| Book Review | The American Historical Review, 104.5

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| Book Review | The American Historical Review, 104.5 | The History Cooperative

Book Review

Asia

Murray A. Rubinstein, editor. Taiwan: A New History. (Taiwan in the Modern World.) Armonk, N.Y.: M. E. Sharpe. 1999. Pp. xiv, 520. Cloth $69.95, paper $27.95.

Murray A. Rubinstein and his contributor colleagues have given us by far the most comprehensive volume of Taiwan history in the English language. Rubinstein draws together essays by major figures in the writing on Taiwan and has himself written a helpful introduction and conclusion, as well as chapters on post-1970 socioeconomic change and political Taiwanization. There is not a seriously weak essay among them, although one by Michael Stainton that could have been titled "Bourdieu among the Aborigines" fails to integrate the slices of theory that sandwich his rich insider history. Eduard Vermeer and Sung-Sheng Yvonne Chang contribute exceptional essays that are outliers to the focus on Taiwan's social history. Vermeer situates the island in Fujian province's Ming dynasty trading sphere, reminding us how deep into history globalism reaches. Chang, in separate discussions of literary forms and factions under Japanese colonialism and then under the Nationalists, does cultural studies with a powerful political edge. Stylistically she takes no prisoners, noting that with the formation in 1987 of an opposition party, "literature was largely relieved of its function as a pretext for political contention" (p. 416). . . .

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