Studies in Taiwan’s postwar development are often conducted by narrating the evolution of the state-building process under different leaders, in which the development of specific aspects and sectors are explored in order to find the causal explanations for Taiwan’s politico-economic transformation. Based on the newly available personal diaries of President Chiang Ching-kuo and other archival treasures at the Hoover Institution, as well as valuable declassified historical files in Taiwan and abroad, this proposed project seeks to explore the interface between leadership perceptions, policymaking, and US-Taiwan relations in Taiwan’s postwar history during the period from the 1950s to the 1980s. To develop a new approach to interpret the conundrums in the relationship between the two “calculating allies” (Taiwan and the US), this project explores the role of leadership in Taiwan’s postwar history by extending the research from the new perspectives of leadership hierarchy and perception, and aims to review the state-building process in postwar Taiwan. The project invokes the role of leadership to explain the political-economic development of　Taiwan as part of the Cold War structure, in particular the Trans-Pacific Alliance. This project will be an international collaboration gathering seven historians from different fields of the history of international relations, intellectual history, the history of technology, economic history, cliometrics, and science, technology, and society to investigate the cases across three areas of study: Politics and Diplomacy, Economy and Institution, and Science and Technology.

隨著海內外新史料的出現與新檔案的解密，利用第一手原始資料對戰後中華民國在台灣這段歷史重新審視與研究的時機已經到來，本研究計劃將充分利用美國史丹福大學 胡佛檔案館所藏之蔣經國私人日記，以及其他海內外各地所藏相關史料文獻，擬從國家建構、決策分析與領導者認知等不同面向，深入探討戰後台灣的外交、政治、社會、政府機制、經濟建設與科技發展，尤其著重在台灣與其最重要盟邦美國之間錯綜複雜的雙邊關係，以及此一關係對於上述各領域發展所帶來的影響與挑戰。本研究以新史料為基礎，聚集來自不同領域的歷史學者，從多元的角度分析台灣戰後的發展，盼能夠突破傳統研究的視野與框架，對戰後台灣研究提出令人耳目一新的論述與觀點。