War in the camphor zone: Indigenous resistance to colonial capitalism in upland Taiwan, 1895–1915

Abstract

Between 1895 and 1915, Japanese police and military forces invaded Taiwan’s Indigenous highlands for control of camphor. At the dawn of the twentieth century, camphor crystals were a vital natural resource used in the production of celluloid, pharmaceuticals, and industrial chemicals. The consequences of this single commodity were far-reaching, as Japanese pacification armies shelled and burned Indigenous villages to the ground, forcibly relocated tens of thousands, and killed both resistance fighters and innocent civilians. This article examines patterns of frontier warfare in upland Taiwan, with a focus on the Japanese colonial state’s confrontations with the northeastern Atayal peoples (also spelled ‘Dayan’). Despite severe material disadvantages and continuous assaults on their communities, Atayal peoples fought back against the violence of dispossession, frustrating the economic designs of a major empire with numerically superior armies and advanced firepower. In revisiting this history, this article hopes to shed light on the dynamics of resistance, strategic accommodation, and conquest that defined relations between expanding capitalist states, their industries, and Indigenous peoples at the height of the imperialist era.