ABSTRACT
The growth of the coal mining industry in Taiwan during the Japanese occupation was an important phenomenon. Coal mining in Taiwan has a long history, but there were no attempts at large-scale production until the 1870s. These attempts bore little fruit in the late Qing period and the early Japanese occupation. During the First World War, Japanese zaibatsu and several Taiwanese capitalists invested in coal mining enterprises in Taiwan under the guidance of the Japanese colonial government, and the golden age of Taiwan’s coal mining industry (1916-1927) occurred. Because modern industry as a whole in Taiwan was still in its infancy, demand for coal was small. Consequently coal owners began to seek overseas markets. The main export markets were Southern China, Hong Kong and the Southeast Asian colonies of Great Britain and France. So the international economic and political situation influenced the development of coal mining in Taiwan. In this way, although Taiwan was a Japanese colony, the coal industry was connected to the world economy.
