Trade has historically driven Taiwan’s economic growth, with cane sugar dominating exports from the 1620s to the 1960s. Despite this, the strategic evolution of sugar traders has been overlooked. This article explores how Takow (Kaohsiung) merchants navigated international trade, particularly after the 1870s, adapting to the interplay of tradition and modernity. Focusing on Wang Xuenong, a prominent sugar merchant during the Meiji period (1868–1912), it examines how merchants like him incorporated East Asian and Western elements into their trading company systems. The article also investigates their expansion into rice milling and steamship transport, illuminating Taiwan’s commercial transformation from the late Qing dynasty to Japanese rule. Through a lens of cross-cultural knowledge transfer and human resource strategies, it highlights the historical significance of these changes in Taiwan’s journey towards industrialization and modernization.
Lin Yuju is a research fellow at the Institute of Taiwan History, Academia Sinica, and a professor at the Department of History at National Taipei University. She holds leadership roles as Chairman of the Cao Yonghe Cultural and Educational Foundation and the Taiwan Oral History Association. Awarded the Outstanding Research Award of NSTC in 2024, Lin has received numerous fellowships at esteemed institutions globally, including the University of Tokyo, Kyushu University, Columbia University, Waseda University, Fudan University, and Harvard University. Her research interests encompass socio-economic and maritime history in Taiwan and Asia, Qing Dynasty history. Lin has authored and edited various publications in both English and Chinese, including Lin Yuju and Madeline Zelin eds., Merchant Communities in Asia 1600-1980 (2015), and in Chinese are Coastal Lives: Port Cities, Communities, and Society in Qing-era Taiwan (Taipei: Linking, 2022), The Transformation of the Colonial Frontier by a National Policy Company (2011); Colonial Frontier: Political and Economic Development in East Taiwan (2007); Local Merchants and their Socio-Economic Networks in the Zhuqian Area of Taiwan during the Qing Dynasty (2000); and The Spatial Structure of Ports in Qing Taiwan (1996).
DATE: Wednesday, June 12, 2024
TIME: 18:30 - 20:00
LOCATION: SIN 1, at the Department for East Asian Studies/Chinese Studies, Altes AKH, Campus, Spitalgasse 2, Yard 2, Entrance 2.3
