Introduction Empires and Indigenous Peoples, Global Transformation and the Limits of International Society
Introduction Empires and Indigenous Peoples, Global Transformation and the Limits of International Society PROLOGUE: THE WUSHE REBELLION AND INDIGENOUS RENAISSANCE IN TAIWAN On October 27, 1930, terror visited the small community of Japanese settler- expatriates in the picturesque resort town of Wushe, an administrative center nestled on a plateau in the central mountains of Taiwan.1 On that day, some 300 indigenes led by Mona Ludao raided government arsenals, ambushed isolated police units, and turned a school assembly into a bloodbath. All told, Mona’s men killed 134 Japanese nationals by day’s end, many of them butchered with long dag- gers and beheaded. Alerted by a distressed phone call from an escapee, the Japanese police apparatus, with backing from military units stationed in Taiwan, responded with genocidal fury. Aerial bombardment, infantry sweeps, and local mercenaries killed roughly 1,000 men, women, and children in the ensuing months. A cor- nered Mona Ludao removed to the countryside and then killed his family and hanged himself to avoid capture. Subsequently, the Japanese government relocated the remaining residents of Mona’s village, Mehebu, forever wiping it off the map.2 Over the course of Japanese rule (1895–1945), the Taiwan Government- General forcibly relocated hundreds of other hamlets like Mehebu. The invasive and exploitative policies that provoked Mona and his confederates also eroded pre- colonial forms of social organization, authority, and ritual life among Taiwan’s indigenes. As it severed bonds between indigenes and their lands, in addition to prohibiting or reforming folkways it deemed injurious to its civilizing mission, the government-general nonetheless laid the groundwork for the emergence of Taiwan Indigenous Peoples as a conscious and agentive historical formation.
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