Interactional craft: Taiwanese artisans and the production of plows in colonial Taiwan

This article explores the central role of Taiwanese artisans and their hands-on practice in the production of plows in colonial Taiwan. Inextricably tied to local social and material conditions, plows were long one of the most widely used agricultural implements across Asia. Beginning in the 1920s, Japanese manufacturers attempted to sell plows to Taiwanese farmers. These imported products, shaped by Meiji-era agricultural reforms and enhanced with industrial parts and fittings, commercially failed within a decade due to a combination of social and ecological factors. Despite this outcome, the new designs and materials of the Japanese devices catalyzed change in Taiwanese plow production. Supported by concurrent growth in the supply of metal parts and hardwoods, Taiwanese artisans resourcefully incorporated the new materials and features into their craft, leading to two new types of Taiwanese plow. Distinct from technological creolization, the artisans did not simply find new uses for the Japanese technology or tinker with existing devices; rather, in interaction with the soil, animals, farmers, crops, wood, and metal, they brought together the multipolar relationships among human and nonhuman agents of agricultural work, giving these relations material expression through their mindful hands. The new Taiwanese plows quickly recaptured the market and remained in common use through much of the twentieth century. This article’s examination of plow production demonstrates the emergence of resourceful creativity from the complex interplay of material and ecological elements in a specific historical context, contributing to critiques of innovation-centric and diffusionist perspectives in the history of technology.