Status Updates From Between Assimilation and In...

What? Done already? That makes it even more puzzling that he spend so much time on japanese colonial and republican china eras.

yeah, Taiwans experience with the nationalists is even more complex than standard colonial rule.

Interesting thoughts: Reasons for not assuming the nationalists were not colonizers because the nationalists never considered themselves and Taiwan was more economically advanced than the mainland and the immigration after 1945 were more exiles than colonists. But the book says that it has some validity after all due to many similarities with the japanese colonizers.

finally, the nationalist period from 1945 on. And interesting. Not only where many nationalist party members in japan early on, and played it down as much as their communist training, but the nationalists brought japanese advicors back to train troops in Taiwan. So basically they were exactly what they accused the taiwanese off.

As interesting as it is to read how different taiwanese dealt with the japanese colonials, but I still ask why all of this is here. Is that really necessary to go into so much detail?

so basically the nationalists looked for communists on Taiwan where there were almost none. Ironic.

It is not just chinese historians who found it difficult to free themselves from mythological constructions of the Boxer Movement, that is a problem in general And as interesting as some of this stuff is, I had to ask myself constently why it is here. Is it really necessary to bring this up?

so the nationalists were incompetent in both economy and even oppression in Taiwan and after the February 28th incident and military response (the nationalists saw it as a pure rebellion) the estimates of the number of victims ranged from 500 to 100000. A 1992 government report estimated between 18,000 and 28,000.

boy the chaos of the uprising sounds like a good material for a show or a film. All the chaos, the uprisings, the violence.

Hm, I saw version of the "the dogs left and the swine came" statement a few times. The dogs are the japanese and the swine the chinese, only this one here stated also that the chinese were uncultured.

So the nationalists demanded standard mandarin from the taiwanese but many newly arrived mainlanders could not speak understandable mandarin as well. And I noticed that the author also used the term dialects instead of languages. I think he might have fallen for nationalist propaganda as well.

So both sides saw the other as backward and feudal. The nationalists saw the taiwanese as tainted wuth collaborationism and willful refusal to join the fatherland, and to the taiwanese the nationmalists were corrupt and repressive.

Looks like even at the time of nationalist takeover were most taiwanese more interested in self-government and a great deal of autonomy and while the mainlanders agreed that 50 years of japanese rule had mady Taiwan very different from the other provinces of China, for them that meant Taiwan should be even tighter controlled. Similar to the CCP today.

so after the Wuchang Uprising in 1911, a chain reaction spread across China, and within a few weeks and months, 15 Chinese provinces declared their independence from the Qing Dynasty's rule, leading to the collapse of the monarchy and the establishment of the Republic of China. I had to look up how many there were but the author mentioned it. And I get that you need some background info, but is it necessary here?

I remember reading about the Japanese granting greater "freedom" in the colonies and occupied territories towards the end of World War II to gain local support. Naturally in Taiwan, the military setbacks prevented the implementation of these measures.

Oh, so many wealthy and elite Taiwanese returned after the japanese handover, when it was clear that their assets were secure. And funny, during the early years of rule, the governor-general emphasized that those who remained owed loyalty to the Meiji emperor as he now held the mandate of heaven. This is the only time I ever saw that concept brought up in terms of Taiwan.

This distinction between the Great Tradition and Maritime China is very fitting and useful here. The former states that only the Norther Plain is the true China with confucian sholars first and merchants last, but maritime china along the southeast coast had it in reverse and in Taiwan the degree of variation from the Great Tradition ideal set the island apart.