In Prescribing Colonization, Michael Shiyung Liu reassesses the impacts and reinterprets the meanings of the familiar history of Japan's colonial medicine in Taiwan. Liu situates this historical case in the processes of how Japan adapted Germany's Staatsmedizin to its local contexts and, subsequently, appropriated such practices for the goal of empire-building. The author argues against both a modernization perspective, which celebrates the positive social consequences of colonial medicine, and what he terms the “tool of empire” thesis, which primarily regards colonial medical interventions as cultural or physical forms of aggression. Favouring a more nuanced approach, Liu highlights the complexity and contingencies of his case.

After an introductory chapter, chapter one reviews how Japan developed concepts of social medicine, social hygiene, state medicine and other related notions, modelled after Germany and, to a lesser extent, drawing from traditional ideals about medicine. The following chapter traces how key colonial officials transported and adapted the German–Japanese Staatsmedizin model to the Taiwanese context in the beginning years of the colonial era. Chapter three reviews how these official plans were revised and transformed in the 1920s, partly in response to the colonial government's need to co-operate with the local elite, work with available financial resources, and address the medical problems unique to Taiwan's tropical environment. Chapter four discusses medical development during the remainder of colonial rule, with a focus on the hierarchical structures that characterized the professional formation of medicine in Taiwan, as well as an overview of the role of Taiwan in the development of colonial medicine in the Japanese empire. The conclusion of the book takes up the perennial so-what question, arguing, in essence, that the author's reinterpretation of this history reveals how it was shaped by three significant but previously ignored factors: academic rivalry in Japan; ethnic (Japanese versus Taiwanese) and occupational (laboratory medicine versus clinical medicine, doctors versus other healthcare professionals) hierarchies within the medical profession; and broader social developments such as the colonial economy and general improvements in living conditions.

Although not an entirely new argument, this book should be commended for its skilful usage of systematic and extensive data assembled from both Japanese and Chinese materials. In particular, readers who are unable to read Chinese or Japanese publications will be grateful to Liu's efforts at engaging with this set of materials and presenting a very readable narrative in English. Furthermore, Liu's well-researched account delivers a convincing argument about how historical contingencies play a central role in shaping the outcomes of even the most top-down, centralized policies, such as those in colonial medicine. A concrete example can be found in the author's vivid account of how the nasty fights between two research institutes in Japan resulted in groups of top-tier Japanese medical researchers opting to leave for job opportunities in the colonies – which they otherwise would not have bothered to consider – and thereby significantly facilitating the development of colonial medicine. Finally, Liu's attention to social factors is well placed. His use of historical accounts and statistical data establishes a useful observation that the improvement of living conditions and the general population's purchasing power, not just official medical policies and regulations, should be recognized as an important part of the story.

Historically minded readers might find that not all claims are equally well evidenced or illustrated in this book, however. For instance, the author argues that “[i]n the late 1930s, Taiwan was a significant model for Japanese colonial medicine in the medical circles of the empire” (p. 147). While the ensuing discussion provides an interesting overview of the developments of colonial medicine in Manchuria, Shanghai, Korea and other Japanese colonies, it is not always clear how Taiwan served as a model in these cases. To be sure, in this and other similar instances, the author's claims are often entirely plausible, but more evidence and elaboration are desired. On a lesser note, several mistakes regarding the Romanization of Japanese words are found and should be corrected for the next edition.

Theoretically, Liu does a good job of refuting the perspectives that over-emphasize either the positive or the negative aspects of colonial medicine, but his proposed alternative theory appears less clearly developed. Liu likens his theoretical position to those taken by David Arnold, Warwick Anderson and myself (p. 168). His clear self-positioning in the field provides a good roadmap for the book, but it would have been even more useful if he could have elaborated on how he engages with, and extends beyond, existing theoretical frameworks. Still, Liu's goal to strike the right balance between theoretical patterns and historical contingencies gestures at an important, if challenging, research direction in social histories, a direction similar to what Elizabeth Clemens calls for in “Toward a Historicized Sociology: Theorizing Events, Processes, and Emergence” (Annual Review of Sociology, No. 33, 2007, pp. 527–49). He has laid solid groundwork for an explicit and coherent theoretical framework, even if the latter is not fully articulated.

In short, Prescribing Colonization is a welcome addition to the growing scholarship on Japanese colonialism, colonial medicine and Taiwanese social histories.