一八九五年日本接收台灣之際，不少台灣人因不願被日本人統治，隨即以「義民」形式，集體組織武裝部隊與日軍對抗，這次戰役是台灣本島有史以來的最大規模陸上戰役，台灣史學家稱之爲「乙未抗日戰爭」。 有關於這場戰爭的論述，傳統上都從清帝國與日本之間的「甲午戰爭」談起，認爲台灣乙未戰爭是甲午戰爭的延續，因之，持「大中國史觀」者一般喜稱這些義民軍的抗日行動是基於國家民族大義；另一方面，持「台灣史觀」的學者雖多標舉這是一場「獨立運動戰爭」，但幾乎也都是從政治的角度解讀，其論域的相對客體仍是「大中國」。 無疑的，這兩種論述都相當程度的忽略了台灣人的主體性與多元性，因之，前者很難解釋「台灣民主國」的形成，後者則多忽略了參戰者的身份與立場，例如參戰者雖多爲「客家人」，但一般學者均吝於提及。因之，本文擬從「草根史」的角度出發，參酌法國年鑑學派布勞岱爾的史學分析方法，據之提出「義民史觀」以解讀這場戰爭，文中將提及由台灣客家人在一七二一年首創的義民組織，在清領台灣期間成了一股穩定社會的主要力量，而這種發自民間的自衛性武力組織也正是台灣乙未抗日戰爭的主力部隊。

When Japan took over Taiwan in 1895, a lot of Taiwanese defendedtheir home in a body of "Yi-Ming" (義民righteous people)-a collective civil armed corps. This war was called "Yi-Wei War" (乙未戰爭) which was the biggest scale war that ever occurred at Taiwan territory within the memory of men. Generally, there were two kinds historical standpoints about the Yi-Wei war, one was the viewpoint from the Great China, the other was that from Taiwan. With one consent, the two viewpoints always discussed the war from the beginning of war between the Chin-Japan occurred in 1894 called "Zia-Wu War" (甲午戰爭). What the difference was that the former always narrated the story based on the viewpoint of Great China nationalism, the latter attempted to establish the viewpoint of Taiwan nationalism. Undoubtedly, the two discourses seriously ignored the self-determination of Taiwanese for example the emergency of the Republic of Taiwan, and the ethnical diversities in Taiwan for example the Hakka. The discussions in this article is based on the viewpoint of grassroots and referred to the analytic framework of Fernand Braudel, which we named it the historical standpoint of Yi-Ming. That is, only if should we realize the whys and wherefores of the "Yi-Ming" (righteous people) arose since 1721, we could not touch the truth of the "Yi-Wei War" (乙未戰爭).