CCK-ISC cordially invites you to a new academic year’s lecture from its Taiwan series:

Chang Lung-chih:

Taiwan: From a Qing Dynasty Frontier to the First Colony of the Japanese Empire

Date: 18.10. 2018, 12:30–15:00
Venue: 118/C
CCK-ISC Faculty of Arts, Charles University Prague, Celetná 20, Praha 1

Abstract: 

The talk will explore Taiwan’s transition from a Qing frontier to a Japanese colony in the late nineteenth century. It will consist of four related case studies on major late Qing and early Japanese policy debates on Taiwan between 1874 and 1906, namely, the Sino-Japanese controversy on aboriginal Taiwan in 1874; the Qing policy debate on the building of Taiwan province in the 1880s; the Sino-Japanese negotiations about the cession of Taiwan in 1895; and Meiji policy debates on the governance of Taiwan as a colony in the late 1890s. The discussion focuses on multiple and competing visions of Qing and Japanese officials on Taiwan’s status and territorial rule. The presentation shows important continuities and contingencies in Taiwan’s territorial transition between the Qing and Japanese empires. The study of Qing and Japanese frontier state building in nineteenth-century Taiwan provides a case of comparative colonialism, nationalism, and colonial modernity in modern East Asia.

Biographical info:

Prof. Chang is currently the Deputy Head of the Department of Taiwanese History of Academia Sinica. His work focuses on the Late Imperial period, Japanese colonisation and the emergence of Taiwanese nationalist movement. Since 2017, he has worked with the Oriental Institute of the Czech Academy of Sciences on a joint project of a TBIO digital platform for the research of collective biographies of the elites.