Island on the Front Line: Militarization, Geopolitics, and Local Society on Cold War Quemoy (Jinmen)

In the 1950s and 1960s, the small Taiwan Strait island of Quemoy, or Jinmen, was both the front line in the military standoff between the Republic of the China on Taiwan and the People's Republic of China on the mainland, and a powerful symbol of anti-communist determination for the Republic of China and its allies, principally the United States.  As a result, the island became one of the most highly militarized societies in history, a place where daily life was inexorably connected to international geopolitics.  Using oral history and village archives, this paper explores first how the global cold war became immanent in everyday life.  Besides the more obvious consequences such as universal militia service, militarization affected domains as diverse as the household economy and religious practice.  The second part of the paper explores how popular memory of the Cold War period shapes contemporary political struggles.  Though at the time few residents fully accepted hegemonic narratives of Jinmen’s necessary sacrifice for the sake of the Free World, this interpretation has become increasingly popular in recent years as a rhetorical tool in calls for compensation and political reform.  The paper thus addresses two broad themes of comparative interest: first, how the local social consequences of war and militarization are embedded in larger national and geopolitical contexts, and second, how even the most comprehensive militarization schemes invariably generate unanticipated local responses that may in turn affect larger political arenas.