Abstract
As is well known, the South Seas Development Company had established in 1921 quickly transformed
the Northern Mariana Islands into the Japanese empire's next "sugar islands" following on from the colonization of Taiwan. Previous studies of the South Seas Development Company especially focused on how the Company had managed sugar industry successfully in the Northern Mariana Islands under the Japanese rule. Instead of seeing the Company-led development of the sugar industry as an example of Japan's expanding colonial powers, this article argues how the Company's sugar industry was constructed in various global sugar networks beyond the Japanese empire and how the construction process caused conflicts between the Company and Okinawan employed in the sugar plantation and the Chamorro possessed of their lands. The structure of this article is as follows. First, it describes how the Spanish missionaries and the German colonial government in the Northern Mariana Islands excluded Chamorro from their lands from the 17th century to the beginning of the 20th century. Second, it focuses Matsue Haruji(CEO of the Company) as a "transplanter" who transplanted the latest scientific knowledge and technology of the American sugar empire into the colonial Taiwan and the Northern Mariana Islands. Third, it describes why Okinawans came out on strike in 1927 and how they united against the Company's policy. In conclusion, it suggests that we reconsider the construction process of the Company’s sugar industry as the settler colonial system which suppressed the Chamorro's voice of protests.
