of salt for sure. As any reader can see, the author supports the DPP point of view on Taiwan's history as well as putting Chiang in a bad light for the results of the Chinese Civil War. However, beware of the author's analysis of the controversial 2004 presidential election as Manthorpe seems to be taking selective clippings of Taipei Times (a pro-DPP newspaper) and looks at the actions of the Criminal Investigation Bureau (CIB). The author took the time to do more than a day's research on 319 "shooting" incident and the efforts by the pan blue camp to annul the election due to charges of election fraud. However, what is repeated here in this book for the English speaking world to see is nothing more than what the DPP government was trying to sell the public in why they didn't stage the shooting incident or rig the election via election fraud the next day on March 20.

Here are some facts that the author did not mention that almost anyone who followed the case would know.

1) Presidential Office Secretary General Chiou I-Jen announced the incident to the public and could not help but hide his giggling as he said that the bullet was on the president's body. This was designed to mislead the public into thinking that the bullet might be lodged in Chen Shui-Bian's body. After the election, when it was clear that Chen only wanted to take an x-ray with a bullet head planted below his body for dramatic effect, the public knew they had been duped by Chiou I-Jen on March 19.

2) Chen and Lu changed the location of the bullet. At first they said it was between the dress shirt and his loose jacket. However, once they realized the public had seen the security video of Chen walking into the hospital with no pain apparently, they changed the location the bullet head saying it was between the undershirt and the dress shirt. It should be noted that a clever researcher that is open-minded to interview people on the other side of the tracks have noted that the space between the 2 holes on the undershirt measures only 7.5 cm and his belly wound is 11 cm long. Manthorpe is not going to tell you something like that because he would never bother looking at the pictures of the physical evidence, but he did enough research to tell us that the CIB took some practice shots of the belly (pig skin) that resulted in a similar wound. Similar wound or not, his undershirt still only measures 7.5 cm between entry and exit hole.

3) In Dr. Henry Lee's report, there are 2 holes in the jacket despite the fact that Chen is supposedly shot only once. How did he get 2 holes in his jacket on the same side? Beats me. In the final report on August 2005, the CIB removed the 2nd (upper) hole and kept the original one using Photoshop (most likely). Once again, a convenient detail that Manthorpe would never look into.

4) Manthorpe makes references to polls that had Lien and Soong ahead by 200,000 to 300,000 ballots before the election. Which poll said this? None of them said that. I don't see a quote and I can assure the entire world that on March 18, 2004 which was 2 days before the election Lien/Soong were ahead by every poll at least 8 and mostly 10 points by most polls. Even the unpublicized DPP poll constantly had the Lien Soong ticket ahead by 10 points most of the election. The DPP doesn't show you the real poll of course. 10 points is 1.5 million ballots. It is not 200,000 -300,000 ballots which one could argue is close enough to the 29,158 figure that Chen supposedly won by.

5) How much did the 319 incident affect Chen's support. By about 500,000 - 700,000 ballots. Manthorpe does not want to acknowledge this because he doesn't want to make it look like Chen was helped by the convenient "shooting" incident the day before. He says polls done are by TV stations that are pro-blue and can't be trusted. Sure.Is it that we can't trust those polls are is it that we can't trust the 200,000 - 300,000 figure given to us with no real context or reference by the author? What did polls say on the night of March 19? They had Lien and Soong ahead by about 5-6 points which is 800,000 ballots or so. It should be said that Lien Chan wanted the election to go on believing he would still win with a decent margin of 5-6 points. However, on election day after the illegal so-called National Security Mechanism prevented military officers from voting, reports of election fraud came in from all over the country to the pan blue election HQ. Did Manthorpe with his investigation skills tell us this? No, he only tells us that Lien wanted the election held on March 19, but protested the fairness on March 20. That doesn't make sense right? Well, Manthorpe fails to mention that Lien made it abundantly clear in his speech that it was not just the 319 incident, but several incidents including what had happened on March 20 that he was suing for.

So why was the impact by about 500,000 ballots? Because 1.5 million minus 500,000 - 700,000 is about 800,000 to 1 million which is about what the poll said on March 19. Of course there were other incidents that took place after the 10 P.M. opinion poll closed on March 19, but the most telling point is the exit poll which was calculated by Warren Mitofsky which indicated a 53-47 advantage for the Lien Soong ticket. If Manthorpe had bothered calling a man with offices in New York, he could have found out that the data had come in consistently at around 53-47 and that Mitofsky himself was quite sure that Lien had won the election and even told TVBS TV station to declare Lien the winner. But no one wanting to write DPP history is ever going to bring up the exit poll. Why? Because they aren't accurate? Well, that depends on what you want to believe. Mitofsky's been wrong about what like 6 times in his 30 year career and the data looked good and consistent to him coming in from every part of the island up until the time he saw the official results.

As far as I could see, Manthorpe makes no mention of the exit poll. Later on, the exit poll was changed by Mitofsky to reflect the actual results of 50-50. Gotta go with the ruling party of course. This was 1 week after the election when President Bush offered his congratulations letter. Believe the 50-50 "correction" if you will.

6) Speaking even more to common sense. Did the author ever try interviewing personally any of the hundreds of people in front of the presidential office at that time with stories of election fraud committed by the election staff? Why are such basic investigative journalism techniques foreign to Western authors that have this love affair with the supposedly pure DPP that challenges the corrupt former mainland KMT party ousted by the Communists in 1949? Of course how that happened is simplified too. Gotta read Chiang biographies to know the role the U.S. had in trying to achieve a divided China in the Civil War.

During the election lawsuit, Manthorpe tells us what the judge thought of the pan blue lawyer's arguments. The judge thought they were weak. Weak or not, did the author mention to us that the judge refused to look at the voter lists which the opposition had pointed out at least 300,000 or so cases of illegal entries? That is, illegal voters. Dead voters, overseas voters not in Taiwan, people in jail, even some people that don't exist voted in the 2004 presidential election. The judge threw all that evidence out on the basis that mistakes are normal in elections and do not constitute election fraud. Aliens or people who never existed do not randomly pop up in voter lists with their named stamped ahead of time. The author doesn't explain how the actual evidence of election fraud existed in the voter lists which the DPP government kept private in the name of privacy for the voters. If Manthorpe had interviewed the Pan Blue lawyers, he would know that the judiciary photocopied and pasted a new voter list for the case to show how their jotted down cases of illegal entries were in fact clerical mistakes made by the "unqualified" party members who took notes from the original voter lists before they were altered by "someone".

The author does not do any of this kind of research and fails to mention any of this. He believes in the fairness of Taiwan's judiciary. Well, as we can all see now, that is only a point to be debated when Chen Shui-Bian is being held without guilty charges. I'm giving anyone reading this some background info on why the big bad KMT would want Chen in jail whether he is found guilty or not.

7) I am trying to tell readers out there that this election was planned at least a year in advance for the Chen administration to win no matter how far they were behind. A researcher who looks into the actual truth and not the sanitized government version, can tell you that the DPP administration had their 30,000 victory planned ahead of time and they knew full well the Pan Blue camps would be pissed off about it. They even made statements to how there would be rioting in the election. That's what happens when you cheat the people out of an election.

8) With the DPP out of power, they can no longer stop the KMT from examining physical evidence from the 319 case if it hasn't been destroyed already. The author better hope the KMT never does actually investigate the physical evidence or the events surrounding the case because this book is going to need a very thorough and embarrassing re-write one day.

Manthorpe is just one of many Western authors that uses the Taiwan Independence issue to put pro-China parties (the KMT and CCP) in the wrong light. Is it all about caring for the Taiwanese? Or is this about U.S. strategic dominance in Taiwan which is an Intelligence base for the U.S.? 228, the White Terror. The authoritarian past of the KMT is used to blind the reader into not recognizing the DPP's shady past and present. Such victims surely couldn't play tricks once they get into power right?

9) Did Manthorpe ever mention that Chen Shui-Bian is known for having played a fake tea-poisoning incident in 1985 while running for Tainan County Commissioner? It was reported by the New York Times even. How did Manthorpe miss such an interesting article? After showing up to a debate on a stretcher, Chen showed no signs of having been poisoned later in the day after the debate. Guess that diarrhea cleared up quickly?

And speaking of 1985, before a naive reader of Taiwan politics starts to believe every road accident is a political assassination engineered by the evil Chinese KMT party, one should take note that Chen Shui-Bian dropped the charges against the man for running over his wife. I know, she was ran over several times back and forth. Can't be an accident right? Well, ask the man himself why he supposedly did that. Did he get nervous? He can tell you? But does Manthorpe bother telling us that he was very sorry for the incident and that he is one of his supporters? Why would Chen drop the charges against a supposed KMT assassin? If his poor wife was a political victim, why would he drop the charges? He's a lawyer for Christ sake. I think most wives just having lost their ability to walk would want the culprit busted. But her ever-loyal husband dropped the charges. Sounds like a KMT conspiracy for sure.

Just to add to it, a group Dangwai activists (Dangwai means outside of the KMT party) researched the incident and 3 of them came to the conclusion that it was just a normal accident and not a political attack. This is a footnote the author could have included in his book but he didn't. Dangwai people are generally against the KMT and later became DPP people once rival parties were made legal. Even people on Chen's side agree that it was just an accident.

10) So while the KMT has an authoritarian past that cracked down on anyone that opposed its rule, readers interested in Taiwan should take note that it's very difficult to get both sides of the story on Taiwan's political development if you can only read English. If you can read Chinese, you can read some more interesting works such as a book by former DPP Chairman Hsu Hsing-Liang that wrote about the hit squads the green had during the Chiang Ching-Kuo period. This hit squad could murder or send letter bombs to KMT people as well as victimize people on its own side and thus making the KMT guilty once again. Manthorpe gets some points for neutrality by mentioning how now DPP legislator Wang Hsing-Nan sent a letter bomb to a Taiwanese KMT official.

Manthorpe mentions the letter bomb, but not how legislator Wang Hsing-Nan was directly involved in the 319 incident. That would require some actual journalism to understand how Wang was mixing things up the day before the election to help Chen get re-elected the next day. Oh, and by the way, the DPP is on suspicion for playing election tricks. In the 2002 Kaohsiung election fake sex tape help Frank Hsieh win, in 2006 Kaohsiung election supposed vote buyers help current Mayor Chen Chu win. The KMT is known to have played plenty of election tricks as well as committing fraud in the past, so to put things in a more well-rounded note, the DPP has learned these things from the KMT and added a nice Taiwanese victim quality to all of it. A party that relies on violence to achieve its aims while simultaneously playing the role of the victim is precisely the kind to stage a shooting incident and then say the other side did it while teaming up with mainland China to hurt the Taiwanese people's president. Chen Shui-Bian really outdid himself. Out of fairness to the honest folk in the DPP, not everyone in the party gets elected via tricks and/or fraud.

Concise History of Taiwan
Manthorpe has filled a vital need, writing a concise, highly readable history of Taiwan and its Chinese inhabitants.Although he does discuss the aboriginal tribes in the early chapters and touches upon their interactions with the various settlers, invaders and would-be exploiters, be they Chinese, Japanese or Westerners, the main focus of the book is Chinese people who started moving to Taiwan 400+ years ago and their relationship with mainland China.Manthorpe begins the book with the 2004 assassination attempt on President Chen Shui-bian, and then moves back in time to the first peoples traveling to Taiwan in prehistoric times. The book quickly jumps to the seventeenth century and progresses through Dutch Rule, Ming Dynasty, Qing Dynasty, the Japanese occupation, return to Nationalist Chinese rule, and bringing up to the present and the blossoming of Taiwan's democracy.It is a roller coaster of events, and Manthorpe ties in the happenings on Taiwan with the relevant activities in the rest of the world.Although written for a popular audience, the author has included a comprehensive bibliography and footnotes for someone who wants to explore any part of the history in greater detail.There are only 2 aspects that detract from the story.Manthorpe strongly supports Taiwan's independence.Although there are many arguments for independence (as well as many against), they tortured logic that he sometimes employs greatly weakens the argument.For example, because the Qing dynasty only ruled over the western plains, and ignored the mountainous aboriginal tribes and their territory, he argues that this part of the island was not ever part of Imperial China. They may have been left alone, but these tribes were not exactly treated as a sovereign kingdom either.Another minus is that this is the typical great men and wars view of history.The reader does not get much perspective of what it would be like as a common person to be around during these times.Nevertheless, Manthorpe has produced a book that reveals the history of Taiwan and illuminates the complexity of the political issues surrounding Taiwan's relationship to mainland China and, indeed, the rest of the world.

Inconsistent focus but enjoyable read
As someone who plans on spending some time in Taiwan in the near future, I was interested to learn more about its history. I found this book to be a good overview, and it held my attention much more closely than I had expected. I learned some things that I had never suspected about Taiwan's influential history as a focal point of East Asian sea trade (and piracy!).

Some reviewers have noted that this book tends to be selective in its focus, giving much more time to ancient history than to modern events (especially recent). This is a valid criticism, perhaps, but personally I enjoyed the historical narrative of pirate kings, wars, and the mysterious mountainous interior, as opposed to the endless modern political debates.

-The bottom line:
For someone seeking an in-depth analysis of Taiwan's modern status as a nation (or not) and relationship to China, there are other works that focus on that specifically. But if you want a good comprehensive understanding of the forces and events that have shaped Taiwan and its people throughout the ages, I can't think of a better read.

Excellent book
This is a great book about Taiwan history.The author has sharp observation and indepth knowledge of the history of Taiwan.A valuable reference. ... Read more

Product Description
For centuries, various great powers have both exploited and benefited Taiwan, their designs for this island frequently clashing with the desire of local inhabitants to control their own destiny. Such conflicts have shaped Taiwan’s multiple, and frequently contradictory, identities. Denny Roy contends that Taiwan’s political history is best understood as a continuous struggle for security. Eschewing the usual emphasis on the high politics of the recent era, he offers a comprehensive narrative of the island’s political history from the first Chinese settlements to the Chen Shui-bian presidency. Roy covers the political system constructed by the KMT during the Cold War, the opposition breakthrough, the presidency of Lee Teng-hui, and the DPP presidentialvictory in March 2000.

Roy’s approach allows him to integrate his understanding of Taiwan’s domestic politics with its foreign affairs—particularly the relations with mainland China. He reveals how the interplay between political forces within and the influence of foreign countries from without has shaped Taiwan. His is a balanced account, incorporating up-to-date coverage and presenting many indigenous voices. Taiwan: A Political History illuminates the origins of the island’s often-troubled domestic and international political situation. ... Read more

Customer Reviews (11)

Very best
This book strikes me as an invaluable introductory book on Taiwan, since it is inclusive, insightful, informative, and interesting. Any expert should take pride in writing such a great book for both general readers and scholars.

decent, but a bit dull
the book prevents the basic facts, but lacks analytical depth. a good intro nonetheless for beginners. for a more detailed approach, check out "The Generalissimo's Son" though that book as well is not too engaging theoretically or analytically.

A good introduction to Taiwan's history
As the title of my review implies, this is a valuable volume for the person who is interested in developing an understanding of the complex forces that shape Taiwan today.

Roy takes up Taiwan's history from the beginnings of Chinese settlement of the island and the Japanese Occupation.However, the bulk of the book focuses on Post-World War II Taiwan.While it focuses on the political history of the country, other aspects are not ignored.My main criticism is that although this purports to be a political history, the main criticism of the legitimacy (or lack thereof) of "Chinese" sovereignty (regarding the so-called Post WWII transfer to China) over the country is ignored.Save for that ommission, this is a servicable summary of modern Taiwan political history.

I would recommend this book for someone wishing to learn a little about Taiwan before coming to the country.For a person wishing to engage in an in depth study of the country, this would be a good volume to start with.However, if you already have a basic understanding of the major forces shaping this country (particularly post-World War II,) I would advise passing this work by for more in depth works on the subject.

A very interesting book about Taiwan history
I was born in Taiwan and completed my college education in Taiwan. The Chinese history text books focus on the story of the mainland China. I have not known too much about Taiwan. For some reasons my grandparents and parents did not talk too much about it either.

This book opens my eyes and I could not stop reading it. Even though the book is very comprehensive some of the information the author got is either manipulated, biased or missing. It is far from perfect. There is a lot of truth about Taiwan to be explored. For example Koxinga was given the credit of defeating Dutch and then occupied Formosa. But he lived
only 4 monthes after defeating the Dutch. He was a pirate and very brutal. He excuted his new born grandchild and grandchild's mother. He is more like a refugee than a hero. The main reason he came to Taiwan is he was escaping from Qing dynasty's attack.

Because of Taiwan's democracy a lot of information are more readily available and people does not afraid of being talking about the past I believe the author might want to update this
book soon.

"Even-handed, thorough, and accurate"
Review by Prof. Shelley Rigger, the top U.S. scholar on Taiwan, in TOPICS magazine, May 2003: "Nowhere else will readers find such an even-handed, thorough, and accurate account of Taiwan's recent history. What is more, the book is a pleasure to read, balancing rich historical details and anecdotes with thoughtful analysis. Roy's book provides the most complete and in-depth account of Taiwan's post-World War II political development available in English. However, much of the value of the book comes from his determination to situate the island's postwar history in the context of Taiwan's pre-war experience. As a result, Roy is able to offer satisfying answers to some of the most puzzling issues facing students of contemporary Taiwan, including islanders' complicated feelings toward Japan, China--even Taiwan itself." ... Read more

Customer Reviews (6)

An excellent survey of Taiwan's history
This is one of the most complete books on Taiwan and its history available in the English language.The reading is dense in places and is highly academic, but for anyone who has a background in Taiwan's history and wants to get in depth, this would the volume for you.

Beginning from Taiwan's physical environment, other specialists focus on aboriginal Taiwan, the encroachment of the Minnan people, from the Dutch and Cheng to incorporation by the Ching Dynasty.The late ninteenth century receives some coverage in depth.There is also a frank assessment of the Japanese occupation years.

About half of the book is devoted to post- World War II Taiwan. Political, religious, modernization and other topics of modern Taiwan are discussed in depth.Unfortunately, due to the dating of the book, recent democratic developments are not covered (the book stops shortly following President Lee Tung Hui's popular election as President).However, for anyone interested in developing a deeper understanding of Taiwan, other than actually living here, this book is one of the best options available.

For the novice on Taiwan, I recommend reading Denny Roy's "Taiwan:A Political History first."It is an excellent read and not as dense as this work.

poorly written; no organization or structure
This book was a major disappointment.Each chapter is written by a different person; the book is really just a collection of dry academic articles slapped together, with no organizing structure.The alleged editor is also one of the contributing authors, and it doesn't appear that he did much editing at all.The overall quality of the book is substandard, with amateurish and badly printed black and white photographs taken by the editor.

Worst of all, judging by the first two selections, the writing is pretty awful.Here's a sample of the obtuse academic style you will find in this volume:
"The Chinese hegemonic project of making Taiwanese aborigines part of the Chinese nation was incompatible with the developing counterhegemonic aboriginal project of affirming their distinct identity and political rights as indigenous people."(page 37)
Hard to believe that such a passage could have been written by a native English speaker, much less that it actually got published!

Instead of this volume, I recommend Denny Roy's book, which is quite well-written.

Taiwan-A new History
A must have book for Taiwan research.

The Editor/Author's Response
This is a response to Denny Roy's review. Prof. Roy is indeed a rival of sorts having recently written a political history of Taiwan that may soon be published. He and a number of others find my definition of history--or rather my broad conception of history--troubling but I will stand by it. I have called on the resources of the best people I know in the subfield of Taiwan studies and they have produced admirably researched and written chapters. The book is designed as a comprehensive single volume work that provides an introduction to Taiwan and all facets of its history. Thus literature, religion, geography, ethnography, and culture are included in the mix. Some scholars such as Prof Roy and Prof. John Copper among them are are more focused on politics but there is more to history than politics in this new and decidedly multi-cultural and post modern world. One person's comprehensiveness is another's choppiness but so be it. I think the book is well integrated and the individual authors have worked through, in good measure, the themes spelled out in the introduction. One other important point The political struggles KMT-dangwai of the 1970s and 1980s, struggles I saw first hand on Taiwan are dealt with within the context of the matrix of events and are part of a large scale political narrative. They are not however the only subject of this long chapter. In other books I have focused on this period and its actors such as Lu Hsiu-lien as well as the Presbyterian Church but this was not the time for such detail. Pro. Roys own focus on the modern period is well done indeed but then he writes a formal "poltical" history, while I do not. One final point: What I find annoying is the tone of the review at certain points, particularly the comments on the concluding section. I think they work and they sum up the book and its major themes.

I invite others who know the book such as Alan Wachman and other Taiwan hands or China hands as well as journalist and members of the public to add their voices to this discussion of a book that many recognize as an invaluable work for scholar and lay reader alike.

A hodgepoge of uneven quality
There are few recent books that attempt to cover all of Taiwan's history, making Rubinstein's effort valuable and appreciated.I found parts of it useful in writing my own book on Taiwan's history (yes, let's acknowledge that this reviewer has a potential conflict of interest).Almost all edited books, however, suffer from the difficulty of achieving unity and thoroughness while avoiding repetition with the ensemble cast of authors with their own styles and interests.Rubinstein's book is no exception.I found chapters 4 through 8, 10 and 11 excellent history.Other periods, however, were not so well covered.I found it astounding that the book does not include a chapter on the political opposition's successful campaign to force the KMT government to begin to liberalize in the 1980s, an extremely important period in Taiwan's history.Yet the book throws in chapters on Taiwan's geography, religion and literature.Rather than a "history," the book is really an assemblage of chapters on history, political science, geography, economics, and humanities--different layers made of clay, plastic and metal, with no attempt to integrate them.This book is better understood, perhaps, as a Taiwan reader.I must also mention that Rubinstein's writing at the end of the book is uncharacteristically poor and rough, as if he rushed through it to meet a deadline.Overall: worthwhile, but does not fulfill its promise.(If my book gets published, I'll be bracing for Rubinstein's retaliation.) ... Read more

Product Description
This concise account of Taiwan's history makes a cogent, compelling argument for the right of the Taiwanese people to declare their nation independent, if they so choose. Davison's bold stand--unprecedented from a Western author--challenges the "one China" notion advanced in the Shanghai Communique of 1972 and states unequivocally that, should independence be proclaimed, it could only be taken away by force if the international community sides with contemporary might over historical right. ... Read more

Customer Reviews (1)

Go for Copper's Taiwan first
I'm still new to the small field of English historical writing to Taiwan: so far I've only read this book and _Taiwan: Nation-state or Province?_ by John Copper. I have to say, Copper is clearly the more mature researcher and the superior writer. Copper's work, similar in length, scope, and purpose to Davison's (not to mention cheaper!), is based on a much more complete bibliography, a longer experience among Taiwan researchers in Washington, and despite the title, a clearer argument for Taiwan's historical and cultural independence from China.

Much of Davison's book is a summary of history texts used in Taiwan - authors Qi Jialin, Zhou Mingfeng, and Huang Dashou are mentioned particularly often. Thus, if you wish to start investigating history books about Taiwan written in Taiwan, Davison's book offers a kind of introduction. But for a purely general introduction, I can't really say there is anything in Davison I could not have gotten from Copper if I had read that one first. ... Read more

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Product Description
In an absorbing account of a frontier family's rise to local eminence, from pioneer hardship to gentry affluence, Johanna Meskill presents not just a family history but a social history of late imperial China. The narrative centers on a half dozen major figures whose fame or infamy shaped family fortunes and is interwoven with an analysis of several larger themes: the dynamics of the settlement process; the role of violence in popular culture; patterns of upward mobility; the continuing vigor of gentry culture. Available for the first time in paperback, this History Book Club selection includes numerous illustrations from family and other contemporary sources.

"It is a piece of local historical research . . . yet it is also a book about all of Taiwan and indeed all of China-as good a book as we are likely to encounter for some time."-Eric Widmer, Brown University, History Book Club prospectus.

"Meskill's aim in this book was to look at Chinese society and history from the ground up rather than, as is usually the case, from the top down. . . . In this, she has succeeded brilliantly. There is, as yet, no other work with a comparable perspective."-Edward Rhoads, History

"Possibly the best historical account of a Chinese gentry family (aside from autobiographical and fictional renditions) available in the English language . . . a milestone in the field of Chinese local history."-Harry Lamley, Journal of Asian Studies

"A major addition to the expanding field of Ch'ing Chinese Studies." -Ching-chih Chen, American Historical ReviewJohanna Menzel Meskill is Professor of History at Herbert H. Lehman College, The City University of New York.Sponsored by the East Asian Institute, Columbia University ... Read more

Customer Reviews (1)

MUST-read resource on Taiwan history & culture.
This is a first-choice, must-read book on Taiwanhistory and culture. It covers most of Taiwan'sfrontier period as well as colonial era. If youreally want to get a feel of what life was likein early Taiwan, this is the book for you. Veryaccurate and well-written, it reads like a novel.Definitely required reading, I highly recommend it for not just scholarly work, but also for purely pleasure reading. ... Read more

Product Description
In this engrossing cultural history of baseball in Taiwan, Andrew D. Morris traces the game's social, ethnic, political, and cultural significance since its introduction on the island more than one hundred years ago. Introduced by the Japanese colonial government at the turn of the century, baseball was expected to "civilize" and modernize Taiwan's Han Chinese and Austronesian Aborigine populations. After World War II, the game was tolerated as a remnant of Japanese culture and then strategically employed by the ruling Chinese Nationalist Party (KMT) Even as it was also enthroned by Taiwanese politicians, cultural producers, and citizens as their national game. In considering baseball's cultural and historical implications, Morris deftly addresses a number of societal themes crucial to understanding modern Taiwan, the question of Chinese "reunification," and East Asia as a whole. ... Read more

Customer Reviews (2)

An interesting twist on Confucian values
Margery Wolf's anthropological case study of women in a rural Taiwanese farm village reexamines the traditional patriarchal view of women roles with a closer look at the ways women manipulate the Confucian family by their uterine family connections and by networking within the women's community.Wolfsets forth arevisionist dynamic: the Uterine family and how mothers bond with sons as opposed to the traditional Confucian family values.Wolf claims there is a women's community and a the support system it can provide underlaying the traditional patrilineal values.

To make her point, Wolf describes the socialization of female children in the natal family from birth through young womanhood and within the marital family from engagement and marriage to the time they take over the domestic duties of the mothers-in-law.Kingroups and various women's social groups are juxtaposed against village locales. The close relationship between a mother and her sons is compared to the harsher treatment of daughters.Also depicted is entrance into the women's community and the ways the women's community can apply pressure through gossip and loss of face.She also explains non-normative situations: the simpua child, uxorilocal marriages, prostitution. These show examples of women on the outside of the traditional family roles.Adopting a wife for a son as an economic savings and to eliminate stress by training the daughter-in-law, and the difficulties of marrying a brother.Husbands who take their wives family name to provide sons for the lineage, and the stresses of the uxorilocal marriage.Prostitution as a lucrative alternative for some families.

Wolf has clearly demonstrated a different dynamic employed by women which overlays the traditional male power structure of the Confucian family, within which women create for themselves a position of security and limited control over their lives and their children's lives and can thus make bearable and even improve family life within the limits of the patriarchal patrilineal society of rural Taiwan.

Decrying women's status, arguing for mothers' centrality
This account of a typical life-cycle of Chinese women in a multi-surnamed Hokkien village, aptly characterized as an "afterthought to fieldwork" by Norma Diamond in _The American Anthropologist_ enlivens the demographic analyses of her (then-) husband Arthur Wolf's work on patterns of adoption and marriage. She stresses the importance of informal neighborhood groupings of (unrelated) women and dwells extensively on prostitution, especially by adopted daughters (the obssession of Arthur Wolf's life work), and on rivalry between women. In particular, Margery Wolf stresses the rivalry between daughters-in-law and mothers-in-law as leading to the breakup of larger family units into nuclear family households (although in her earlier work she hademphasized the fragility of bonds between brothers thatpreexisted sister-in-law rivalry as a centripetal force within families ).

Wolf considerablyunderestimated the extent to which women's work outside the house was (and is) important toto the economic well-being of their families and to financing family enterprises. As Diamong complained, "there is little feel for how adult women view themselves and their lives, how they interact with the males in their lives, and how completely they accept the male evaluation of them as economically useless and ritually polluting." Taiwanese scholars have challenged the Western conception of female "pollution" in the work of Wolf, Emily [Martin] Ahern, and others.

The specificity of Wolf's _House of Lim_, although it probably depends on unnamed Taiwanese research "assistants" eliciting and translating the data, makes it the most useful of her books. ... Read more

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An ethnography of the leather-tanning industry in SouthernTaiwan, Tanners of Taiwan examines what it means to be Chinese.

Tanners of Taiwan is an ethnography of identity construction setin the leather-tanning communities of Southern Taiwan. Through lifehistory analysis and ethnographic observation, Simon examines what itmeans to be Chinese - or alternatively Taiwanese - in contemporaryTaiwan. Under forty years of martial law from 1947 to 1987, the ChineseNationalist Party tried to create a Chinese identity in Taiwan throughideological campaigns that reached deep into families, schools andworkplaces. They justified their rule through a development narrativethat Chinese culture and good policy contributed to the prosperity ofthe Taiwan miracle. These ideological claims and cultural identities,however, have never been fully accepted in Southern Taiwan. Thisethnography is the first to document from the ground level how thoseclaims have been contested, and how a new Taiwanese identity has beenconstructed since democratization. Tanners of Taiwan providesmore than a description of workplaces in Taiwan. Looking at thedifferent perspectives of tanners, women managers, and workers, itdemonstrates how cultural and other identities are constructed throughdynamics of power and political economy.

A small, affordable case studies book to be assigned with a coretextbook in introductory anthropology courses. Shows how the US readeris connected to the seemingly distant lives of Taiwanese tanners. Simonfollows hides from the US to tanneries in Taiwan, then elsewhere to bemade into shoes and other leather goods, and then back to the consumerin the US - demonstrating concretely the notion of "globalinterconnectedness."

Anchored in personal observation and ethnographic detail, the book makesvery tangible such otherwise abstract notions as "national identity" and"global integration." ... Read more

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In 1945, Taiwan was placed under the administrative control of the Republic of China, and after two years, accusations of corruption and a failing economy sparked a local protest that was brutally quashed by the Kuomintang government. The February Twenty-Eighth (or 2/28) Incident led to four decades of martial law that became known as the White Terror. During this period, talk of 2/28 was forbidden and all dissent violently suppressed, but since the lifting of martial law in 1987, this long-buried history has been revisited through commemoration and narrative, cinema and remembrance.

Drawing on a wealth of secondary theoretical material as well as her own original research, Sylvia Li-chun Lin conducts a close analysis of the political, narrative, and ideological structures involved in the fictional and cinematic representations of the 2/28 Incident and White Terror. She assesses the role of individual and collective memory and institutionalized forgetting, while underscoring the dangers of re-creating a historical past and the risks of trivialization. She also compares her findings with scholarly works on the Holocaust and the aftermath of the atomic bombings of Japan, questioning the politics of forming public and personal memories and the political teleology of "closure." This is the first book to be published in English on the 2/28 Incident and White Terror and offers a valuable matrix of comparison for studying the portrayal of atrocity in a specific locale.

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Taiwanese society is in the midst of an immense, exciting effort to define itself, seeking to erect a contemporary identity upon the foundation of a highly distinctive history. This book provides a thorough overview of Taiwanese cultural life. The introduction familiarizes students and interested readers with the island's key geographical and demographic features, and provides a chronological summary of Taiwanese history. In the following seven chapters, readers gain insight into Taiwanese customs and culture through its thought and religion; kinship and marriage systems; literature and art; architecture; festivals and leisure activities; music and dance; cuisine and fashion. The final chapter presents the most recent information regarding children and education, and explores the importance of the Taiwanese family in the context of meaningful relationships amongst acquaintances, friends, and institutions that make up the social universe of the Taiwanese. ... Read more

Customer Reviews (2)

Best Book
I liked this book very much.I thought that it was informative, and well written.I didn't think that the other review was helpful or made any sense.Thankyou Barbara E.Reed and Gary Marvin Davison for making such good book.

Easy to read.
I am still waiting for another nice book ... Read more

Product Description
An ethnography of the leather-tanning industry in SouthernTaiwan, Tanners of Taiwan examines what it means to be Chinese.

Tanners of Taiwan is an ethnography of identity construction setin the leather-tanning communities of Southern Taiwan. Through lifehistory analysis and ethnographic observation, Simon examines what itmeans to be Chinese - or alternatively Taiwanese - in contemporaryTaiwan. Under forty years of martial law from 1947 to 1987, the ChineseNationalist Party tried to create a Chinese identity in Taiwan throughideological campaigns that reached deep into families, schools andworkplaces. They justified their rule through a development narrativethat Chinese culture and good policy contributed to the prosperity ofthe Taiwan miracle. These ideological claims and cultural identities,however, have never been fully accepted in Southern Taiwan. Thisethnography is the first to document from the ground level how thoseclaims have been contested, and how a new Taiwanese identity has beenconstructed since democratization. Tanners of Taiwan providesmore than a description of workplaces in Taiwan. Looking at thedifferent perspectives of tanners, women managers, and workers, itdemonstrates how cultural and other identities are constructed throughdynamics of power and political economy.

A small, affordable case studies book to be assigned with a coretextbook in introductory anthropology courses. Shows how the US readeris connected to the seemingly distant lives of Taiwanese tanners. Simonfollows hides from the US to tanneries in Taiwan, then elsewhere to bemade into shoes and other leather goods, and then back to the consumerin the US - demonstrating concretely the notion of "globalinterconnectedness."

Anchored in personal observation and ethnographic detail, the book makesvery tangible such otherwise abstract notions as "national identity" and"global integration." ... Read more

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At the beginning of the 1600s, Taiwan was a sylvan backwater, sparsely inhabited by headhunters and visited mainly by pirates and fishermen. By the end of the century it was home to more than a hundred thousand Chinese colonists, who grew rice and sugar for export on world markets. This book examines this remarkable transformation. Drawing primarily on Dutch, Spanish, and Chinese sources, it argues that, paradoxically, it was Europeans who started the large scale Chinese colonization of the island: the Spanish, who had a base on northern Taiwan from 1626 to 1642, and, more importantly, the Dutch, who had a colony from 1623 to 1662. The latter enticed people from the coastal province of Fujian to Taiwan with offers of free land, freedom from taxes, and economic subventions, creating a Chinese colony under European rule.

Taiwan was thus the site of a colonial conjuncture, a system that the author callsco-colonization. The Dutch relied closely on Chinese colonists for food, entrepreneurship, translation, labor, and administrative help. Chinese colonists relied upon the Dutch for protection from the headhunting aborigines and, sometimes, from other Chinese groups, such as the pirates who ranged the China Seas.

In its analysis the book sheds light on one of the most important questions of global history: how do we understand the great colonial movements that have shaped our modern world? By examining Dutch, Spanish, and Han colonization in one island, it offers a compelling answer: Europeans managed to establish colonies throughout the globe not primarily because of technological superiority but because their states sponsored overseas colonialism whereas Asian states, in general, did not. Indeed, when Asian states did, European colonies were vulnerable, and the book ends with the capture of Taiwan by a Chinese army, led by a Chinese warlord named Zheng Chenggong.

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Customer Reviews (1)

Fascinating social history
As a teacher and researcher whose focus includes Asian education, I've always wondered about the role of sports in K-12 Asian schools, particularly those in Taiwan. With Taiwan's tremendous emphasis on academics, I wondered how it was that Little League Baseball could thrive there. In "Playing in Isolation," Junwei Yu offers readers insight not only into this question, but also into the entire history of the sport in Taiwan. Baseball came to the island with the Japanese and became very popular in Taiwan even in the first half of the 20th century, especially among the island's native population. Yu describes how baseball offered a cultural and political outlet for these people, as well as how the ruling KMT party gradually co-opted the sport for political purposes in the 1970s. Also describe in fascinating detail are the corruption scandals associated with sport. This is a terrific read for sports fans, political buffs, and sociologists. ... Read more

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"Peking Opera and Politics in Taiwan" tells the peculiar story of an art caught in a sea of ideological ebbs and flows. Nancy Guy demonstrates the potential significance of the political environment for an art form's development, ranging from determining the smallest performative details (such as how a melody can or cannot be composed) to whether a tradition ultimately thrives or withers away. When Chiang Kai-shek's Nationalist government and military retreated to Taiwan in 1949, they brought along numerous Peking opera performers. Expecting that this symbolically important art would strengthen regime legitimacy and authority, they generously supported Peking opera's perpetuation in exile. Valuing mainland Chinese culture above Taiwanese culture, the Nationalists generously supported Peking opera to the virtual exclusion of local performing traditions, despite their wider popularity. Later, as Taiwan turned toward democracy, the island's own 'indigenous' products became more highly valued and Peking opera found itself on a tenuous footing. Finally, in 1995, all of its opera troupes and schools (formerly supported by the Ministry of Defense) were dismantled.Nancy Guy investigates the mechanisms through which Peking Opera was perpetuated, controlled, and ultimately disempowered, and explores the artistic and political consequences of the state's involvement as its primary patron. Her study provides a unique perspective on the interplay between ideology and power within Taiwan's dynamic society. Nancy Guy is an associate professor of music at the University of California, San Diego. ... Read more

Customer Reviews (1)

Clear and Meaningful
I had the chance to get into the classes "American Diplomatic History I and II" taught by Professor Tucker. This book is exactly reflects her outstanding teaching skills: it is clear, very well documented and it brings more than just knowledge. It bringsan understanding of the events, of what was at stake then, all that is necessary to analyze the current challenges in the region. ... Read more