Taiwan: A Political History

This book strikes me as an invaluable introductory book on Taiwan, since it is inclusive, insightful, informative, and interesting. Any expert should take pride in writing such a great book for both general readers and scholars.

I was born in Taiwan and completed my college education in Taiwan. The Chinese history text books focus on the story of the mainland China. I have not known too much about Taiwan. For some reasons my grandparents and parents did not talk too much about it either. This book opens my eyes and I could not stop reading it. Even though the book is very comprehensive some of the information the author got is either manipulated, biased or missing. It is far from perfect. There is a lot of truth about Taiwan to be explored. For example Koxinga was given the credit of defeating Dutch and then occupied Formosa. But he lived only 4 monthes after defeating the Dutch. He was a pirate and very brutal. He excuted his new born grandchild and grandchild's mother. He is more like a refugee than a hero. The main reason he came to Taiwan is he was escaping from Qing dynasty's attack. Because of Taiwan's democracy a lot of information are more readily available and people does not afraid of being talking about the past I believe the author might want to update this book soon.

Review by Prof. Shelley Rigger, the top U.S. scholar on Taiwan, in TOPICS magazine, May 2003: "Nowhere else will readers find such an even-handed, thorough, and accurate account of Taiwan's recent history. What is more, the book is a pleasure to read, balancing rich historical details and anecdotes with thoughtful analysis. Roy's book provides the most complete and in-depth account of Taiwan's post-World War II political development available in English. However, much of the value of the book comes from his determination to situate the island's postwar history in the context of Taiwan's pre-war experience. As a result, Roy is able to offer satisfying answers to some of the most puzzling issues facing students of contemporary Taiwan, including islanders' complicated feelings toward Japan, China--even Taiwan itself."

"Taiwan: A Political History" fills a yawning gap in the existing literature. Speaking as a former government official and a teacher of Asia/Pacific politics it is great to see the foreign and domestic politics of Taiwan, with all its bewildering twists and contortions, laid out in an accessible way. Denny Roy's concise history is readable, highly informative and touched with humour. This history is very well weighted in its judgment of Taiwan's recent past. For example, Roy gives credit to the KMT for fostering economic growth in Taiwan, makes a good case for Chiang Ching-kuo's motivations in ushering in Taiwan's democratization, but does not shy in exposing the numerous human rights abuses committed by the KMT. To his credit Roy has also sensibly remained out of the "One China" versus "Independence" debate, stating in the preface that this is for the Taiwanese people to decide. His well-written book bears out his claim to remaining outside the fray on this debate. The democratization of Taiwan (much like that of South Korea) remains an important test case for the growth of democracy outside the western world - a political transition that occurred primarily because of domestic factors. My own interest in reading this book was to investigate, more fully, Taiwan's move to democracy. From a comparative politics point of view, the Taiwan case is a very rich one. Roy's book provides the reader with a well crafted synopsis of Taiwan's move to democracy. This kind of work should inform wider literature on comparative politics and social movements. Roy analyses the role of the elite, the competing forces within society and the international community in considering these changes. The case of Taiwan's democratization seems to run parallel to that of some other nearby countries where domestic and international pressures prompt a shift of thinking within the political elite of an authoritarian polity. However, recent times also show cases where the political elite have resisted domestic pressure (Burma being a good case). Roy makes a sound case that Taiwan's leadership, and President Chiang Ching-kuo in particular, made a series of fundamental political changes in the late 1980s out of enlightened self-interest. The complex issue of Taiwan's "identity" is also something that an outsider will understand more fully from Roy's volume. The book explains something of the early interaction between Taiwan and mainland China, as well as the waves of migrations that have occurred. Identity in Taiwan, as Roy explains, has remained a salient issue within Taiwanese politics, even if the merging of community has blurred this in recent times. While the debate over Taiwan's status vis-a-vis the PRC is the most obvious political faultline, the divide between "Taiwanese" and "Mainlanders" has been of overlapping importance. The book also devotes some space to the fortunes of the indigenous "mountain tribes", which have faced terrible discrimination in t

Lucian W. Pye's review for FORIEGN AFFAIRS, March-April 2003:"This is a history that provides excellent background information for understanding the complexities of the current "Taiwan problem." Tracing the changing formation of Taiwanese identity and the island's continuous search for security, Roy gives a straightforward account of the turbulent rise and fall of all who have sought to rule the island. His story extends from the first Chinese settlers (the Ming dynasty loyalists fighting rear-guard actions against the Qing dynasty) through the Dutch, Portuguese, Qing, and Japanese periods of colonial rule, concluding with the Nationalist Chinese era and Chen Shui-bian's presidency. He shows a repeated pattern of people migrating from mainland China and developing a separate Taiwanese identity. It is a rich and fascinating history, but it offers no easy solutions to the current problems in Taiwan-China-U.S. relations."