Diplomats, Activists, and the Hauntology of American Empire in Martial Law Taiwan
In: International Journal of Taiwan StudiesSearch for other papers by Derek Sheridan in
Current site
Google Scholar
Abstract
Despite open US support for the Kuomintang (kmt) during the martial law period, opposition and pro-independence politics to this day have been haunted by the spectre of the American empire. Imaginings of US power and intentions, however, have often exceeded the actual institutional traces of US presence, both extending and subverting US power. In this article, I explore how imperial conditions during martial law were imagined through the relationships Taiwan dissidents had with two kinds of US expatriates: foreign service officers and civilian anti-kmt activists. While the former were formally bound to the principle of ‘non-interference’ despite local appeals, the latter justified ‘intervention’ as resistance against existing US support of the kmt. Based on a close reading of memoirs and historical surveys by former diplomats and activists, I examine how the micro-politics of the Cold War US presence contributed to spectres of American empire beyond the intentions of its putative planners.
Purchase
Buy instant access (PDF download and unlimited online access):
Institutional Login
Log in with Open Athens, Shibboleth, or your institutional credentials
Personal login
Log in with your brill.com account
-
Arrigo, Linda Gail and Miles, Lynn (2008) A Borrowed Voice: Taiwan Human Rights through International Networks, 1960–1980, Taipei: Social Empowerment Alliance.
-
Bacevich, Andrew J. (2002) American Empire: The Realities and Consequences of U.S. Diplomacy, Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press.
-
Bao, Shao-lin (1992) 「台獨」幕後: 美國人的倡議與政策 [Behind the Veil of Taiwan Independence: American Initiatives and Policies], Hong Kong: Zhonghua shuju [in Chinese].
-
Barrett, Richard (1988) ‘Autonomy and diversity in the American state on Taiwan’, in Edwin Winckler and Susan Greenhalgh (eds), Contending Approaches to the Political Economy of Taiwan, Armonk, NY: M.E. Sharpe, 121–137.
-
Benda, Jonathan (2007) ‘Empathy and its others: The Voice of Asia, A Pail of Oysters, and the empathetic writing of Formosa’, Concentric: Literary and Cultural Studies 33(2): 35–60.
-
Berrigan, Darrell (1949) ‘Should we grab Formosa?’, Saturday Evening Post, 13 August.
-
Bush, Richard C. (2015) At Cross Purposes: U.S.-Taiwan Relations since 1942, Armonk, NY: M.E. Sharpe.
-
Central Intelligence Agency (1949) ‘Probable developments in Taiwan’, ORE 39–49, 14 March. Washington, DC: Central Intelligence Agency.
-
Chan, Meng-Tung (詹孟桐) (2020) 美軍在臺灣：冷戰下的日常生活 (1951-1979) [U.S. Military In Taiwan: Everyday Life Under The Cold War (1951-1979)]. Masters Thesis. National Taiwan Normal University [in Chinese].
-
Chen, Tsui-lian (2017) 重構二二八：戰後美中體制、中國統治模式與臺灣 [Reconstructing 228: The Post-war US-China System, the Chinese Ruling Model and Taiwan], Taipei: Weicheng chuban [in Chinese].
-
Chen, Zhong-dong (2018) 失落在膚色底下的歷史：追尋美軍混血兒的生命脈絡 [A History Lost Under the Skin: Tracing the Lives of the Mixed Children of American Soldiers], Taipei: Xinren wenhua shiyanshi [in Chinese].
-
Cline, Ray S. (1989) Chiang Ching-Kuo Remembered: The Man and His Political Legacy, Washington, DC: United States Global Strategy Council.
-
Cumings, Bruce (2009) Dominion from Sea to Sea: Pacific Ascendancy and American Power, New Haven, CT: Yale University Press.
-
de Grazia, Victoria (2005) Irresistible Empire: America’s Advance through Twentieth-Century Europe, Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press.
-
Department of State (1949) ‘Draft report by the National Security Council on the position of the United States with respect to Formosa’, Foreign Relations of the United States, Document 310 (enclosure), Volume IX, 19 January 1949. Washington, DC: US Department of State.
-
Department of State (1971) ‘Memorandum of conversation’, Foreign Relations of The United States, 1969–1976, Document 139, Volume XVII, 9 July. Washington, DC: US Department of State.
-
Derrida, Jacques (1994) Specters of Marx: The State of the Debt, the Work of Mourning, and the New International, trans. Peggy Kamuf, New York: Routledge.
-
Foucault, Michel (2007) Security, Territory, Population: Lectures at the Collège de France, 1977–78, trans. Michel Senellart, François Ewald, and Alessandro Fontana, New York: Palgrave Macmillan.
-
Geyer, Michael and Bright, Charles (2005) ‘Regimes of world order: Global integration and the production of difference in twentieth century world history’, in Jerry H. Bentley, Renate Bridenthal, and Anand A. Yang (eds), Interactions: Transregional Perspectives on World History, Honolulu: University of Hawai’i Press, 202–238.
-
Go, Julian (2007) ‘Waves of empire US hegemony and imperialistic activity from the shores of Tripoli to Iraq, 1787–2003’, International Sociology 22(1): 5–40.
-
Halloran, Richard (1972) ‘Ex-agent sees “revolutionary potential” on Taiwan’, New York Times, 12 March: A3.
-
Immerwahr, Daniel (2019) How to Hide an Empire: A Short History of the Greater United States, New York: Random House.
-
Jacoby, Neil H. (1966) U.S. Aid to Taiwan a Study of Foreign Aid, Self-Help, and Development, New York: F. A. Praeger.
-
Kelly, John Dunham (2003) ‘U.S. power, after 9/11 and before it: If not an empire, then what?’ Public Culture 15(2): 347–369.
-
Kerr, George H. (1945) ‘Some Chinese problems in Taiwan’, Far Eastern Survey 14(20): 284–287.
-
Kerr, George H. (1947) ‘Formosa: The March Massacres’, Far Eastern Survey 16(19): 224–226.
-
Kerr, George H. (1965) Formosa Betrayed, Boston, MA: Houghton Mifflin.
-
Kerr, George H. (2000) 葛超智先生相關書信集 [Correspondence by and about George H. Kerr], Taipei, Taiwan: 228 Memorial Museum [in English and Chinese].
-
Lin, Bing yan (2004) 保衛大臺灣的美援 (1949–1957) [V. S. de Beausset’s Order of Brilliant Star], Taipei: Taihe yinshua shiye youxian gongsi [in Chinese].
-
Lin, Hsiao-ting (2016) Accidental State: Chiang Kai-Shek, the United States, and the Making of Taiwan, Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press.
-
Lutz, Catherine (2006) ‘Empire is in the details’, American Ethnologist 33(4): 593–611.
-
Mendel, Douglas (1966) ‘Book review: Formosa Betrayed’, The Journal of Asian Studies 25(4): 755–756.
-
Michener, James A. (1951) The Voice of Asia, New York: Random House.
-
Mitchell, Timothy (1999) ‘Society, economy and the state effect’, in Timothy Mitchell and George Steinmetz (eds), State/Culture: State Formation after the Cultural Turn, Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press, 76–97.
-
Moyn, Samuel (2012) The Last Utopia: Human Rights in History, Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press.
-
New York Times (1970) ‘Escaped Taiwanese is living in Sweden’, 25 January: A3.
-
Peng, Ming-min (1972) A Taste of Freedom: Memoirs of a Formosan Independence Leader, New York: Holt, Rinehart and Winston.
-
Peng, Ming-min; Hsieh, Tsung-min; and Wei, Ting-cao (1964) ‘Declaration of Formosan Self-Salvation’, 20 September. Retrieved 25 March 2020from http://www.hi-on.org.tw/ad/peng_0707_z04.html.
-
Phillips, Steven E. (2003) Between Assimilation and Independence: The Taiwanese Encounter Nationalist China, 1945–1950, Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press.
-
Sargent, Daniel J. (2015) A Superpower Transformed: The Remaking of American Foreign Relations in the 1970s, Oxford: Oxford University Press.
-
Sheridan, Derek (2016) ‘“Uncle Sam said very clearly you are not a country”: Independence activists and the mapping of imperial cosmologies in Taiwan’, Verge: Studies in Global Asias 2(2): 115–137.
-
Sneider, Vern (1953) A Pail of Oysters, New York: Putnam.
-
Spencer, D. J. (1965) The Jing Affair, New York: Funk and Wagnalls.
-
Stoler, Ann Laura and Bond, David (2006) ‘Refractions off empire: Untimely comparisons in harsh times’, Radical History Review 95: 93–107.
-
Stuart, John Leighton (1947) ‘Memorandum on the Situation in Taiwan’, Telegram No. 869, 18 April, US Embassy: Nanking, China. Reprinted in United States Relations with China, with Special Reference to the Period 1944–1949, Washington, DC: US Government Printing Office, 1949.
-
Taussig, Michael (1997) The Magic of the State, New York: Routledge.
-
Thornberry, Milo L. (2011) Fireproof Moth: A Missionary in Taiwan’s White Terror, Mechanicsburg, PA: Sunbury Press.
-
Tucker, Nancy Bernkopf (2011) Strait Talk: United States-Taiwan Relations and the Crisis with China, Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press.
-
Wang, Chih-ming (2010) ‘Risky fiction: Betrayal and romance in The Jing Affair’, Concentric: Literary and Cultural Studies 36(1): 35–59.
-
West, Harry G. and Sanders, Todd (2003) Transparency and Conspiracy: Ethnographies of Suspicion in the New World Order, Durham, NC: Duke University Press.
-
Williams, William Appleman (1980) Empire as a Way of Life: An Essay on the Causes and Character of America’s Present Predicament Along With A Few Thoughts About an Alternative, New York: Oxford University Press.
-
Yin, Bao-Ning (殷寶寧) (2006) 情慾，國族，後殖民: 誰的中山北路？ [Sexual Desire, Nationality, Post-Colonialism: Whose Zhongshan North Road?], Taipei: Zuo’an wenhua [in Chinese].
| All Time | Past 365 days | Past 30 Days | |
|---|---|---|---|
| Abstract Views | 580 | 152 | 19 |
| Full Text Views | 87 | 20 | 2 |
| PDF Views & Downloads | 192 | 59 | 11 |
Diplomats, Activists, and the Hauntology of American Empire in Martial Law Taiwan
In: International Journal of Taiwan StudiesSearch for other papers by Derek Sheridan in
Current site
Google Scholar
PubMed
Abstract
Despite open US support for the Kuomintang (kmt) during the martial law period, opposition and pro-independence politics to this day have been haunted by the spectre of the American empire. Imaginings of US power and intentions, however, have often exceeded the actual institutional traces of US presence, both extending and subverting US power. In this article, I explore how imperial conditions during martial law were imagined through the relationships Taiwan dissidents had with two kinds of US expatriates: foreign service officers and civilian anti-kmt activists. While the former were formally bound to the principle of ‘non-interference’ despite local appeals, the latter justified ‘intervention’ as resistance against existing US support of the kmt. Based on a close reading of memoirs and historical surveys by former diplomats and activists, I examine how the micro-politics of the Cold War US presence contributed to spectres of American empire beyond the intentions of its putative planners.
| All Time | Past 365 days | Past 30 Days | |
|---|---|---|---|
| Abstract Views | 580 | 152 | 19 |
| Full Text Views | 87 | 20 | 2 |
| PDF Views & Downloads | 192 | 59 | 11 |