Just a note on the Senkakus/Diaoyutai mess

Oops.

Jon Sullivan over at the U of Nottingham tweeted round this paper on the Senkakus/Diaoyutai and western and eastern systems of international governance (the next paper in that file discusses Taiwanese netizen attitudes towards the Senkakus and sovereignty). It makes some interesting points and is constructed in a very articulate and smooth propagandistic way. However, it contains an interesting anecdote about the Senkakus that I hadn't heard before....

...when former US President Ulysses Simpson Grant was visiting China and Japan in mid-1879. Grant agreed to mediate the dispute at the request of Li Hongzhang and Prince Gong, and offered a proposal with American diplomats in Japan as a basis for negotiation. The proposal suggested dividing the Ryukyu Islands into three parts: the central part would belong to the residual Ryukyu Kingdom protected by Chinese and Japanese consuls, the southern part would belong to China, being close to Taiwan, and the northern part would belong to Japan, being close to Satsuma (Kagoshima).

Think about it for a second. If the Manchus thought the Senkakus were part of their colonial empire, they would have said "we already own that, the issue is the islands to the north." But no one did. Instead, Grant had to suggest that the southern islands of the Ryukyus be annexed to Taiwan... because they weren't at that time. D'oh.
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The Flight of the Lapwing

The East Coast is now being overbuilt with loud, kitschy hotels. Hurry up and visit before it is destroyed.

I was trawling through the Theological Commons (run by the Princeton Theological Seminary), which has more than 70,000 texts from the 19th and early 20th century on theology and religion in PDF format (including many scholarly works), and found this treasure, The Flight of the Lapwing. The book is subtitled A Naval Officer's Jottings in China, Formosa, and Japan. An apt description. Click on READ MORE.....

Formosa: The Fleeting Prussian Possibility in the 19th century.

Shuimen town, Pingtung, morning.

From The Prussian Expedition in the Far East (1860-1862), Bernd Martin (link):

The French Baron Gros even encouraged the Prussian envoy to annex the island of Formosa as a Prussian colony. The French seemed very keen on having the Prussians as their allies in colonial adventures in Southeast Asia. While French troops were to invade the kingdom of Cambodia the Germans should occupy Formosa and thus hinder both the British and the Chinese from interfering with France's colonial acquisitions. The idea of Formosa as a German colony under Prussian administration remained a visionary goal until the Japanese took over the island in 1895.

......

Meanwhile, with the Prussian government's growing pride in the results of the expedition, the discussion was opened again for a permanent foothold, such as the Western powers had, in East Asia. A royal order from Berlin pointed at the Solomon Islands and Formosa (Taiwan) as the most suitable places for a German colony for the settlement of convicts and emigrants from Prussia. However, Count Eulenburg could not feel easy with the idea of Prussia becoming an equal colonial partner of the British or French. He warned his government that any colonial acquisition in East Asia might result in a diplomatic estrangement between Prussia and the Western powers· and would certainly endanger the recently concluded treaties with China and Japan. In order to stress his arguments Eulenburg reported that the island of Formosa was in no way suitable for any kind of western colonization due to its intolerably hot and humid climate. Notwithstanding the protest of Prince Adalbert, Admiral-in-Chief of the Prussian Navy, who strongly favoured a military invasion of Formosa, the mission was ordered home by the civilian government.

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[Taiwan] Don't miss the comments below! And check out my blog and its sidebars for events, links to previous posts and picture posts, and scores of links to other Taiwan blogs and forums!