From Insect to Pest: Pest and Pest Control in Colonial Taiwan
Resource
臺大歷史學報, 56, 133-188
Journal
臺大歷史學報
Journal Issue
56
Pages
133-188
Date Issued
2015
Date
2015-12
Author(s)
Abstract
This paper argues that the concept of “pest” in East Asia is a constructive idea that gradually emerged from the late nineteenth century. Take Taiwan for example; there are a lot of records from the Ming and Qing period concerning the moth. However, in contrast to the identification of the moth as pest in the twentieth century, most of these older records describe the moth (or mulberry insect, mingling, 螟蛉) as the adopted son (yangzi), a metaphor originated from the Book of Odes, which is irrelevant to the notion of “pest”. To simply criticize our predecessors lack of “scientific knowledge” would disregard the subtle transformation of the concept from “moth” to “pest.” In fact, “pest” was a novel idea introduced into Taiwan during the Japanese colonial rule. Six factors contributed to the emergence of “pest”: the birth of the modern nation-state, colonial control, urbanization, industrialization, preparation for war, and the emergence of scientific agriculture and entomology. With this new perspective, new pests were incessantly “discovered” by Japanese entomologists and the frequency of pest damage was ever and increasingly growing. Alarmed by the damage and loss of agricultural productivity caused by such pests, the Japanese colonial government tried to prevent and control the pests by the following institutional and administrative measures: issue regulations for preventing and eliminating the pests, establish agriculture laboratories and quarantine stations, and organize “pest patrols” to monitor and warn about potential pest damage. Thanks to the enormous strides of the Japanese chemical industry during the interwar period, organic and inorganic pesticides were widely adopted by Japanese farmers, and the entomologists concomitantly introduced pesticide products into Taiwan. However, the degree of pesticides application varied widely in different agricultural sectors in Taiwan. As an international commodity, oranges, for example, were heavily fumigated with poisonous cyanide gas; but pests in paddy land were continuingly treated by manual and labour inputs, which was quite different from their Japanese counterpart, who intensively applied various chemical pesticides. This variation and difference indicates a sharp contrast between Japan and Taiwan, and reflects the different effect of urbanization and agricultural commercialization in the two places.
Subjects
害蟲，蟲害，農藥，農業，農學，日治時期臺灣史
Pest, Pest damage, Pesticide, Agriculture, Agriculture science,
History of Japanese Colonial Rule in Taiwan.
History of Japanese Colonial Rule in Taiwan.
Type
journal article
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