Japanese Colonialism in Taiwan: Land Tenure, Development, and Dependency, 1895-1945.

Chih-ming Ka's study of Taiwan's agricultural sector during the period of Japanese colonial rule focuses in particular on the production of sugar and rice by Taiwanese farmers, and the articulation of this production with the colonial state and Japanese capital. Using as a broad framework Amin's model of peripheral capitalism and the development of dependency in the emergence of the modern world system, Ka identifies as a key feature of colonial Taiwan the persistence of family farms capable of competing successfully with capitalist enterprise, and the persistent absence in agriculture of the large-scale capitalist production found in most other colonial economies. Instead the articulation between Taiwanese agriculture and Japanese capital was carried on through a political structuring of the terms of trade, the political manipulation of prices and ultimately of farmers' incomes. Thus the author …