| dc.description.abstract | The theme in this study is to discuss changes to the frontier society in northern Taiwan after mid 19th century under influences of politics, economics and society and the historical meaning of such changes. During the discussion, the researcher selects Kuan-shi area in Hsin-chu as the study case. With the observation on the area case, the researcher explores the impact to the frontier soci-ety by political and economic changes.
At the end of the 18th century, local government in northern Taiwan strategically allowed the armed reclamation groups by Han people and plains aborigines to establish armed villages with defense nature along the mountains. In the meantime, local elites from these villages were allowed to establish their private armed force and exempt from land tax. This local society under semi-autonomous society is the frontier society in this article. The researcher points out that after mid 19th century, frontier society was in the state of chaos due to competition of local elites on economic resources and lack of specific legal system standard. Besides, owing to changes of in-ternational situation, the authorities also changed the strategy of letting local elites occupy the economic resources along the mountains. They established the “Fu-Ken office” and “Ai-Yung battalion”（both are the coordination unit without administration system） to help local government rectify land tax and armed force of frontier society. In 1895 after the Japanese ruled Taiwan, the ruling authorities had stronger intention to rectify the border. Tax and land rights were re-regulated. Systems of Pao-chia, police, education and local administration were established, leading to grad-ual loss of autonomy of frontier society. Under the political and economic influences, local elites in frontier society faced new challenges, too. Some had significant decrease of their influence due to internal conflict of the group or even changes of policies. Example is the Wei family (plains aborigine, once serving as Ken-hu), the Chengs and the Liens, etc. On the other hand, however, some other elites, such as Lo Pi-yu and Chou Yuan-pao, took the advantage and grew after helping the ruling authorities. Chen Wan-hui and Chen Feng-mao, etc made a big fortune by grabbing the business opportunities. They had become the new local leaders. Also, in the 20th century, besides the end of private armed reclamation due to strengthened control power of the state, local society started diverse development thanks to the influence of national policies and local elites. Increase of village population, construction of modern traffic and innovation in industry brought diversifica-tion of public space and activities. All these changes truly reflect the Transformation of frontier society.
The results of this study have three major contributions: 1) the article clarifies the historical process of frontier society from border state to the contemporary national system through area case observation and discusses how ruling authorities established each governing system to control the once-regarded border areas. 2) Contemporary local elites had to further depend on the actual or symbolic authority endowed by the national system to increase their own economic and symbolic capital in addition to alliance relationship of economics or marriages and participation of public affairs. 3) With local economic and society diverse development, the article explains the influence of national policies and local elites, which is the key factor of promoting social transformation. | en_US |