Monopoly System in Taiwan

The Monopoly Bureau (專賣局) was established in 1901, when the Government-General of Taiwan merged its separate opium, salt, and camphor bureaus into a single agency. It grew into the most lucrative arm of the colonial state, at its height supplying around two-fifths of government revenue. Tobacco was brought under monopoly in 1905, liquor in 1922, and matches, weights and measures, and petroleum during the war years. The Kuomintang inherited the apparatus largely intact in 1945, renaming it the Tobacco and Liquor Monopoly Bureau (公賣局) and gradually narrowing its scope, first dropping opium, salt, and petroleum, then camphor in 1968, until only tobacco and liquor remained. Privatization as Taiwan Tobacco & Liquor in 2002 ended a century of state monopoly.

Gathered here are the physical traces of that system: the bureau’s branch offices and warehouses, its camphor refineries, the wineries and tobacco factories that produced its goods, and the retail outlets through which they were sold. The commodity-specific collections on the tobacco and salt industries treat those trades in greater depth.