Push-Car Railways, Camphor, and Coal in the Imperial Hinterland

Abstract This article examines the push-car railway industry in colonial Taiwan from 1895 to the 1930s. It argues that this human-powered transportation resolved a colonial dilemma between the colonial government's economic ambition and its limited capacities as shaped by Taiwan's environmental and colonial conditions. The push-car railways effectively connected Taiwan's local economy to the global market. The article rethinks the relationship between the environment, capitalism, and colonialism from three perspectives. First, muscle-powered technology was crucial to the rise of fossil capitalism at the turn of the century. Second, the push-car railway industry revealed a multilayered relationship between the colonizer and the colonized, profoundly reshaping the environment of the imperial hinterland. Third, as an integral part of fossil capitalism, the push-car railway industry amplified and complicated human cost instead of decreasing it. This analysis unravels how local Taiwanese business actors developed networks under colonial constraints, reshaping socioeconomic and environmental relationships in Taiwan's hinterlands.