Camphor
Mountain forest. Colonial monopoly. Indigenous land rights.
Distilled from the wood of East Asian and Bornean trees and sacred across Asian ritual.
As a strategic material for celluloid, medicine, and munitions, Camphor drove a colonial state monopoly in Taiwan whose violent frontier displaced and killed Indigenous peoples as it pushed into the mountains.
Lineage of Extraction
Colonial authorities seized camphor as a state monopoly, its wealth feeding industry and empire far from the mountains that produced it.
As the camphor frontier advanced into Indigenous Taiwanese territory, communities such as the Atayal and Seediq were dispossessed and killed to clear the forest for extraction.
Pathways to Reclamation
Why This Matters
Camphor is a reminder that 'natural resources' have always been seized through force. Reclamation is the return of mountain forests, and their governance, to the Indigenous nations colonialism tried to erase.