Mariko Iijima
Associate Professor,
Sophia University
Mariko Iijima is an associate professor at the Faculty of Foreign Studies, Sophia University, Tokyo. After graduating from Sophia University, she received her M.Phil. and D.Phil. in Modern History from the University of Oxford. She specializes in global history, Japanese migration history, and the history of coffee and sugar production in the Asia-Pacific region. Her recent work includes “Coffee Production in the Asia-Pacific Region: The Establishment of a Japanese Diasporic Network in the Early 20th Century,” Journal of International Economic Studies, No.32 (Hosei University, 2018) and her edited book, Introduction to Global Histories (Sophia University Press, 2018, in Japanese).
“Sugar Islands in the Pacific in the Early 20th Century: Taiwan as a Protégé of Hawai‘i”
The modernization of sugar production in Taiwan at the beginning of the 20th century was not achieved without referring to the leading sugar-producing areas such as the Dutch East Indies (Java) and Hawai‘i. However, previous work in the history of sugar production in Hawai‘i and Taiwan paid little attention to their connections and networks. Although Hawai‘i and Taiwan were under the control of different colonial masters, both areas were resided by a substantial number of Japanese settlers and dependent on sugar production for their economic foundation. Hawai‘i, where started to accept Japanese immigrants and to develop the sugar industry a decade earlier than Taiwan, became an important reference for sugar production in Taiwan. In this paper, in what way Hawai‘i contributed to Taiwan’s modernization of the sugar industry by looking at the migrations of sugarcane, people, technology and management system is explored.