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Paper short abstract:

This paper examines the changing political roles Japanese entomology played in colonial Taiwan as the Government General juggled agricultural and industrial developments, and the empire expanded to the South seas. It seeks to complicate the mantra, "Industrial metropole and agricultural Taiwan."

Paper long abstract:

The 1895 Japanese acquisition of Taiwan led to a dash by the new colonizers, albeit amidst decades of armed resistance from the residents, to exploit the island's natural resources including its rich soil. Starting with the most visibly lucrative camphor and sugar industries, and extending to tea, rice, cinchona, and other agricultural and silvicultural products, the Japanese sought to maximize extraction quickly, first to make this early colony sustainable and later to make profits. Multiple studies have examined how actors from the metropole and the newly established Government General of Taiwan (GGT), sometimes in tandem and at other times in competition, introduced to these ends violence, technology, capital, infrastructure, policies, and more. Fewer studies scrutinize the use of science for the same purpose, especially in the field of zoology.

Tokyo Imperial University sent zoologists to Taiwan as early as 1896 to assess their natural resources. Despite the initial lukewarm interest in the island's insects, GGT's early enthusiasm for plant resources quickly catapulted entomology to be a major field of study with special focus on botanical pests. By the 1920s, entomological articles dominated Taiwan's premier Natural History journal that began publication in 1911, and upon the 1928 establishment of Taipei Imperial University, the majority of zoologists holding professorial positions studied insects. Although popular understanding suggests that the GGT policies shifted in the 1930s from agricultural to industrial Taiwan, entomology was at its height in this decade with the island's researchers earning world-acclaim; in addition to the foremost figure Shiraki Tokuichi acting on the board of the International Entomological Congress, insect research shifted to accommodate new agricultural interests. This paper examines the details of the field's development with focus on entomology's political contributions to the building of colonial Taiwan as well as to Japan's 1930s- southern advance as the South seas (nan'yō) became another agricultural destination.