Barclay, George W. 1954. Colonial Development and Population in Taiwan. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press
This venerable classic is full of statistics on the colonial period.
Rubenstein, Murray, Ed. 1994. The Other Taiwan: 1945 to the Present. Armonk: M.E. Sharpe.
This work was one of the first of the post-democratization books to explore the real Taiwan -- not the ichy-Chinese fantasy state of the KMT, but the democracy movement, the environment, and many other topics.
Campbell, William. 1992. Formosa under the Dutch. Taipei: Southern Materials Center (Reprint of 1903 edition published in London by Kegan Paul, Trench, Trubner and Co. Ltd.)
A must have collection of Dutch period documents.
Davidson, James. 1988. The Island of Formosa Past and Present. Taipei: Southern Materials Center. Reprint of 1903 edition published by Macmillan, New York.
There is simply nothing else like this amazing account of Formosa in the 19th century, full of anecdotes statistics, and first-hand reportage.
Harrell, Stevan and Huang, Chun-chieh. ed. 1994. Cultural Change in Postwar Taiwan. Taipei, Taiwan: Southern Materials Center. Reprint of 1994 Edition published by Westview Press, Inc
Many wonderful articles on culture in Taiwan during the early 1990s. Still relevant a decade later.
Ho, Samuel P. S. 1978. Economic Development of Taiwan, 1860-1970. New Haven and London: Yale University Press.
The bible of Taiwan economic history. Don't leave home without it.
Hu, Tai-li. 1984. My Mother-in-Law's Village: Rural Industrialization and Change in Taiwan. Taipei: Academia Sinica.
An account of industrialization in the 1960s and 1970s by an anthropologist who studied those who lived it.
Jacoby, Neil. 1966. U.S. Aid to Taiwan: A Study of Foreign Aid, Self-Help, and Development. New York: Praeger.
The key work on US aid to Taiwan.
Ka, Chih-ming. 1995. Japanese Colonialism in Taiwan: Land Tenure, Development, and Dependency, 1895-1945. Boulder: Westview.
A complex and dense book, littered with insights and ideas. Brilliant.
Kerr, George. 1965. Formosa Betrayed. Boston: Houghton Mifflin.
Kerr, George. 1974. Formosa: Licensed Revolution and the Home Rule Movement, 1895-1945. Honolulu: University Press of Hawaii.
Two of the most important works on Taiwan, written by a former US consul on the island. The former contains an account of the 2-28 incident, the latter a discussion of the struggle for local autonomy in the 1920s and 1930s.
A brutal look at the way US academics in the 1950s-70s presented things the way the KMT wanted them presented.
Sheppard, John R. 1993. Statecraft and Political Economy on the Taiwan Frontier 1600- 1800. Stanford: Stanford U. Press.
A landmark work on the period.
Silin, Robert. 1976. Leadership and Values. Cambridge: Harvard University Press.
One of my sentimental favorites, on how bosses operate in Taiwan.
Winckler, Edwin A., and Susan Greenhalgh. ed. 1988. Contending Approaches to the Political Economy of Taiwan. Armonk, NY: M.E. Sharpe
This classic of the late 1980s is one of the best introductions to the political economy of Taiwan.
I have a large, if old, bibliography here.
*OK, so it's 15.....
Can I add my own personal favorites, though they're more Taiwan-centric, and less concerned with the political relationship between Taiwan, China, and the U.S.?
ReplyDeleteOut of the SMC missionary travelogues/early colonial writing, I found these two to be the most illuminating:
Mackay, George Leslie. From Far Formosa. 1896. Taipei: SMC Publishing, 2002. His anecdotes were more humorously written and entertaining than Campbell's, even if Campbell's had more raw information.
Yosaburo Takekoshi. Japanese Rule in Formosa. 1907. Taipei: SMC Publishing, 1996. as an underling of the Japanese, this is hardly an unbiased account of what was happening in Taiwan, but it has a lot of raw, statistical information that I found particularly useful.
Minor Arts of Daily Life: Popular Culture in Taiwan. Ed. David K. Jordan, Andrew D. Morris, and Marc L. Moskowitz. Honolulu: University of Hawai'i, 2004. except for a couple of flagrantly bad chapters, this is an excellent introduction to Taiwan's cultural life, using specific topics and case studies ranging from the making of the LGBT community, representations of Chinese hell and filial piety, call-in shows, foreign maids, and my favorite chapter -- Taiwanese baseball and national identity.
Wright, Teresa. The Perils of Protest: State Repression and Student Activism in China and Taiwan. Honolulu: University of Hawai'i Press, 2001. an excellent analysis comparing 1989's Tienanmen Massacre in Beijing to 1990's White Lily student moment in Taipei. why did one end in bloodshed and why did the other one end peacefully? this book made it very clear to me some of the very basic institutional differences between the PRC and ROC government.
Taiwan in the Twentieth Century: A Retrospective View. Ed. Richard Louis Edmonds and Steven M. Goldstein. China Quarterly Special Issues New Series 1. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2001. Okay, actually, I don't like this book very much, as it's pretty dry reading to me, but they do have several chapters dealing specifically with Taiwan's political development and its relationship with Japan, with the United States, and with Southeast Asia.
A couple of other (more recent) books that are good:
ReplyDeleteBrown, Melissa J. Is Taiwan Chinese? The Impact of Culture, Power, and Migration on Changing Identities. Berkeley: U of California P, 2004.
Works through some of the arguments that have been made about the cultural and ethnic identities of the people of Taiwan. Important for those discussions about whether or not (or to what extent) Taiwan is "Chinese".
Phillips, Steven E. Between Assimilation and Independence: The Taiwanese Encounter Nationalist China, 1945-1950. Stanford: Stanford UP, 2003.
Looks both at how the Taiwanese intellectuals responded to the KMT takeover and at the experiences that the KMT had on the mainland that conditioned its responses to Taiwanese demands for a greater role in self-government.
Great list! My buddy Drew and I came up with our own list here:
ReplyDeletehttp://homepage.mac.com/taidu/booklist.pdf
Anyone who wants to take a look at Kerr's Formosa Betrayed can find it at The Taiwan Library Online.
ReplyDeleteExcellent list. I'd add:
ReplyDeleteRoy, Denny. Taiwan: A Political History. (Cornell University Press, 2003)
It's the best overview of Taiwan's history that I've found. It would be the first book I'd recommend to anyone who wanted the basic background info.
I have a extensive list of Taiwan related books in English on my website. See Books about Taiwan
ReplyDelete