Abstract:
Between 1895 and 1945 the Japanese transformed the colony of Taiwan into a regional
center for southern expansion under the auspices of the Government-General of Taiwan (GGT).
This dissertation explores how this process unfolded by focusing on the Government-General's
interactions with other imperial institutions, the populations under its nebulous jurisdiction, and
the peoples it sought to control through the production of ethnographic knowledge. By viewing
empire through the lens of one strategic colony, this project demonstrates the existence of
multiple imperial centers that possessed unique geographical and institutional imperatives.
The GGT initiated imperial strategies that took advantage of its proximity to neighboring
territories on the empire's edges. Due to Taiwan's geographical and cultural affinities with South
China and Southeast Asia, it extended Japanese economic, cultural, and geopolitical interests
across the East and South China Seas. Japanese colonial leaders mobilized Taiwan's institutions
and personnel to economically exploit and later administer what would collectively become the
"Southern Region." Imperial ambitions in Taiwan, however, did not always align with those of
the Tokyo central government. Rather, the GGT at times actively competed with the Foreign
Ministry, Army, and Navy to shape Japan's southern advance. Japanese imperial ideas and
practices thus did not solely emanate from the metropole but also from its colonies out toward
extra-imperial regions.
In addition to advancing Japan's trans-regional circuits of mobility and exchange farther
south, the GGT pioneered Japanese area studies of the Southern Region through research
institutions such as Taiwan's Encyclopedia Bureau and Taihoku Imperial University. Japanese
colonial officials and scholars compiled ethnographic surveys to promote Japanese trade and
investment in Southeast Asia's natural resources. They simultaneously formulated historical and
ethnological narratives of commonality and connections among Japan, Taiwan, and Southeast
Asia as cultural legitimacy for Japan's southern advance. Drawing on Japanese- and Chinese language sources from Taiwan, Japan, and China, this dissertation illustrates how Japanese
colonialists and Taiwanese subjects shaped Japan's relations with South China and Southeast
Asia well before the Imperial Navy and Army's southern military advance in the late-1930s.
Taiwan-based initiatives that advanced Japan's economic and cultural ties with, and knowledge
production of, the Southern Region helped lay the institutional and conceptual groundwork for
subsequent military occupation during the Sino-Japanese and Pacific Wars