China's Island Frontier : Studies in the Historical Geography of Taiwan

Until the seventeenth century, Professor Knapp reminds us, Taiwan lay obscure off the southeast coast of China-an island cloaked in anonymity and inhabited principally by aborigines. Then, rather abruptly, the island was thrust into the maelstrom of European commercial expansion in East Asia, which in its wake drew Chinese peasant pioneers across the straits to Taiwan. This is the story, told from many viewpoints, of how Taiwan was transformed over a period of three centuries from a raw frontier to a stable entity with social and economic patterns similar to those found along the coastal mainland of southeastern China. Contents Figures Acknowledgments Introduction Part One: Migration and Rural Settlement 1 From Aboriginal Island to Chinese Frontier: The Development of Taiwan before 1683 2 Cultural Contact and the Migration of Taiwan’s Aborigines: A Historical Perspective 3 Settlement and Frontier Land Tenure 4 The Chinese Settlement of the I-lan Plain 5 Frontier Social Organization and Social Disorder in Ch’ing Taiwan 6 Sequent Occupance and Place Names Part Two: Urbanization and Economic Integration 7 Walled Cities and Towns in Taiwan 8 Lu-kang: A City and Its Trading System 9 The Development and Structure of Transportation Networks in Taiwan: 1600–1972 10 Push Car Railways and Taiwan’s Development 11 Sugar: The Sweetener in Taiwan’s Development Contributors Notes Glossary of Chinese Terms