The Republic of China East Asian Fellowship supported my historical research in Taiwan in the fall of 2024. The work I did during this stay built upon a previous visit in the summer of 2022, when I explored the collections at Academia Historica and the National Archives Administration in Taipei. This fall, I also visited the National Central Library to gather data from the Republic of China historical chronicles, which contain important news reports related to mainland migration and the retreat process from 1949 into the 1950s.
The advantage of this extended research trip was that I could spend much more time collecting sources that required a longer time to process. For example, I came across collections of oral history interviews produced by Academia Historica and Taiwan Historica that illustrate the lives of hundreds of interviewees across Taiwan who experienced the turbulent transitions of the mid-twentieth century. The interviewed populations ranged from those living in rural communities in Chiayi and Tainan Counties, to the technical experts of the Sino-American Joint Commission on Rural Reconstruction, to the bureaucratic residents of Zhongxing New Village, a planned town built around the former provincial capital in Nantou City.
These rare books would be difficult, if not impossible, to access without an extended physical presence in Taiwan. I am deeply grateful for the support from the CCS and Taiwan’s Ministry of Education. This research trip laid the foundation for an extended stay in Taiwan through 2025 that will constitute the core of my dissertation research.
- Aidan Lee
Department of History