Airbrushing Taiwan’s History: Can Japanese Colonialism Ever Be Justified?

‘Amazingly,’ wrote Kaori Shoji, ‘Taiwan is the one country where the Japanese imperialists managed to do more good than harm.’

The News Lens
Date: 2017/03/23
By: James Baron

.As European colonial and imperial exploits reached their apogee in the late 19th century, moral philosophers such a John Stuart Mill were faced with a quandary: how to justify the colonial project? In fact, it doesn’t seem to have been too much of problem for Mill, for whom utility was solely an occidental preoccupation. That subject peoples were variables in a “greatest happiness” metric was apparently inconceivable or at least an inconvenience to be side-lined like an embarrassing relative.

“For Mill, colonization is like a case of public charity,” writes Eddy Souffrant, associate professor of philosophy at UNC Charlotte. “And in it, the activities of the individual colonizer have repercussions beyond his own particular interests.” If colonization could solve overcrowding in British cities while turning a profit, it was justified according to Mill.    [FULL  STORY]