Transformative Agendas: Postwar Gazetteers and the Reconstruction of Urban Taiwan, 1945–1960

Abstract:This essay studies how the government of the Republic of China attempted to reterritorialize Taiwan as a part of modern China, following Japanese colonization, by examining the first editions of postwar gazetteers for Taiwan's major cities. This genre historically played an important role in the assertion of control by China's dynasties and in efforts by local elites to shape official knowledge and policies, and these editions on Taiwan's cities were some of the first dedicated city gazetteers produced in the twentieth century. The essay argues that these texts were among several important tools that the state used to project its Chinese nation-state onto Taiwan, by linking urban Taiwan to China's history and envisioning future cities that would be the basis of the nation. Versions of these future cities gradually took shape, but they did so more within the context of Taiwanization than of Sinification.