The Jackson School spoke with Assistant Professor and Taiwan Studies Associate Chair James Lin about his new book, “In the Global Vanguard: Agrarian Development and the Making of Modern Taiwan” — a history of how Taiwan’s agricultural past shaped its global role, turning vegetables into tools of diplomacy and development. Lin will discuss the book more in-depth during a May 15 lecture from 3:30-5 p.m. in Thomson Hall 317.
What inspired your work on “In the Global Vanguard: Agrarian Development and the Making of Modern Taiwan”?
Taiwan today is known as an innovator in science and technology, perhaps best exemplified by producing over 90% of the world’s most advanced semiconductors. But Taiwan’s engagement with science and technology has had a long history, dating back to when Taiwan was still predominantly an agricultural economy and innovated cabbage and pineapple rather than semiconductors. The project began when I unearthed a document in the Ford Foundation archives on Taiwan’s efforts to disseminate its improved vegetables in the 1970s to help nations dealing with public health problems of nutritional deficiencies, and I was fascinated by the discourse and ideas behind these practices. I wanted to trace this history of development and explain how it was linked to the larger political, economic, and social history of Taiwan. In doing so, I hope to tell a history of how the authoritarian government that ruled Taiwan for four decades co-opted its advanced science and technology successes to position itself as a vanguard nation.
Can you briefly summarize what Taiwan’s agrarian successes looked like?
At the height of Taiwan’s international development missions abroad during the Cold War, Taiwanese technicians and scientists were deployed in over three dozen nations in all corners of the developing world. Developing nations invited Taiwan on the basis of its manifest success in achieving miraculous annual GDP growth, agricultural productivity increases, and land reform. I argue that part of this success was constructed and embellished, as in the case of land reform, to portray the authoritarian government’s largesse and technical modernity in a positive light. But at the same time, the technicians and scientists who worked with rural populations in Africa, Asia, and Latin America were earnest in their desire to bring Taiwanese seeds and methods to the rest of the world and help them alleviate hunger and poverty.
What did Taiwan’s method of exporting agrarian success look like and how did it impact Africa and Southeast Asia communities?
Taiwanese agricultural technicians consisting of experts in farmers associations, crop breeding, and general agronomy were divided into teams and given charge of small countryside regions in the African and Southeast Asian states that invited Taiwanese missions. Technicians often worked as agricultural extension agents, going to different rural communities and teaching about modern improved crop varieties or cultivation methods. They often maintained their own demonstration farms, where they could showcase the results of using Taiwanese introduced seeds and methods to locals in ideal conditions. And in larger missions, crop improvement stations were established to test and select crop varieties that were better suited for local ecologies and environments for extension purposes. In some instances, Taiwanese agricultural methods introduced varieties that offered higher yields and could theoretically supplement incomes. But the teams also faced numerous obstacles: limited capital and manpower, local tastes rejecting Taiwanese introduced varieties, or even war, in the case of the Republic of Vietnam. My book offers an in-depth history based on oral interviews of Taiwanese agricultural technicians in mostly Francophone west Africa and Vietnam.
What would you say are the most important takeaways from the book?
I hope to emphasize two major points: Traditionally historians of development have focused on how Global North nations, like the United States, imposed development on the rest of the world. My book offers a unique history of Global South to South development. Taiwan, or more accurately at the time, the Republic of China, often positioned itself to other developing nations as a relatable, subtropical, and postcolonial society. Taiwanese officials skillfully adopted the language of global post-colonialism and decolonization to portray development as a means of attaining power and wealth. But internally, elites often considered the Republic of China to be a great nation that should lead world. And externally, they were under existential threat as the Republic of China’s status as a nation was challenged in the United Nations by communist allied nations to the People’s Republic of China. This was one of the examples where the complicated domestic and global politics intersected and were in tension. Taiwan’s development missions reflected this complex interaction of politics, science, technology, and modernity.
The second point is that development ultimately served as a means of legitimacy for an authoritarian Republic of China government that enforced martial law at home in Taiwan. It co-opted the discourse of technical modernity to create what I term a “development imaginary,” where science and technology are used to construct an image of an idealized Republic of China society and nation. This practice is not unique to Taiwan, and shows the power and allure of development, science, and technology writ large.
What were your research and writing processes like? Additionally, how long did it take to complete “In the Global Vanguard?”
This book took almost 15 years, believe it or not. The kernels of the project emerged from my M.A. studies at Columbia University back in 2010, then this continued as my Ph.D. dissertation at UC Berkeley, for which I began my research fieldwork in 2012. For my fieldwork, I spent two years in archives across the world, from the National Archives at College Park, Maryland to archives of Taiwanese government bureaus in Taiwan, to the Vietnam National Archives II in Ho Chi Minh City. After I completed the dissertation in 2017, I began revising it to a book manuscript and adding oral history interviews as well as other new data and frameworks. It has been slow going at times as I balanced teaching and service with writing, and there were avenues that I didn’t get to explore as fully as I wanted, but at some point we have to move on to the next project!
Anything else you would like to mention?
The book is available open access at the University of California Press website, so anyone can download and read it for free!
