Transitions to Modernity in Taiwan

On 19 April 1895, British Consul Lionel Charles Hopkins, at the northern port of Tamsui, was summoned by Tang Jingsong, the governor of Taiwan, to his yamen in the western district of Taipei. Shortly after his arrival, Hopkins was handed a petition. Signed by a number of Taiwanese ‘notables’, the document appealed to the British government to incorporate the island into a protectorate in the wake of an impending Japanese invasion. The British declined. This book addresses the interconnectivity o