Geopolitical enclaves: Space and social-political change in Cold War Taiwan's Military Dependent Villages

This essay explores the development of so-called Military Dependent Villages (MDVs, 眷村) in Taiwan from 1950 through the 1990s. MDVs were built for married military personnel and their families following the Kuomintang's 1949 retreat to Taiwan after the Chinese Civil War. As walled residential compounds dotted throughout Taiwan, MDVs were exclusive spaces steeped in the Kuomintang's anti-Communist mission and later its halting commitment to the internal development of Taiwan. The temporary-turned-permanent presence of MDVs in Taiwan reflects accommodation with new sovereign territory and attendant postwar social transformations. Through the concept of “geopolitical enclaves,” this paper explores MDVs through the lens of their spatiality - their morphological variety, their geographical distribution, their aesthetic elements, and waves of upgrades and reforms – to show how the spaces were integral to the ROCs far-reaching social, political, and economic changes after retreat to Taiwan in 1949. The paper reconsiders the idea of geopolitics through the links connecting intimate household-level experiences to great-power politics in East Asia during the Cold War and beyond. • This article uncovers the political history of a neglected Cold War social space. • It synthesizes new and archival work not previously presented in English. • It places advances current thinking about geopolitics to include micro-spaces of enclaves.