Sweet Temptation and the Spread of Sugar: A Preliminary Study of Overseas Chinese Sugar Technology and Settler Colonialism Landscape

HSU Ching-hui, TSAI Jing-ting, and CHUNG Kuo-feng

This study examines archaeological discoveries in Taiwan in recent years, focusing on material remains associated with sugar production facilities and implements dating from the seventeenth to nineteenth centuries. It explores how sugar production technology and knowledge originating in South China were transmitted and embedded within the traditional territories of Austronesian Indigenous peoples in the southwestern plains of Taiwan through overseas Chinese social networks and migration-based economic systems organized around contract labour. In this process, sugar production facilities and tools gradually shifted from being imported from migrants’ home regions to locally manufactured forms. At the same time, patterns of land use associated with sugarcane cultivation contributed to the formation of a settler colonial landscape characteristic of Han Chinese settler society. Furthermore, the study investigates how sugar, once a luxury commodity, was transformed into a major trade good. Supported by the competitive advantages of overseas Chinese communities in sugar production technology and commercial networks, sugar production played an important role in integrating Taiwan into the early modern global trade system.