Formosa Delayed: George H. Kerr’s Struggles Writing About Taiwan

My article about the pre-life of Formosa Betrayed has just come out. Here's the abstract if you don't feel like clicking on the link:

George H. Kerr did not publish Formosa Betrayed, his 1965 book about the Guomindang’s early rule over postwar Taiwan and U.S. inaction during the 1947 massacre of thousands of Taiwanese people, until almost twenty years after those events. While scholars and pundits hold various theories about the reasons for the apparent delay, few have paid attention to Kerr’s attempts to write about Taiwan for the Institute of Pacific Relations (IPR) in the early years of the Cold War. Between 1947 and 1952, Kerr worked on two books, one arguing for the importance of Taiwan to postwar reconstruction in the Western Pacific, the other a more “polemical” study about the 1947 massacres that he had witnessed as a diplomat in Taiwan. Correspondence between Kerr and IPR Secretary-General William L. Holland reveals that several factors prevented Kerr from publishing an account about postwar Taiwan when it might have made the most difference – his inability to meet the IPR’s scholarly, objective expectations; his concerns about the IPR’s reputation during the McCarthy era; and the developing consensus in the United States that Taiwan was no longer a contentious issue. This article also explores why Kerr later constructed a different narrative about his failed publication efforts.

I'm glad that it's out, and I'm looking forward to any response that I get. Now back to the biography of Kerr...