James J. Gerien-Chen

My project examines the role of Taiwanese settlers in Japanese imperial efforts to establish a modern legal order in South China between 1895 and 1945. I analyze policies which encouraged Taiwanese migration to treaty-ports across South China and especially Xiamen to show the role of Taiwanese settlers in the formulation of legal imperial personhood based on Chinese ethnicity. Taiwanese were central to Japanese imperial strategies of appealing to regional ethnic Chinese elites, and I highlight especially Chinese and Taiwanese individuals’ participation in the formation of this imperial order through claims to law and ethnicity, and their roles in co-creating Japanese Empire across the South China Sea region.