XXX Международный конгресс ИИСАА. 19–21 июня 2019 г. Т. 2

Секция XV 48 XXX Международный Конгресс по источниковедению и историографии стран Азии и Африки neighbouring countries. Meanwhile, this issue can also be used in order to build one’s own national identity and reconceptualize the entire historical heritage. Thus, in the last two decades the Republic of China is witnessing endless discussions about the evaluation of the Japanese colonization period in Taiwan in 1895–1945. As it is well known, the Qing government ceded Taiwan to Japan under the Treaty of Shimonoseki in 1895, and the island was returned under the control of the Chinese Republic in 1945, after the defeat of Japan in the World War II. These 50 years are known as the period of the Japanese colonial administration in Taiwan. The dynamics of assessing this period in the modern Taiwanese historiography indicates unceasing attempts to build a consistent concept of Taiwan self-determination, which would allow to reach a public consensus on the matter. More than 40 years after the establishment of China’s Republic Government in Taiwan, led by the Kuomintang until the early 1990s, the state ideology of the ruling party was based on the idea of historical and cultural unity of Taiwan with the imperial and republican China, thus inextricably linking its history with the history of mainland China and claiming that their separation was only temporary. The main focus was on the history of the Chinese state — first the Empire, and then the Republic. Therefore, the history of Taiwan itself in the period before 1947 had no significance. Even in the textbooks of the early 1990s, which had not undergone radical editing, only a small paragraph was devoted to Japanese presence in Taiwan. It merely reported on the colonial seizure of a part of the state territory and on the fierce resistance of the “tribesmen”. Reconsidering the events of the first half of the 20th century started in the 1990s and has continued up to the present day. The main reason for these innovations is internal political process in Taiwan, namely, the discourse around Taiwan’s self-de- termination. Political disagreements are aggravated by the social differentiation of the Taiwanese society. It is divided into four groups with fundamentally different socio-historical and linguistic background: “native” Taiwanese, whose ancestors immigrated to the island in the Qing period, “new” Taiwanese, who moved to Taiwan after the Kuomintang evacuation, Hakka group and, finally, the aboriginal popula- tion of the island. Accordingly, the “Taiwanese born on the island” look back on the Japanese period with a certain amount of nostalgia, since the cruel events of the anti-Japanese war on the mainland bypassed them. On the contrary, for the Taiwan- ese “born on the mainland” and their descendants, the memory of the Sino-Japanese war of 1937–1945 is a very sensitive issue, while the history of Taiwan until 1947 is devoid of emotional colouring. The re-interpretation of the period of Japan’s colonial rule in Taiwan is largely determined by the desire of the acting political forces to develop a strategy for self-de- termination of Taiwan. Despite the hot political debates regarding the vectors of the self-determination — “orientation to China” versus “orientation to independence”, all parties involved recognize Taiwan’s historical value at all stages of its history.