Danny Reviews Ibn Battuta

Danny Yee reviews The Adventures of Ibn Battuta, by Ross Dunn (U. California Press, 2005):

Ibn Battuta set off from Tangier in 1325, visiting Egypt, Mecca, Syria, Iraq, Anatolia, the Central Asian steppe, India, the Maldives and possibly China before returning home nearly twenty five years later. After additional trips to Spain and West Africa he settled down and his story was turned into a Rihla (travel narrative) by Ibn Juzayy....

Dunn provides information about the people Ibn Battuta met and the places he visited and background on the broader history, society and culture. So the opening chapter "Tangier" looks at the geography of the city and the Straits of Gibraltar and the history of the Almohad dynasty, for example, while the chapter on Persia and Iraq begins by describing the impacts of the Mongols and Turks on Mesopotamia. More general material includes explanations of the different schools of Islamic law, Sufism, the role of Arabic, and other aspects of the common culture of the Islamic world.

The result makes The Adventures of Ibn Battuta almost a guide to the Islamic world in the second quarter of the 14th century. With the travel and biographical material providing an extra attraction -- Ibn Battuta's adventures get more exciting than the consumption of watermelon! -- it would make an excellent entry work for those with no background knowledge of Islam or Islamic history.

Communists Win/Lose in Moldova

Siberian Light has been tracking the Moldovan elections.

Here's the breakdown of the three parties that forced their way over the five percent threshold and into 101-seat parliament.

• Communist Party: 46.1% / 56 seats
• Democratic Moldova Bloc: 28.4% / 24 seats
• Popular Party Christian Democratic: 9% / 11 seats

But Publius Pundit has a different headline: Communists lose majority in Moldova.

The Aftermath of Taiwan's Uprising on 2-28

The [Nationalist] state responded to the challenge presented by the [Taiwanese] uprising [on February 28] and demands for reform with overwhelming force. On the morning of March 8, the first Nationalist military reinforcements arrived in the northern port city of Jilong [= Keelung]. As these forces moved southward toward Taibei, fighting broke out with Taiwanese. Over the next two days, thousands of soldiers landed in Jilong and on the south coast at Gaoxiong [= Kaohsiung]. They reasserted the government's control by indiscriminately shooting anyone on the streets. Martial law was declared throughout the island on March 9. On March 10, [Taiwan administrator] Chen Yi announced that the resolution committees had become part of the revolt and were now illegal. He also ordered all workers to return to their posts and shopkeepers to open for business, implemented price controls, and outlawed meetings or the collection of money for any purpose. Since Taiwanese were poorly armed and lacked a unified command, resistance collapsed quickly. Furthermore, most prominent islanders never sought a pitched battle with mainland forces....

Estimates of the number killed range from unbelievably low (500) to absurdly high (100,000). Those with close ties to the Nationalist government claim lower figures for the dead and injured, while supporters of Taiwan independence and critics of Jiang's regime insist on higher numbers. The rough consensus among scholars is 10,000 killed and 30,000 wounded. Although discovering whether 5,000, 10,000, or more died is an important way of understanding the scope of the massacre, knowing who was killed helps make clear the incident's effect on later political activity. As soldiers spread terror through the island, they crushed the Taiwanese as a political force able to advocate change outside the Nationalist state or Guomindang party structure. The elite's struggle to position themselves between the Nationalists and the bulk of the island's population failed. Instead, the government saw as one the elite, urbanites who took up arms, and even Taiwanese who stayed home throughout the crisis. All were part of a rebellion against the state.

The [2-28] incident and its aftermath had a greater impact on the island's elite than did retrocession [to Chinese rule]. Many of the most vocal critics of the state and promoters of expanded self-government, usually prominent figures from the Japanese era, died, fled, or were frightened into silence. For example, two members of the Provincial Consultative Assembly were killed and five others arrested, while four members of the Taibei City Council died and nine were jailed. Others killed included lawyers, professors, teachers, landlords, merchants, and journalists. Because of their political activity under both Japanese and Chinese rule, these were among the best educated and most prominent islanders....

The February 28 Incident was a watershed in Taiwan's modern political history. Decolonization essentially came to a close in early March 1947. At that point, many of the Taiwanese most likely to use the Japanese-era experience as a basis for evaluating the Nationalists and promoting expanded self-government were killed or cowed into silence. Now, the state dominated debate over the colonial legacy and thus prevented Taiwanese reference to it as justification for political reform. After the incident, the Nationalists combined limited reforms with increasing repression to solidify their rule. Subsequent changes in the political and economic spheres came from and through the state, not as a result of initiatives from the Taiwanese themselves. The events of early 1947 also marked the conclusion of debates over provincial-central relations in Republican China. The centralizers, represented by the Nationalists, had won. And in their victory, any hope for islandwide self-government, for which the Taiwanese had yearned throughout the colonial occupation, was dashed.

The incident is fascinating on two levels. First are the facts, what actually happened on Taiwan in February and March of 1947. Second is the way the incident illustrates the impact of history upon politics and vice versa. Paul Cohen, in his research of the Boxer Movement in China, examines how political context influences the memory of important events. "Certainly, mythologizers start out with an understanding of the past," Cohen writes, "which in many (though not all) cases they may sincerely believe to be 'correct.' Their purpose, however, is not to enlarge upon or deepen this understanding. Rather, it is to draw on it to serve the political, ideological, rhetorical, and/or psychological needs of the present."

SOURCE: Between Assimilation and Independence: The Taiwanese Encounter Nationalist China, 1945-1950, by Steven E. Phillips (Stanford U. Press, 2003), pp. 81, 83, 87-88

Afghanistan, 21 May 1978 (31 Saur 1357)

During the first week of the new government Taraki was elected president and prime minister of the Revolutionary Council of the Democratic Republic of Afghanistan. Babrak Karmal was elected vice president and deputy premier and Hafizullah Amin was deputy prime minister and minister of foreign affairs. The Revolutionary Council was the core of government power. It was made up of twenty cabinet members, who unanimously agreed that martial law should remain in force throughout the country indefinitely. Although the government always announced that all parts of the country were under their control, there were strong indications that the three-week-old regime had still not quelled all the opposition.

In a news conference Taraki declared that Afghanistan was a nonaligned country and that his government would seek friendship from all nations, including Western countries. All the political speeches began hypocritically with the familiar words "In the name of God Almighty we begin..."; "In the name of God Almighty the benevolent and merciful...." Taraki and other members of his government were seen on TV attending mosques--a very wise move, but it did not impress many university people. Those who knew the present leaders of Afghanistan and their ties to the Soviet Union could easily guess that this was not a nonaligned country. I think Taraki and his followers figured that an orthodox Communist regime would not be favored by Afghans, so it was important for the survival of the new government to be very careful. Such precautions did not last very long, however. Soon Taraki was collaborating with the Soviet Union, his closest ally. Decree after decree was approved by the inexperienced Central Committee members, who were still giddy with pride and joy at their easily gained positions. They were in a great hurry to make changes, forgetting the ingrained, time-tested old customs and traditions of the Afghan culture.

Every night I listened to broadcasts from outside the country, switching from the BBC to the Voice of America and to Pakistani and Indian radio stations. With great sadness I realized that the outside world, even the United States, did not react strongly to the coup. From my colleagues' comments at the university I could guess that they also were listening to those stations, but none of us dared to talk about it.

During the previous week, classes at the university and other schools had been called off almost every afternoon. The students were ordered to go to the auditoriums and listen to Marxist speeches in which Taraki was touted as the greatest leader of all time. Generally, several school days were wasted for every new decree. Most of us were tired of all the propaganda but we couldn't say a word. Disobedience to the rules or expression of our opinions had no place in the present regime.

SOURCE: An Afghan Woman's Odyssey, by Farooka Gauhari (U. Nebraska Press, 1996), pp. 100-101

Afghanistan, 10 June 1978 (20 Jawza 1357)

Three new decrees, the first two concerning the selection of Revolutionary Council members and the third one the military court, were repeated hour after hour, day and night, on radio, TV, and even at the school assemblies. But still the new regime refused to release any information as to [my husband] Saleem's whereabouts. It seemed that he was a forgotten case, as if he had never existed. Most often, when I asked an official about Saleem, he would give me a dirty look, one that made me freeze for a second. I was treated like an antirevolutionary, with no rights at all.

On weekends (Fridays) I unfailingly joined the mass of people taking clean clothes, food, and other supplies to relatives who were thought to be imprisoned at Puli-Charkhi. I always tried to be among the first few in a very long line of people who were waiting there. The line increased throughout the day, and as time went on, it seemed that there was no end to this infinite queue of worried and miserable human beings. When the gate opened at eight in the morning, we each gave our package to the man in charge to be passed along to the intended recipient. Then we waited for a response. For some a note came back from their beloved one, along with dirty clothing to be washed and returned. For others, the package was kept for hours and then was returned with the simple comment "He is not here." I always hoped that someday they would give my package to Saleem.

The first few weeks after the coup, most of the visitors to the prison were from educated, well-to-do families; I could easily tell from the way they talked and dressed. But later all sorts of men and women from every sect and group of society could be seen: rich, poor, educated, nomads, Uzbeks, Hazaras, Kabulis, Kandaharis--almost every ethnic group of the country was represented.

SOURCE: An Afghan Woman's Odyssey, by Farooka Gauhari (U. Nebraska Press, 1996), p. 104

Afghanistan, 24 June 1978 (3 Saratan 1357)

All convicted criminals, even murderers, were released in most parts of country, making big news on radio and TV. According to the minister of education, "The doors of the prisons are being closed and the doors of the schools are being opened." Yet, paradoxically, the political kidnappings continued and people still disappeared. The jails were being emptied to make room for the new political prisoners!

People were getting tired of all such propaganda. As I was crossing Puli-Baghi Umomi Road I noticed that someone had written under the government's famous slogan of "Food, Shelter, and Clothing for All," in large letters that could be read from far away, 'Address: Puli-Charkhi Prison." Whoever did it took a big risk to write such words on a very busy road.

SOURCE: An Afghan Woman's Odyssey, by Farooka Gauhari (U. Nebraska Press, 1996),
p. 107

Afghanistan, 26 March 1979 (6 Hamal 1358)

Our New Year came on March 21 and I don't think people celebrated it the way they used to. School started right after the New Year. My daughter told me that a new subject, one hour daily, had been added recently to their curriculum. It was called itla-at, or "information" class. During this class the teacher asked the students about their homes, what went on there, what their parents said about the new regime and who visited them. This was a new wrinkle in the spy network that was spreading through the schools.

Rumors were rampant that even children had been disappearing from schools and the streets. The Marxists had supposedly taken them to special "indoctrination schools," but people kept quiet and didn't talk about their missing family members.

Both of my sons were going into the tenth grade, while my daughter was in the fifth. They were growing fast and making new friends. There were times when I felt so uncertain about decisions. I wanted Saleem's opinion when it came to raising my children. One day Ali wanted to go out and play football with his friends but I wouldn't let him. I was scared, I was scared even of my own shadow. I didn't know who I could trust anymore. I was afraid that if I let him go and play, he would not return safely. I didn't know his friends. Times had changed so much that I was afraid I might lose the children exactly the way I had lost my husband--and I wouldn't be able to find them either. When I told Ali no, he cried. His tearful eyes were killing me.

SOURCE: An Afghan Woman's Odyssey, by Farooka Gauhari (U. Nebraska Press, 1996), pp. 113-114

How U.S. Navy Reforms Helped the Tsunami Relief Effort

In the 3 March New York Times, Robert D. Kaplan offers an interesting analysis of how the Pentagon's recent restructuring of the U.S. Navy improved the tsunami relief efforts in Indonesia.

The fact is, the Navy of the 1990's could not have responded nearly as quickly and efficiently to the tsunami as did the post-9/11 one. This is largely because of structural changes made to fight the war on terrorism.

A decade ago, our carrier battle groups mainly did planned, six-month-long "pulse" deployments. Since 9/11, the Navy has put increasing emphasis on emergency "surge" deployments, in which carriers, cruisers and destroyers have to be ready to go anywhere, anytime, to deal with a security threat. The new strategy explains why, in late December, the Abraham Lincoln strike force was able to so quickly leave Hong Kong for Indonesia at a best speed of 27 knots.

In recent years the Navy has also instituted what it calls sea-swaps, in which crews are rotated in the middle of a deployment, without the battle group having to return to port. This allows the ships to remain on call in unstable areas of the globe while giving the initial crews a rest.

For example, the Benfold, a guided missile destroyer on which I have been embedded for four weeks - and which played a substantial role in tsunami relief - is now being maintained by a crew from another destroyer, the Higgins, as part of a sea-swap. Although the Benfold had intended to go to the Korean Peninsula before the tsunami hit, its navigators had sailing charts of Indonesia on hand because, as they explained to me, the war on terrorism necessitates a flexible, expeditionary mentality.

Sept. 11 has also encouraged America's blue water (oceanic) Navy to become more of a green water, street-fighting force, adept at littoral operations, whether that means infiltrating coastal terrorist hideouts or providing onshore assistance to disaster victims. While fighting terrorism has sharpened the Navy's skill at disaster relief, the humanitarian work in the Indian Ocean, it is now clear, has provided a major victory in both the war on terrorism and the more low-key effort of managing China's re-emergence as a great power. Not only did the Abraham Lincoln strike group show Muslim Indonesians that America is their friend, it also proved how helpful our sailors can be compared to the Chinese Navy, which floundered in its relief efforts. Clearly, by doing good, we have done well.

Apparently so, according to the results of a new poll in Indonesia.

• For the first time ever in a major Muslim nation, more people favor US-led efforts to fight terrorism than oppose them (40% to 36%). Importantly, those who oppose US efforts against terrorism have declined by half, from 72% in 2003 to just 36% today.


• For the first time ever in a Muslim nation since 9/11, support for Osama Bin Laden has dropped significantly (58% favorable to just 23%).


• 65% of Indonesians now are more favorable to the United States because of the American response to the tsunami, with the highest percentage among people under 30.


• Indeed, 71% of the people who express confidence in Bin Laden are now more favorable to the United States because of American aid to tsunami victims.

The Terror Free Tomorrow poll was conducted in February by the leading Indonesian pollster, Lembaga Survei Indonesia, and surveyed 1,200 adults nationwide with a margin of error of 1 2.9 percentage points.

New York Public Library Digital Gallery Now Online

The New York Public Library has announced a new digital library now available to the public. Here are a few of the galleries that caught my eye in the Printing and Graphics category. Unfortunately, the image-viewing function seems exceedingly buggy, even after installing LizardTech's Express View 3.4.2 under IE. Firefox seems even less well-supported.

Charting North America: Maps from the Leonard Slaughter Collection and Others

The Floating World: Japanese Color Woodcuts by Kitagawa Utamaro

Dust Jackets from American and European Books, 1926-1947

Posters of the Russian Civil War, 1918-1922

World War I Photograph Albums and Postcards

UPDATE: Apparently the server couldn't handle the enthusiastic level of response. The "bugginess" was nothing more than server constipation.

Moldovans Prefer European Election Monitors

Andy at Siberian Light notes a report that Moldovans don't want CIS election observers. He comments:

Moldova does, however, want OSCE and Council of Europe observers.

Can you imagine the hurt and suffering the poor man [Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov] is going through as he ever so slowly comes to terms with the heartbreaking knowledge that there are people in former Soviet states that actually don't trust Russia?

Andy's post attracted a cynical comment that cites an article on the IWPR website about the recent elections in Kyrgyzstan.

This article, perhaps unwittingly, demonstrates that the real protests are not taking place in the name of democracy, but are orchestrated by local regional powerbrokers.

UPDATE: The Financial Times has more on the Moldovan elections (via Instapundit).

At first sight, Sunday's parliamentary elections in Moldova, an impoverished former Soviet republic wedged between Ukraine and Romania, look like fertile ground for a political battle between Russia and the west.

President Vladimir Voronin, the Communist party leader who came to power on a pro-Moscow ticket four years ago, is confronted by centre-right and rightwing opposition parties.

Following the success of popular protests that forced changes of government in Ukraine and Georgia, Moldova might seem ripe for a similar upheaval. But the parallels are misleading. Far from calling on Moscow for support, the veteran Communist president has transformed himself into a pro-west leader, anxious to build ties with the European Union.

In an attempt to exploit the popularity of Ukraine's Orange Revolution and the Rose Revolution in Georgia, Mr Voronin has also recently wooed those countries' new democratic leaders - Ukrainian president Viktor Yushchenko and Georgian president Mikheil Saakashvili.

And, to the Kremlin's considerable annoyance, he expelled 19 Russian "poll monitors" accusing them of meddling in the election.

Mr Voronin hopes his tactics can help settle Moldova's biggest challenge - the conflict with its Russian-backed separatist enclave, Transdnestria. But he clearly also hopes his manoeuvres will allow his party to retain control of parliament and be in a position to extend his own power when deputies vote for a new president later this year.

Macam-Macam Update on the Tsunami and Aceh

Last week, Macam-Macam posted a wide-ranging update on the "Boxing Day Tsunami" that included a link to a long backgrounder on the history of Aceh in, of all places, Margo Kingston's web diary at the Sydney Morning Herald. The backgrounder is entitled "The Aceh conflict: past, present and Quo Vadis?" by a "PF Journey" of Chinese Indonesian background. Here's a sample of what it has to say. (I've corrected a few of the typos that seem to be a Margo Kingston speciality.)

From Sabang to Merauke – Can 225 millions Indonesians be wrong?

Another one of Sukarno's famous catchcries was "From Sabang to Merauke". Sabang is located on an island in Aceh on the northern tip of Sumatra, the westernmost island in the Indonesian archipelago. (It was badly hit by the Tsunami). Merauke is located in West Papua near the border with PNG, and is the most easterly city of Indonesia.

It was the catchcry Sukarno and his nationalists of the 20s and 30s used to rally the people of Indonesia against the Dutch colonial power. It was also a nation building tool, for there was no Indonesia in those days. Indonesia, as the political entity as we know today, is a recent creature.

Every Indonesian student from Kindergarten to University has been constantly brainwashed and taught songs about "From Sabang to Merauke". The Indonesians like to say that the sun rises at Meurake and sets in Sabang. To the average Indonesian, the unity of Indonesia from Sabang to Merauke is firmly etched in their consciousness. East Timor was more like an adopted son, whereas Aceh is like the number one son in the family.

Aceh is also known as Serambi Mekkah, the gateway to Mecca. Before the age of air transport, ships carrying Indonesian pilgrims on the way Mecca for the Haj had to stop at Sabang before crossing the Indian Ocean. Aceh has also been described as "the front porch of Mecca". To a lot of Indonesian Muslims, Aceh is their holy land, so the spiritual and emotional attachment to Aceh is far far stronger than to East Timor.

Obviously this cut no ice with the Acehnese, especially with the Aceh Nationalists. Tengku Hasan Di Tiro, head of GAM (Free Aceh Movement), declared in 1976:

"There never was such a people, much less a nation, in our part of the world by that name (Indonesia). No such people existed in the Malay archipelago by definition of ethnology, philology, cultural anthropology, sociology or by any other scientific findings. Indonesia is a Javanese republic with a Greek pseudo-name." (Indo- (combining form of India) + Greek nes(os): islands + -ia (suffix for country).

Indonesia's total population is about 230 million. There are about 5 million Acehnese. Can 225 million Indonesians be wrong? ...

The tsunami wildcard: curse or blessing?

A blessing? It puts Aceh on the front page. The world now knows where Aceh is and its problems. It exposes the incompetence of the Indonesia government and the military.

It provides a circuit breaker for GAM and the Indonesian Government, with a face saving opportunity to secure a peaceful deal. The AP reported recently:

"BANDA ACEH, Indonesia Rebels in Aceh Province said Monday that they were willing to put their demand for secession on hold if Indonesia accepted a "face-saving" formula that would allow the tsunami-hit region to hold an independence referendum within 5 to 10 years. Members of the Indonesian government and rebel leaders from Aceh Province held talks over the weekend in Helsinki to consider a possible cease-fire and to reopen a peace process that was broken in May 2003 by the Indonesian military."

With the aid money that is pouring in, estimated to be US$5-10 billion, Aceh can be re-built, providing its long suffering people with better facilities and infrastructure. Aceh will not and cannot be closed again to the outside world by the military or the Islamic fundamentalists.

A curse? Conservative estimates put the tsunami's death toll at about 5% of the population and it has affected about 40% of the population. The tsunami destroyed whatever basic infrastructure the region had. The Acehnese fear that after the initial shock and horror of the disaster the outside world will forget Aceh and things will go back to normal, out of sight and out of mind.

Influential Islamic clerics have declared that the tsunami that hit Aceh is Allah's warning to the Acehnese against the influence of decadent western values and that they must more strictly observe their religion, including putting a stop to Muslims killing Muslims.

Another red flag needs to be raised here - the size of aid money that is pouring in for Aceh. Will this become the new honey pot for the corrupt officials from both sides? If so, the poor people of Aceh will be hit by a triple whammy: Firstly, the never ending war; secondly, the Tsunami; thirdly, another betrayal.

Taiwan's 2-28 Incident

On the evening of February 27 [1947], six police officers attempted to arrest a women selling cigarettes illegally in Taibei. A policeman struck the woman, an angry crowd gathered, and violence broke out after an officer fired his weapon, killing a bystander. The next day, 2,000 to 3,000 Taiwanese marched to the [cigarette] Monopoly Bureau Headquarters, and hundreds moved on to [Nationalist administrator and garrison commander] Chen Yi's office. Besides protesting the beating and shooting, islanders complained of unemployment, food shortages, inflation, political repression, and corruption. That afternoon, a soldier or police officer at the office fired into the crowd, sparking an islandwide uprising. Vandalism and violence against police, soldiers, bureaucrats, and any mainlander unfortunate enough to be on the streets spread beyond Taibei.

The provincial administration had badly underestimated the willingness of Taiwanese to transform their discontent into concrete action. Incident turned into uprising as urbanites and government forces battled over buildings, railroad stations, and police stations in large towns and cities. Taiwanese gained control of most of the island since Nationalist soldiers, almost exclusively young draftees from the mainland, had little stomach for a fight. Many mainland officials and businessmen abandoned their posts and stayed home throughout the crisis. In some cities, officials and police sought safety together in local military outposts. Railroad, telephone, and telegraph traffic throughout the island ground to a halt in the first days of March. After two or three days of conflict, the situation calmed, although occasional shots were still heard in Taibei.

This crisis was not simply a revolt against the state. Many different groups used the opportunity created by the temporary power vacuum to pursue their own agendas. For example, while educated youth sought immediate political and economic reform, secret society and gang members took advantage of the chaos for personal profit. Urban workers and youth wanted economic recovery and jobs. Youth who had received Japanese military training reconstituted their old units in many of the island's cities and took to wearing their old uniforms, singing wartime songs, and sporting swords. This naturally served to justify the suspicions of mainlanders that the Taiwanese had been "Japanized." Ironically, many of these youth had joined the [Sun Yat-sen's] Three Principles of the People Youth Corps after retrocession. Just as they had done immediately after Japan's surrender, these young men helped maintain public order.

As had been the case under Japanese rule, the elite's political agenda placed them between the state and Taiwanese society. They sought the restoration of order and reform of the provincial administration, but found themselves dragged into a maelstrom by the actions of less wealthy Taiwanese. In fact, Taiwanese politicians had frequently raised the problems of poor and homeless islanders in the town, county, and islandwide consultative assemblies. Their solution, however, was reform to facilitate greater Taiwanese control of the island's resources. In late February and early March, prominent islanders often attempted to limit violence between Taiwanese and mainlanders. For example, Xie E, one of the few Taiwanese women involved in politics at that time, tried to calm islanders through a broadcast that suggested soldiers had not fired on the crowd on February 28. [Prominent Japanese-era reformer on Taiwan] Lin Xiantang personally protected Yan Jiagan, a Nationalist official, from angry Taiwanese. In another instance, some Taiwanese sheltered the Taizhong county magistrate from an angry crowd that wanted to cut off his nose.

SOURCE: Between Assimilation and Independence: The Taiwanese Encounter Nationalist China, 1945-1950, by Steven E. Phillips (Stanford U. Press, 2003), pp. 75-76

Let's hope Lebanon's "2-28 Incident" achieves better results sooner than Taiwan's 2-28 Incident did in 1947 or Beijing's Tiananmen Incident did in 1989.

UPDATE: Reader David of One whole jujuflop situation recommends a U.S. diplomat's account, entitled Formosa betrayed of the bloody aftermath of the 2-28 Incident in Taiwan.

The Guomindang in Taiwan: Liberators or Recolonizers?

The February 28, 1947 Incident and its aftermath represented a conflict between decolonization and reintegration, when the legacy of Japanese rule and the drive for local self-government clashed with the centralizing mission of Jiang Jieshi's [= Chiang Kai-shek's] Nationalist regime. Nationalist incompetence and misrule caused the short-lived uprising, but long-term Taiwanese political goals shaped its denouement....

The Taiwanese considered both the Chinese and Japanese regimes exploitative, but deemed the new government particularly dishonest, incompetent, unpredictable, and inefficient. Suzanne Pepper, in her review of the Nationalists' takeover of occupied China in late 1945 and early 1946, noted four major problems: inability or unwillingness to punish collaborators; corruption; ineffective measures to rebuild the economy; and "condescending attitude adopted by returning officials." The last three were amply evident in the Nationalist administration of Taiwan. The first point, however, is more difficult to assess in regard to Taiwan because of its complex colonial legacy. Policies on important issues such as the disposition of Japanese assets and economic reconstruction, cultural reintegration and language, and political participation engendered disappointment, frustration, then resistance. The Nationalists did nothing to dispel the ambivalence of Taiwanese toward the colonial experience. Because so many islanders soon came to see few major differences between the Japanese and the mainland Chinese economic and political systems, they began to discuss Nationalist rule as a form of colonialism.

The island faced two difficult economic transitions in late 1945: from the Japanese to the Chinese orbit, and from wartime mobilization to peacetime reconstruction. The Nationalists inherited an industrial infrastructure worn down from the demands of Japan's war effort and American bombing. The most damaged areas included harbors, housing in coastal cities, sugar refineries, and communication and transportation facilities. Work on repairs ceased upon surrender, as Japanese technical experts and managers began to return home, and spare parts for equipment became difficult to obtain. Agricultural production, insufficient in late 1945, remained inadequate because of a lack of fertilizer. Food shortages and unemployment worsened as hundreds of thousands of Taiwanese who had been soldiers, laborers, students, merchants, and low-level bureaucrats in China, Japan, and Southeast Asia were repatriated. In such a situation, any government would have had a difficult time managing the island's resources. The Nationalists magnified these problems by connecting Taiwan to the mainland's economy even as the latter struggled, then failed, to recover from the war.

SOURCE: Between Assimilation and Independence: The Taiwanese Encounter Nationalist China, 1945-1950, by Steven E. Phillips (Stanford U. Press, 2003), pp. 64-65

Taiwan's Transition from Qing to Japanese Rule

The extent of Taiwanese participation in Qing-era government is closely connected to the issue of the island's historical relationship with the mainland which, in turn, forms part of the debate over the island's independence from China today. As one of the last parts of China settled and brought into the Middle Kingdom, Taiwan was more weakly tied to the central government and Confucian culture than other areas populated by Han peoples. For example, the Qing imperial bureaucracy had been less developed on the island than in mainland provinces. This made it easier for the Japanese to rule once they acquired the island, since there existed few leaders with strong political ties to the former central government to compete for legitimacy. As the historian Chen Ching-chih writes, "there were no more than 5,350 degree holders in Taiwan on the eve of the Japanese takeover. This figure would give Taiwan, which had a population of 2,546,000 in 1896, 21 degree holders for every 10,000 people. Taiwan thus proportionately contained a smaller group of degree holders than each of the eighteen provinces in China."

The decisive defeat of the Qing dynasty in the Sino-Japanese War of 1894-95 marked a major turning point in Taiwan's history. The island became distinct from the mainland in an important way--of all China's provinces, it was the only one surrendered completely and permanently to imperialists by the Qing. The island was no longer tied to a chaotic and crumbling China, but became part of an increasingly powerful and economically developed Japan. Colonial rule created the island's post-1945 elite and shaped its attitudes toward a national-level government. Under the Japanese, the Taiwanese experienced the benefits of a relatively efficient and honest administration as well as its rigid and intrusive demands. Islanders were excluded from full citizenship in the Japanese nation, even as the colonial regime held out the prospect of limited participation in the state. The Japanese era presented a tangle of contradictions: law and order with repression in a police state; economic development and exploitation; and education and employment opportunities limited by systematic discrimination. Wealthy and educated Taiwanese reacted ambivalently, organizing a series of reformist political movements that vacillated between seeking further assimilation into the empire and demanding greater autonomy from it. In particular, the elite's attitude toward the dual character of Japanese rule became clear in its attempt to expand self-government without seeking independence--setting a pattern for interaction between the islanders and Jiang Jieshi's regime after 1945.

SOURCE: Between Assimilation and Independence: The Taiwanese Encounter Nationalist China, 1945-1950, by Steven E. Phillips (Stanford U. Press, 2003), pp. 6-7

Taiwan at the Fall of the Ming Dynasty

During the Ming, Taiwan was not under the control of the Chinese state, although traders, fishermen, and pirates from Fujian Province had established themselves on the west coast of the island. Political upheaval on the mainland helped link Taiwanese and Chinese history. When the Ming collapsed in 1644, Taiwan became a redoubt for a fallen regime that claimed to represent the true China and its culture against alien rule, an image the Nationalists revived after 1949. The life and career of Zheng Chenggong (1624-62), known in many Western histories as Koxinga, a regional strongman and pirate who gained increasing influence as the Ming collapsed, linked Taiwan to the mainland's political history. Zheng's support of the Ming court against the non-Han Manchu invaders made him a permanent icon of Chinese patriotism. Even today he remains a particular source of local pride in Tainan, the city on the site where Zheng's forces brought about the Dutch evacuation from their small colonial outpost in 1662. A combination of effective military strategy and generous peace terms, however, in 1683 enticed Zheng's heirs to surrender to the Manchu Qing dynasty (1644-1912).

SOURCE: Between Assimilation and Independence: The Taiwanese Encounter Nationalist China, 1945-1950, by Steven E. Phillips (Stanford U. Press, 2003), p. 4

The Last Yankee in the Pacific

In the Winter 2004 issue of American Speech (Project Muse subscription required) two dialectologists, Daniel Long of Tokyo Metropolitan University and Peter Trudgill of the University of Fribourg, have traced the linguistic heritage of an English-speaking native of Japan's Bonin Islands back to a very distinctive accent found only in eastern New England.

ABSTRACT: On the isolated Bonin (Ogasawara) Islands in the western Pacific Ocean, the English language has been in use for close to two centuries. The first human residents arrived in 1830, and one individual from Massachusetts, in particular, left his progeny and his mark on island society. In this paper, we analyze tape recordings made in the 1970s of a speaker born (in 1881) and raised on the islands and demonstrate that his vowel system remarkably resembles that of Eastern New England, in particular that he maintains a phonemic distinction between NORTH and FORCE vowels. We discuss other conservative dialect features of his speech, such as a nonlabiodental variant of /v/ ([ß]) [like the Spanish /v/], which appears in complementary distribution with the mainsteam [v] variant, and contact features, such as th-stopping [i.e. th sounds like t or d]. In order to place this language variety, this speaker, and these recordings within their sociohistorical context, we provide a description of these unique islands and their complex linguistic heritage.

Here's one of the key pieces of evidence: the vowel distinctions or lack thereof among LOT, THOUGHT, NORTH, FORCE (or stock, stalk, stork, store). (I've replaced phonetic symbols with lay equivalents: ɔ = aw, ə = uh.)

Conservative General American: LOT ≠ THOUGHT ≠ NORTH [awr] ≠ FORCE [or]
Modern General American: LOT ≠ THOUGHT ≠ NORTH = FORCE [awr]
Canadian: LOT = THOUGHT [a] ≠ NORTH = FORCE [or]
Scots: LOT = THOUGHT [aw] ≠ NORTH [awr] ≠ FORCE [or]
Conservative RP ("Received Pronunciation"): LOT [a] ≠ THOUGHT = NORTH [aw] ≠ FORCE [awuh]
Modern RP ("Received Pronunciation"): LOT ≠ THOUGHT = NORTH = FORCE [awh]
Eastern New England: LOT = THOUGHT = NORTH [a] ≠ FORCE [awuh]
19th-Century Bonin English: LOT = THOUGHT = NORTH [a] ≠ FORCE [owuh]

The Power and the Glory

When Andrés Gentry asked me to cite the most influential book I have read, I listed Graham Greene's The Power and the Glory, which I read in high school, as a missionary kid questioning the faith of my family heritage. When I googled the title, I found an interesting take on the book's Themes, Motifs, and Symbols at SparkNotes.com. I'll give one example of each.

Theme: The Dangers of Excessive Idealism

To put it simply, an idealist is one who imagines that the world can be a much better place than it is. What could be dangerous about that? The [Mexican revolutionary] lieutenant, in many ways, illustrates the danger. Obsessed with the way things could be, he remains mired in dissatisfaction and bitterness about the way things actually are. Although the wish to help the poor is a noble sentiment, dreams of "starting over", erasing history, and wiping out all religious belief are simply not realizable. Moreover, being unable to bring about the impossible leads the lieutenant to feelings of frustration and anger, an even more keen awareness of how imperfect the world is, and hatred for those people whom he views as obstacles to the realization of his dream. Moreover, his conviction that he knows what is best for the people is itself a form of arrogance. The priest, on the other hand, comes to accept suffering and death as a part of life; that is not to say that he does not wish to help alleviate suffering, but his faith in the next world helps him to accept the trials and hardships of this one....

Motifs: Abandonment

Many things are abandoned in this novel, and the words "abandoned" or "abandonment" crop up repeatedly. Many of the townspeople feel that the clergy has abandoned them, and the priest, in turn, feels that the people have abandoned him. Mr. Tench has abandoned his family, Captain Fellows and Mrs. Fellows abandon their house and their dog, and the priest tries to abandon the mestizo on the road to Carmen. These are just a few examples. It is an important motif, because it implicitly raises the most important question, whether human beings have been abandoned by God and left to the cruelty of nature and each other. Significantly, the greatest act of heroism in the novel--the priest's decision to return to help the gringo--is a refusal to abandon someone in need, and a refusal to abandon a dangerous and ugly world....

Symbols: Alcohol

Alcohol recurs throughout this book as a symbol with two very different meanings. On the one hand, it represents weakness for "the whiskey priest"; a mark, to him, of his unworthiness and the decadence of his former life. The authorities' attempts to rid the state of alcohol are a manifestation of the impossible and detrimental desire to purge the world of all human weakness. On the other hand, alcohol is an integral part of the Catholic mass, evidenced by the priest's persistent attempts to procure wine. As we see throughout the book, the sacred and the profane are often portrayed not as opposites, but as two halves of the same coin.

Not bad for SparkNotes. The other two companion books I cited were Endo Shusaku's Silence and Ooka Shohei's Fires on the Plain.

Ideological Prejudice Test

Why are there so few women in the academic hard sciences? Why are there so few conservatives in the academic humanities and soft sciences? Here are some frequently offered answers to each question. Are your answers the same to both questions?

1. They lack the required the mental capacity for such specialized intellectual endeavors.

2. They lack the necessary intellectual stamina.

3. They don't find such careers sufficiently rewarding, either personally or financially.

4. They are subtly--or not so subtly--discouraged by their potential mentors already established in the field.

5. They are not sufficiently willing to sacrifice their families or family values to pursue such demanding career goals.

Ian Buruma on Uncaptive Minds

Cliopatria's Ralph Luker alerts us to a wonderfully moving essay, Uncaptive Minds, by Ian Buruma in Sunday's New York Times Magazine: "What teaching a college-level class at a maximum-security correctional facility did for the inmates — and for me." Here are a few excerpts:

The main business of Napanoch, N.Y., is a maximum-security prison, Eastern New York Correctional Facility, also known as Happy Nap....

There is ... a reason that inmates call the prison Happy Nap. Eastern is more relaxed than other maximum-security prisons, or "maxes," in upstate New York, with less hostility between staff and prisoners, and as a result fewer U.I.'s, or "unusual incidents" -- stabbings and the like. It is said that the farther upstate you go, the harsher the prison conditions can be. Among New York's maxes, Eastern has one of the best reputations. It is one of only three maximum-security prisons in the state where you can still get an education -- not just in manual skills, but a proper college education with a degree at the end, thanks to privately financed initiatives....

The Bard Prison Initiative now runs an associate degree program at Eastern. There are plans to introduce a bachelor's program soon. Inmates have to go through an application process like any prospective college student: an essay, test scores, transcripts (G.E.D.'s for those who didn't finish high school) and an interview by Kenner and his colleague Daniel Karpowitz. "The admission process," Kenner said recently, "is emotionally the hardest part of our work. Up to 200 apply for 15 spots." Only 50 students, out of a prison population of more than 1,200, are now enrolled....

My class of nine consisted of a Puerto Rican, who had been to the Bronx High School of Science, one of New York's prestigious magnet schools; two white military veterans; a Vietnamese-American; four black men, two of them Muslims; and one young white man who had been incarcerated since he was 16.

I had been assured ... that the students would be enthusiastic. This was an understatement. But as I learned in my first weeks of teaching, the main difference between these students and those on the Bard campus was their polite formality. I was invariably addressed as "professor," not so much for my sake, I sensed, as for their own self-respect. Somewhat patronizingly, I suppose, I had expected talk about sword-fight movies and Oriental wisdom. Instead, from the very start, questions of a far more sophisticated kind came quick and fast: about the economics of the Opium Wars in China, about the criminal activities of unemployed samurai, about the impact on Japanese cultural identity of Western ideas. One of the black Muslims, a tough New Yorker, mentioned Alexis de Tocqueville in the context of the Meiji Restoration.

The students were smart, streetwise and funny, and I found it impossible not to be charmed by them. They were also clearly grateful to be in class, where they were treated as intelligent adults. It is easy to feel a little smug about dealing with these men, to feel a sentimental solidarity with them against the guards and the rest of their oppressive world. This soon leads to the kind of phoniness that any inmate can see through in an instant....

It is a tricky situation. Education widens the gap between students and corrections officers and can easily increase hostility. Many of the officers have not been to college themselves and probably don't expect their children to either. But higher-education programs should also make life easier for the C.O.'s, since the prisoners who benefit from them are more inclined to behave themselves. Indeed, a C.O. once told a colleague of mine that life at Eastern was a trifle dull. At the previous institution where he'd worked there were shakedowns, stabbings on the galleries, mayhem in the solitary-housing unit. At Eastern, a guard was liable to fall asleep.

My second class was on the failed samurai rebellion in the 1870's against the Westernized Meiji government, on which the movie "The Last Samurai" was very loosely based. I mentioned a book, by Ivan Morris, titled "The Nobility of Failure," and explained the admiration in Japan for rebels who die for lost causes. We discussed how this ethos compared with the American celebration of success. Perhaps, I said a bit facetiously, there was no such thing as a noble failure in America. One Muslim among my students laughed and said, "This room's full of them."...

It was obvious to me, as a teacher, how precious education was to the students, not only because they could practically recite every sentence of the books and articles I gave them to read but also because of the way they behaved to one another. Prisons breed cynicism. Trust is frequently betrayed and friendships severed when a prisoner is transferred without warning to another facility. The classroom was an exception. We talked about Japanese history, but also about other things; one topic led to another. One day a guest lecturer spoke about pan-Asianism in the 1930's -- the Japanese aim to unite and dominate Asia by defeating the Western empires. My Vietnamese student remarked that he was a pan-Asianist with "a small a," but that really he was a "panhumanist," for "we are all one race, right?" One of the black students snorted in a good-natured way. The Vietnamese smiled and said: "I know we have disagreements about that."

There cannot be many places -- in or outside prison -- where blacks, Asians, Hispanics, Muslims and Caucasians can discuss race and religion without showing hostility. A Muslim student, a big man from the Bronx, said he'd encountered little animosity to Muslims in prison. "Sure, that's because we know each other," another student said. I found this surprising, since prisons are not known for racial or religious tolerance. But perhaps they were referring not to the prison system in general, or even to the narrower confines of Eastern, but simply to the class. Then a black student, in for robbery, piped up: "If I hadn't been in prison, I'd never have met any Jewish guys. I had all the stereotypes in my head, you know, cheap and mean. But now I'm hanging with a Jewish guy the longest time."

Eastern is different. But why? Why was Eastern more receptive to the Bard Prison Initiative than other prisons in the state? Why is Eastern "the place to be"? Several men pointed out that "the tone is set by the top." The superintendent and his deputy both started their careers as teachers.

South Korean Romanization Nazis

Diversity-challenged South Korean opposition Grand National Party legislator Kim Choong-whan wants to legislate standard romanization for Korean names in English (and presumably other languages that use the latin alphabet). If he were serious, he would have first changed the spelling of his own name to Gim Chung-hwan (which google translates as Kim Insect Exchange).

What would Bak Jeong-hui think? This is an especially sensitive issue in Korea, whose citizens were forced to change their names under Japanese colonial rule.