植民地初期の日本-臺灣間における海底電信線の買收・敷設・所有權の移轉

Abstract

This article addresses the undersea telegraphic cables to the main island of Taiwan and continental China during the initial period of Japanese rule over colonial Taiwan and examines the diplomatic negotiations between Japan and the Qing government over the undersea cables and the process of the laying of the cables on the basis of documents from the Japanese Ministry of Foreign Affairs, the Department of Communications, and the Governor General of Taiwan as well as the historical archives of the Qing Dynasty's Foreign Office (Zongli Geguo Shiwu Yamen) and thereby clarify and locate undersea cable [s] linking Japan and Taiwan within the historical context. The result of this examination provides at the same time a link clarifying the historical determinates of the monopolistic right of foreign telegraph companies such as the Great Northern Telegraph Company and the Eastern Telegraph Company to lay telegraphic cables on East Asian seabeds, which were conferred on them by the Qing and Japanese governments. The first undersea cable linking China and Taiwan, based on contract between the Qing government and Jardine, Matheson & Co. in Shanghai, was laid between Danshui and Sharppeak. However, according to the Agreement to Purchase Sharppeak, which was signed shortly after Japan's annexation of Taiwan in December of 1898, the Japanese government was to buy the undersea cable, and Japan thus secured a communications route to the continental China via Taiwan. However, in regard to this contract, there were objections from the Great Northern Telegraph Company and the Eastern Telegraph Company, which had held a monopoly rights, and the problem was not resolved until the second decade of the 20th century. In order to strengthen communications with Taiwan during this period, the Japanese government completed construction the first long-distance undersea cables between Kagoshima and Naha and from Naha to Keelung; then in October of 1910 the first cable between Nagasaki and Danshui was laid, followed by a second cable between the same two locations, which was completed in July of 1917. Nevertheless, the communication cables linking Japan and Taiwan were struck by repeated problems, and on each occasion economic organizations raised demands to the Governor-General of Taiwan and the Japanese government for improvement of the communications system. In this article I have been able to clarify that in addition to the fact that the cables were adopted and functioned as advanced technology to subsume the economy of Taiwan by Japan given that fact that it is presumed that these undersea telegraphic cables carried heavy traffic of incoming and outgoing telegraphic messages from networks of Japanese, the cables also functioned to allow Japanese officials and civilians on the continent to be active in Southern China.