UCLA UCLA Electronic Theses and Dissertations Title ‘The camphor question is in reality the savage question:’ The Japanese Empire, Indigenous Peoples, and the Making of Capitalist Taiwan, 1895-1915 Permalink https://escholarship.org/uc/item/6fd784p3 Author Roy, Toulouse-Antonin Publication Date 2020 Peer reviewed|Thesis/dissertation eScholarship.org Powered by the California Digital Library University of California UNIVERSITY OF CALIFORNIA Los Angeles ‘The camphor question is in reality the savage question:’ The Japanese Empire, Indigenous Peoples, and the Making of Capitalist Taiwan, 1895-1915 A dissertation submitted in partial satisfaction of the requirements for the degree Doctor of Philosophy in History by Toulouse-Antonin Roy 2020 ABSTRACT OF THE DISSERTATION by Toulouse-Antonin Roy Doctor of Philosophy, History University of California, Los Angeles, 2020 Professor Katsuya Hirano, Chair This dissertation examines the relationship between Taiwan’s camphor industry and Japan’s conquest of the island’s Indigenous peoples. Between 1895 and 1915, Japanese police and military forces invaded Taiwan’s Indigenous highlands for access to and control of camphor- producing forests. At the dawn of the twentieth century, camphor crystals were vital to the production of celluloid, a variety of pharmaceuticals, and multiple industrial chemicals. The consequences of Japan’s quest to access and control this lucrative commodity were far-reaching and highly destructive. Japanese armies shelled and burned Indigenous villages to the ground, forcibly relocated tens of thousands of Indigenous people, and killed both resistance fighters and innocent civilians. This dissertation explores the ways in which the productive and consumptive demands of the camphor industry shaped the political, military, and ideological structures of Japanese imperial governance in upland Taiwan. Through the prism of the Taiwan case, it examines the violent forms of colonial occupation that accompany the imposition of capitalist social relations on Native societies. ii The dissertation of Toulouse-Antonin Roy is approved. Paul D. Barclay Wendy Matsumura Benjamin L. Madley William Marotti Katsuya Hirano, Committee Chair University of California, Los Angeles, 2020 iii DEDICATION: I dedicate this dissertation to the Indigenous peoples of Taiwan. Your stories and your struggles have brought me to this land that is not mine, a land that has given me opportunities, a family, and the inspiration to produce this manuscript. For all this I cannot thank you enough. I owe you a tremendous debt. I hope that the work I do moving forward will somehow repay it. I would also like to dedicate this dissertation to the memory of Averill Dean Perry, a.k.a “Pops.” I wish we could have had more chats about the cruel absurdities of the world we live in, but I guess that we will have to do that some other time. iv TABLE OF CONTENTS: Introduction: Camphor Capitalism in the Age of Empire………………..1 Chapter One / A Violent Frontier: Indigenes, Settlers, and Taiwan’s “Camphor Zone,” 1683- 1895……………….43 Chapter Two / Planning the Aboriginal Pacification State: Early Japanese Rule in the Taiwan Highlands, 1895-1898 ………………..89 Chapter Three / Empire of Camphor: Japanese Capital, Monopolization and the Making of a Global Industry………………..145 Chapter Four / War in the Camphor Zone: Camphor Capitalism, Defensive Conquest, and the Decline of Indigenous Sovereignty………………..196 Conclusion………………245 Bibliography………………283 v APPENDICES/GLOSSARY Appendix 1.1: The “Camphor Zone”…………….259 Appendix 1.2: Han settlement in the eighteenth century…………….260 Appendix 1.3: The “Savage Boundary”…………….261 Appendix 1.4: Camphor Stove, Chinese and Japanese models…………….262 Appendix 2.1: The Yilan Plain…………….263 Appendix 2.2: Location of Pacification-Reclamation stations…………….264 Appendix 2.3: Balisha and surrounding townships…………….265 Appendix 2.4: Tiansongpi sub-station area…………….266 Appendix 3.1: The guardline in the northeast, 1909…………….267 Appendix 4.1: “Illustration of indigenes prostrating on precipice and getting ready to kill”…………….268 Appendix 4.2: Dakekan River and settlements targeted during 1900 war…………….269 Appendix 4.3: Yilan Atayal affected by blockades…………….270 Glossary…………….271 vi ACKNOWLEDGMENTS: It is difficult to fully express the depth of gratitude I have for those that made this dissertation possible. I began this project eight years ago in Montreal, unaware that it would soon take me across a continent to the city of angels, and eventually across the Pacific to Taiwan. Whether your help came in the form of intellectual mentorship, emotional support, or financial backing, I have done my best to include you. First, I would like to thank my parents and two older brothers, who have supported my decision to become a historian since day one, and as a result have sat through one too many long- winded lectures on all things past, present, and future. Their recognition of my passion and encouragement has energized me through the highs and lows, and I know will continue to be source of sustenance in the years to come. At UCLA I had the privilege of being in a stellar department surrounded by brilliant mentors and fellow graduate students who inspired me to take my thinking and writing to the next level. Above all I thank my supervisor and mentor Kats. From the moment we met you made me realize that there are genuine stakes to the work we do. You took my writing and thinking to heights I never imagined and for that I owe you a lifelong intellectual debt. To Bill Marotti, you were not only an indispensable part of this project, but also an ally in supporting me, whether it came to letters, funding, or other matters. I am extremely glad you were co- captain of this dissertation! Next, I would like to thank Benjamin Madley. Without your introducing me to the world of Indigenous studies and Native American history, I have no idea how this project would have turned out. You taught me that any history of Indigenous peoples that has no grounding in their needs, interests, and stories is of limited value. For that I am vii eternally grateful. Next I would like to thank Wendy Matsumura at the University of California, San Diego, whose mentoring and guidance played a core part in developing my ideas, helping me to fine-tune important aspects of its theorization, as well as organizing comprehensive exams that elevated my project in multiple ways. Finally, Paul Barclay from Lafayette College, who was kind enough to join my dissertation committee a little late in the game, provided direct support for the writing of this dissertation in more ways than one. Paul, your work on Indigenous Taiwan has set a model for all of us. All that we can do now is to build upon what you have put forth. I presented many parts of this dissertation at conferences where I gained valuable insights from other scholars. I would like to thank Michael Berry, whose 2017 UCLA Musha Incident Conference allowed me to network and share my research with academics from Taiwan and meet important Sediq elders. Next I would like to thank Shu Mei-Shih, who in 2018 put together the UCLA “Taiwan Indigenous Knowledge” conference, where I got to meet important scholars who examine Indigeneity in Taiwan, and also got to meet mentors who later supported me in Taiwan during 2019-2020. I presented parts of chapter four at the 2018 American Society for Ethnohistory conference in Oaxaca, Mexico. The organizer, Kevin Terraciano, kindly provided a productive venue in which I was able to share my work and gain valuable insight into ethno- historical approaches. In Los Angeles I benefitted from a core group of friends, both academic and non- academic, who provided me with a much-needed refuge from the life of the Ph.D. student. To my Japan field colleagues, John Leisure, Jack Wilson, Rory Huang, and Kevin Richardson, many thanks for providing great intellectual comradeship, as well as reading multiple chapter drafts. To everyone else in the Japan field and the UCLA History Department, whether you read viii something of mine, allowed me to geek out on all things theory and Marx, or simply took time out of your busy schedules to hang out or grab a drink, I thank you. For all those I befriended outside UCLA and forged lifelong memories with, thank you for all your support. The time we spent together, training together, and visiting various spots across California was indispensable to recharging my batteries. During my time at UCLA, I was blessed with generous funding from various agencies. First, I would like to thank the Terasaki Center for Japanese Studies, whose various fellowships (Aratani Field Fellowship, Aratani Fellowship, Sasakawa Fellowship) and summer funding allowed me to undertake multiple research trips to Tokyo and Kyoto. I also thank the UCLA Asia-Pacific Center. The Center’s Taiwan Lectureship and UCLA-National Normal Taiwan University (NTNU) Fellowships allowed me to spend extended periods in Taipei conducting research at the National Library and Academia Sinica, and also the archives at Taiwan Historica in Nantou. The Center’s Hiroshi Wagatsuma Memorial Fellowship provided vital funds during the final phases of writing. I would also like to thank the UCLA History Department for offering me research travel funds in both 2019 and 2020. Finally, I would like to thank UCLA Graduate Division and their Dissertation Year Fellowship, which provided me with a year-long fellowship to finish writing my dissertation while in Taipei. Japanese institutions also supported this project in crucial ways. I would like to thank the Waseda University library, the Tokyo National Diet Library, and the Uchida Kakichi collection over at the Hibiya Park Library, who provided me with more sources than this dissertation could ultimately include. In Kyoto, I would like to thank Tomiyama Ichirō and Komagome Takeshi, both of whom shared their pioneering work and insights on the Japanese empire, allowing me to place colonial Taiwan into broader Japanese imperial context.