Title: Policing health in modern Taiwan, 1895--1949
Description: From the outset of Japans colonial rule over Taiwan in 1895, more was at stake in its public health efforts than providing clean drinking water or properly disposing of waste. At stake was the young empire's claim to have entered the club of modern, civilized nations capable of colonial administration. The Japanese government's narrative of 'success' in Taiwan hinged on its efforts to battle epidemics and improve health. After Japans departure from Taiwan following World War II, the resurgence of contagious diseases long held in check under the Japanese caused popular discontent and forced the Chinese Nationalist regime to implement its own campaigns to prevent disease and improve sanitary standards. This dissertation examines a series of public health campaigns across this period (1895-1949) in order to understand the social history of modern Taiwan from the time of its colonization by Japan in 1895 through the establishment of Chinese Nationalist (KMT) rule in the aftermath of World War II. These campaigns deeply affected the everyday lives of ordinary people and the spaces where they lived. The campaigns did so through a unique infrastructure designed for 'policing health'. This infrastructure gave police broad duties in sanitation and public health and demanded compliance by local self-policing bodies. Policing health allowed the government to penetrate local society, install surveillance mechanisms, and mobilize broad participation in public health campaigns.

This study is grounded in the spaces where each campaign most affected daily life: homes, markets and ports, and urban exhibition halls. These campaigns brought the Japanese colonial state and the Chinese Nationalist state into the lives of a large section of the population of Taiwan, and they serve as an excellent site for understanding social and cultural change. This study contributes a new analytical framework for the comparative social history of disease and empire by situating the global circulation of public health and policing infrastructures in the context of local spaces they penetrated. More generally, it treats the history of public health as a valuable opportunity to understand the intersections of knowledge, power, and everyday life.