Home >
Date(s)： 2023/12/11
Time： 10:30~12:00
Venue： Archives 3rd Conference Hall
Speaker：Prof. Victor Louzon (Assistant Professor in History at Sorbonne Université)
Organizer： 中央研究院近代史研究所蔣介石研究群、國立清華大學火種計畫「從臺灣經驗到台灣模式」
Abstract: The “February 28 Incident”, one of the most infamous pages in Taiwanese history, remains poorly known and understudied outside of East Asia – surprisingly so, given the increasing attention of Western public spheres to Sino-Japanese relations. Victor Louzon’s book, L’étreinte de la patrie (Embrace of the Fatherland), is the first French-language account of the 1947 Taiwanese rebellion against Chinese Kuomintang rule and its bloody suppression. Drawing on East Asian, American, and European historiography, Louzon focuses on the mechanisms and genesis of political violence in its most concrete and practical dimensions. He analyzes it in the light of fifty years of Sino-Japanese relations, with particular attention to the Second Sino-Japanese war of 1937-1945. Without showing loyalty to the former colonial metropolis, young Taiwanese rebels (unfettered by the more moderate Resolution Committees) largely tapped a repertoire of actions and symbols forged during the mobilization for the Japanese war effort. Repressive violence, on the other hand, remobilized the Kuomingtang’s long experience in counter-insurgency; as for its disproportionate intensity, it can be explained by the framing of the revolt as a reenactment of Japanese invasion, and by the opportunity it gave the National Army to complete the purge of former colonial elites, at a time when China sought to assert its new international status.