Victor Louzon
- Published in print:
- 2020
- Published Online:
- January 2021
- ISBN:
- 9789888528288
- eISBN:
- 9789882206571
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- Hong Kong University Press
- DOI:
- 10.5790/hongkong/9789888528288.003.0004
- Subject:
- History, Asian History
In this chapter Victor Louzon turns our historiographical focus to the violence of decolonization in Taiwan, namely the 1947 uprising known as the February 28 Incident. Louzon details how the revolt ...
More
In this chapter Victor Louzon turns our historiographical focus to the violence of decolonization in Taiwan, namely the 1947 uprising known as the February 28 Incident. Louzon details how the revolt broke out, and places the incident in the context of memory wars in Taiwan since. His chapter delves into the politics and geopolitics the incident, highlighting both the KMT brutal suppression of the revolt, and the experience of Taiwanese at the center of the revolt, many of whom had been mobilized by the Japanese army and paramilitary structures. His work redirects our attention to the experience of “remobilized” Taiwanese and the repertoire of actions and symbols invoked from the imperial era which defined the incident. Even more his work suggests new insights into broader transnational questions of the imperial roots of mobilization and militarization in Cold War Asia.Less
In this chapter Victor Louzon turns our historiographical focus to the violence of decolonization in Taiwan, namely the 1947 uprising known as the February 28 Incident. Louzon details how the revolt broke out, and places the incident in the context of memory wars in Taiwan since. His chapter delves into the politics and geopolitics the incident, highlighting both the KMT brutal suppression of the revolt, and the experience of Taiwanese at the center of the revolt, many of whom had been mobilized by the Japanese army and paramilitary structures. His work redirects our attention to the experience of “remobilized” Taiwanese and the repertoire of actions and symbols invoked from the imperial era which defined the incident. Even more his work suggests new insights into broader transnational questions of the imperial roots of mobilization and militarization in Cold War Asia.
Barak Kushner and Andrew Levidis (eds)
- Published in print:
- 2020
- Published Online:
- January 2021
- ISBN:
- 9789888528288
- eISBN:
- 9789882206571
- Item type:
- book
- Publisher:
- Hong Kong University Press
- DOI:
- 10.5790/hongkong/9789888528288.001.0001
- Subject:
- History, Asian History
The destruction of Japan’s empire in August 1945 under the military onslaught of the Allied Powers produced a powerful rupture in the histories of modern East Asia. Everywhere imperial ruins from ...
More
The destruction of Japan’s empire in August 1945 under the military onslaught of the Allied Powers produced a powerful rupture in the histories of modern East Asia. Everywhere imperial ruins from Manchuria to Taiwan bore memoires of a great run of upheavals and wars which in turn produced revolutionary uprisings and civil wars from China to Korea. The end of global Second World War did not bring peace and stability to East Asia. Power did not simply change hands swiftly and smoothly. Rather the disintegration of Japan’s imperium inaugurated a era of unprecedented bloodletting, state destruction, state creation, and reinvention of international order. In the ruins of Japan’s New Order, legal anarchy, personal revenge, ethnic displacement, and nationalist resentments were the crucible for decades of violence. As the circuits of empire went into meltdown in 1945, questions over the continuity of state and law, ideologies and the troubled inheritance of the Japanese empire could no longer be suppressed. In the Ruins of the Japanese Empire takes a transnational lens to this period, concluding that we need to write the violence of empire’s end – and empire itself - back into the global history of East Asia’s Cold War.Less
The destruction of Japan’s empire in August 1945 under the military onslaught of the Allied Powers produced a powerful rupture in the histories of modern East Asia. Everywhere imperial ruins from Manchuria to Taiwan bore memoires of a great run of upheavals and wars which in turn produced revolutionary uprisings and civil wars from China to Korea. The end of global Second World War did not bring peace and stability to East Asia. Power did not simply change hands swiftly and smoothly. Rather the disintegration of Japan’s imperium inaugurated a era of unprecedented bloodletting, state destruction, state creation, and reinvention of international order. In the ruins of Japan’s New Order, legal anarchy, personal revenge, ethnic displacement, and nationalist resentments were the crucible for decades of violence. As the circuits of empire went into meltdown in 1945, questions over the continuity of state and law, ideologies and the troubled inheritance of the Japanese empire could no longer be suppressed. In the Ruins of the Japanese Empire takes a transnational lens to this period, concluding that we need to write the violence of empire’s end – and empire itself - back into the global history of East Asia’s Cold War.
