ABSTRACT
In the early twentieth century, Western colonial powers established extensive sugar plantations in Latin America, Indonesia, and elsewhere. In colonial Taiwan, however, the Japanese acquired sugarcane largely via contractual arrangements with small family farms. The case of Taiwan from 1895 to 1945 leads to inquire "not only why the Japanese took this approach but also what their production decisions meant in terms of the Taiwanese peasant economy". The commoditization of agriculture in colonial Taiwan created a precondition for the dominance of Japanese agroindustry based on a commercial monopoly. Through public investment, particularly in the construction of irrigation systems, the state acted as the main investor, devoting large amounts of its tax revenues to build up the agricultural infrastructure. Classical Marxism considered the dissolution of petty commodity production a consequence of the tendency toward concentration within capitalist production and visualized the same tendency in the countryside.
