James Lin, "The Global Vanguard: Agrarian Development and the Making of Modern Taiwan" (U California Press, 2025)

Mar 25, 2026

James Lin, historian of Taiwan and author of The Global Vanguard, explores Taiwan's agrarian development missions and their global reach. He discusses archival and oral-history research, the construction of the “Taiwan model,” its export to Africa and Southeast Asia, and the domestic politics that shaped and were shaped by these development projects.

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ADVICE

Add Oral Histories To Complement Archives

Supplement archival research with oral histories to capture practices on the ground and voices 'from below'.
Lin added interviews with retired technicians to understand how missions were experienced beyond government portrayals.

INSIGHT

Taiwan As A Constructed Development Success

Taiwan is often treated as an outlier 'success story' in development, prompting questions about how that success was constructed.
James Lin reframes Taiwan as actively constructing a 'Taiwan model' tied to Cold War politics, not just an organic miracle.

INSIGHT

South To South Aid Mirrored North To South Politics

South-to-South development from Taiwan resembled North-to-South aid because Taiwan pursued geopolitical and diplomatic goals.
Taiwanese missions emphasized shared rural colonial backgrounds, yet acted to secure Taiwan's international standing and votes in forums like the UN.

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What does it mean for a small state to imagine itself as a model for the developing world? And how were these visions of agrarian development received on the ground?

In The Global Vanguard: Agrarian Development and the Making of Modern Taiwan (U California Press, 2025), James Lin examines these questions through the example of Taiwan. In the first half of the twentieth century, Taiwan transformed from an agricultural colony into an economic power, and it then attempted to export its agrarian success — the “Taiwan model” — to rural communities across Africa and Southeast Asia. The book looks at how these development missions portrayed Taiwan, both at home and abroad, and shows how agriculture, domestic politics, and development politics were deeply intertwined.

Rather than treating Taiwan’s postwar development as a self-contained success story, Lin reframes it as a global project shaped by Cold War geopolitics and international development regimes. As the book shows, the “Taiwan model” was actively constructed and promoted through overseas missions, beginning with early efforts such as the 1959 agricultural mission to South Vietnam and expanding through large-scale initiatives like “Operation Vanguard” in Africa. In these encounters, Taiwanese experts worked directly with rural communities, and the model itself was reshaped in local contexts. At the same time, these missions were deeply significant domestically, serving as a way for the Taiwanese state to project national strength and legitimacy in the context of diplomatic isolation.

Drawing on extensive archival research and oral histories, Lin places Taiwan at the center of global development history and offers a new way of thinking about how models of modernization travel, as well as how “development” itself came to be understood as a technical and scientific enterprise. As such, this book will appeal to readers interested in Taiwan studies, global history, and development studies.

A free ebook version of this title is also available through Luminos, the University of California Press’s Open Access publishing program.

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