International Journal of Korean History (Vol.17 No.2, Aug.

2012) 77

Global History and East Asia:

A Late Chosŏn Perspective*

Kwon Nae-hyun (Kwŏn Naehyŏn)

Joseph Jeong-il Lee**

Prelude

As is widely known, Eurocentrism characterizes the hegemonic

expansion of Europe throughout the world as a universal process of
‘History,’ specifically from the 17th to 19th centuries. 1 This history
schematizes the breakdown of traditional society, a series of revolutions
(democracy, science, and industrialization), the establishment of nation-
states, and the construction of modern civilization. Recently, both
Western and non-Western scholars have raised questions about the
Eurocentric paradigm. One of the efforts to nourish a more
comprehensive and comparative aspect in the historiography of world
history is taken by a group of historians in pursuit of global history.2 This
paper inquires into the general tendency of global historians toward
promoting the convergence of world history in modern civilization. We

** The publication of this article was supported by a Korea University Grant from
Fall 2010 to Spring 2011
** Professor Kwon Nae-hyun works in the Department of History Education, at
Korea University. Research Fellow, Lee Jeong-il, currently works at the
Northeast Asian History Foundation. Dr. Lee was a research professor at Tong
Asia Munhwa Kyoryu Yŏn’guso (Institute for East-Asia Cultural Exchange),
Korea University from Fall 2010 to Spring 2011.
78 Global History and East Asia: A Late Chosŏn Perspective

believe that constructive dialogues should be sought more for a space of

symmetric perspectives in which Western and non-Western histories,
including late Chosŏn (Joseon) Korea during the 17th and 18th centuries,
can be compared in a balanced aspect of convergence and divergence.
Evening out an excess of convergence in the discussion of global
historians, this paper indicates a concurrence of convergence and
divergence in examining the historical process of modern civilization and
allows for a coexistence of West-focused, Asia-focused, East Asia-
focused, China-focused, and Korea-focused perspectives with mutual
respect. Specifically, we will touch on the issue of collective identity in
late Chosŏn to reevaluate the non-West trajectory in the construction of
modern civilization and to propose a wider spectrum of structural
contingency and historical actuality in the process. In so doing, the above
approach will lead us to a truer sense of world history that equitably
contains both global and locale-specific scales of human experiences.3

Symmetric Perspectives in Continental East Asia

Some Asia historians have recently argued for a new understanding of

global history by reexamining how European countries took the lead in
making modern civilization and capitalism, specifically concentrating on
historical exchanges between Europe and Asia from the 17th to 18th
centuries. European countries, according to these scholars, learned far
more from their contact with Asia than is conventionally known, to the
point of building the groundwork for the early shape of modern civilization
in Europe.4
Given the vital rise of Asia, particularly the impressive presence of
China and India, in today’s global community, global history inspires a
legitimate rationale for the long-term significance of the Asian primacy in
the emergence of modern Europe. Several global historians have done
critical reviews of China, whose scale in economy, size in population, and
degree of institutional rationalization in government prove comparable to
 Kwon Nae-hyun & Joseph Jeong-il Lee 79

and compatible with Western history during the period.5 This way of
looking at Europe and China on the same level is relevant both for a
future-oriented discussion on symmetric perspectives in the shape of early
modern history and a historical analysis of ‘glocalization’ in current
times.6
Amidst productive conversation on the contribution of Asian and
Chinese history to the making of modern civilization, however, global
historians do not seem to effectively deal with the problem of the
established Eurocentric interpretation. Presumably, this attitude is due to
their emphasis on the convergence of modernization/modernity to which
divergence, diversity, and difference are subject. In large part, the
globalist account has made a shift of Asia and China to the realm of
convergence.
Convergence is one major crux of modernity/modernization in the
development of global history between the 17th and 19th centuries. Drastic
transformation did occur throughout the periods when the world underwent
the unprecedented extent and level of urbanization, synchronization,
industrialization, transportation, and communication into modern civilization.
Still, a corresponding recognition of divergence should be equally
considered for a balanced ground of comparison to defy any totalizing
pattern of essentialization in global history and to render a wider and
deeper range of human experience in world history.7 The reason is that
the process of modernization/modernity and the entailing change all over
the world have been revolving around divergence as much as convergence.
These changes, ‘which went beyond the original code of modernity, have
been taking place even in Western societies.’8
Accordingly, we need to recognize the absence of divergence as the
critical problem of Eurocentrism, which champions a singular and
unilineal process of modernization/modernity from the West to the rest of
the world without entertaining any development of several modern
civilizations.9 The globalist frontage on convergence is not to neglect
divergence but to maintain the co-operation of convergence and divergence
together from a balanced perspective.
80 Global History and East Asia: A Late Chosŏn Perspective

To be specific, the analytic unit of comparison should not rest with a

dichotomist set of Europe and the rest of the world, but move further into
the histories of Asia, East Asia, and even more specific narrower locales
so as to shed light on the working of convergence and divergence in the
unfolding of modern civilization. This concurrent trait takes on the
interaction, contention, and practice of human agency as the key factor in
contextualizing the historical actuality and structural contingency of
modernization/modernity.
It is R. Bin Wong’s analysis that reconstructs the frame of global
history with a focus on the movement of agency, specifically the state in
the case of China. He observes the competence of China in international
trade during the period by underscoring state power, particularly the age-
old yet well-organized administrative technique of statecraft by the
central government. The state was the leading agency in conducting
accommodations, surveillances, and national security all over social,
economic, institutional, political, and ideological areas. 10 Wong’s
interpretation gives insight into the inner logic of historical actors within
the context of China and enables us to see a China-focused mechanism
and capture the structural contingency and historical actuality of China in
reply to the modernization/modernity of that time.
What is more, Wong presents four analytical categories of challenges,
capacities, claims, and commitments (4Cs) in which to fathom the
perennial impact of statecraft upon the unfolding of Chinese history.11
Statecraft, encompassing all corners of social, political, cultural, and
ideological practice, is counterposed to the typical Eurocentric hypothesis
that the state rose to subdue non-state actors from within, developed the
economy along with the expansive scale of international trade, and
entered into a series of great transformations toward ‘modern’ nation-
states between the 17th and 18th centuries. His emphasis on the historical
context of China herself attests to a productive venue of comparison set in
the collaboration of convergence and divergence, and permits a
coexistence of China-focused and Europe-focused approaches. Wong’s
analysis invites the legitimacy of symmetric perspectives on both sides.
 Kwon Nae-hyun & Joseph Jeong-il Lee 81

The conventional Eurocentric world history tends to depict some

historical experiences of Europe as representing the entirety of European
history. In fact, the European countries most mentioned are Spain,
Portugal, the Netherlands, France, and Britain, all of which augmented
their power into imperialism and colonialism via maritime trade all over
the world between the 16th and 18th centuries. Their limited and partial
experiences have been canonized into an essentialized pattern of modern
history.12 Considering this context, what is to be further explored is the
historical process of divergence within Europe. The European polities,
whose tentative borderlines and territories have fluctuated frequently,
housed numerous ‘Others’ within themselves while heading for unity,
integrity, and coherence in the unit of a nation-state at that time.13
Why, for instance, did Denmark, Finland, or Poland not create global
empires at the same level as Britain and France did during the time? What
were the reactions of the former to the latter’s unprecedented expansion
of trading networks all over the world? On an ideological level, what kind
of consent to and resistance against the latter’s hegemony did the former
exhibit? The necessary step to be taken is observing the multifarious,
competitive, and even confrontational responses of historical actors
within Europe at that time without tailoring certain historical phenomena
into a single formula for a general history. These questions will lessen the
pitfall of mischaracterizing and fossilizing the rich historical experiences
that the Europe of the day begot while highlighting her structural
contingency and historical actuality in the process of modernization/
modernity.
In light of this, Wong’s 4Cs turn our attention back to the complexity
in writing a global history, which current emphasis has been in large part
placed upon some theoretic aggregate of convergence. His stress on the
dynamic interaction of historical players and on the structural contingency
and historical actuality within China aptly points to the fact that global
history is not ‘given’ in a set manner but contestable in various
interpretive forms of practicable engagement. We think that this approach
sparks the ‘discursive practice’ of historical players who continue to
82 Global History and East Asia: A Late Chosŏn Perspective

produce fluid, relative, and competitive action of interpretations regarding

the historical reality that they breathe.14 In the case of late imperial China,
the state—the most competitive agent in imperial China at that time—
took immense effort to fashion refined ideological engagements in the
maintenance of an agrarian economy and civilization, and to
accommodate various social, economic, and cultural needs of localities
while mobilizing them for required state projects. In our view, this
hermeneutical step helps Asian and East Asian historians to illuminate the
structural contingency and historical actuality of various locales, to
discuss a historical China during the period, and to broaden the research
scope of global history in confluence of convergence and divergence.
Trading networks of the Spanish, Portuguese, Dutch, English, and
French maritime forces moved from Africa/Arabia to Southeast Asia all
the way to China. Still, considering the historical context of China, the
growing influence of the European powers was limited to the southern
regions from the 16th to mid-18th centuries. A great deal of historical
interaction between pastoralist forces, spearheaded by the Mongols and
their descendents, and sedentary, usually agrarian, societies in continental
East Asia also contributed to framing the historical course of China
during that time. This China included the capital of Peking representing
the de facto imperial polity down to the shore of the southern provinces.15
Under these circumstances, Ming and Qing viewed the Mongols as the
most dangerous neighbor.16 Various Khanates of Mongolian ethnicity in
the northwestern frontline took substantial part in the dynamic pattern of
continental East Asia.17 Another task was to neutralize other areas such
as Inner Asia and Korea under Pax Sinica, coupled later with Pax
Manjurica. This world system, if regionally confined to East Asia,
reached its zenith during the reign of the Qianlong emperor (r. 1735-
1796), whose reign finalized the conquest of the Jungar Mongols in the
mid-18th century. The China of the day displayed both the maritime,
connected to the Afro-Eurasian maritime network, in the south and the
continental, connected to Inner Asia and East Asia, dynamics in the
north.18
 Kwon Nae-hyun & Joseph Jeong-il Lee 83

Importantly, it is between Chinese and non-Chinese actors that such

crucial topics as Sinification, nativism, collective identity, civilization,
barbarism, and domestic order were amply addressed via numerous forms
of discursive and institutional practice.19 This is important because the
interactions show a differing layer of convergence and divergence within
East Asia and demonstrate that the imperial and civilizational globality of
Ming/Qing was not given but contended. Then, what can be further
argued is the other horizon of symmetric perspectives between China and
non-China in continental East Asia. 20 This stance will increase our
understanding of the structural contingency and historical actuality of
China in the process of modern civilization during the period.
What is more, fathoming the discursive practice, performed by
historical players of her neighbors, can encourage us to facilitate an
intrastate-level analysis of the locale within East Asia. Recent studies
reveal how non-China actors engaged themselves in various types of
discursive practice to rephrase tradition/sovereignty and universal/world
order on their terms, in order to exercise a complex mode of appropriating
the continental world system and civilization to their interest. 21 By
looking at the discursive practice of historical players in the non-China
locales of continental East Asia, accordingly, we will be able to feature
the specifics of structural contingencies and historical actuality of East
Asia in the process of modern civilization, a point of departure from
Eurocentrism and Sinocentrism.
The above approach helps us to catechize afresh such crucial subject
matters as power relations, cultural order, collective identity, and
historiography 1) within the context of a specific locale, 2) in the
historical setting of continental East Asia, and 3) along with the advent of
modern civilization. That is to say, more attention to the interactive and
dialogical mode of discursive practice in the coeval movement of
convergence and divergence in continental East Asia as well as between
Europe and East Asia can nurture a non-essentialist research methodology
in response to both locale-specific and global perspectives. And, at this
juncture we can broaden our view on the global shape of world history,
84 Global History and East Asia: A Late Chosŏn Perspective

embark on constructive discussions on a multidirectional route to modern

civilization, and establish a long-term cause for the historical process of
glocalization.
Along this line, we revisit in the following the issue of collective
identity in late Chosŏn from the 17th to 18th centuries, and discuss how
Chosŏn actors, specifically state and ruling elites, developed the
collective identity of Chosŏn herself without breaking the long-standing
partnership with the China-led world order and civilization in continental
East Asia. The matter of collective identity, as previously indicated, is
significant in the sense that it constitutes the thematic backbone of the
conventional Eurocentrism and the recent global historiography in talking
about the rise of modern civilization. This paper stays away from any
debate over a Korean prototype of modern nation-state or a pristine non-
Confucian nativism contrary to Confucianism during the periods. Instead,
it will take on the issue in such a way as to understand the vivid process
of interactions that display one layer of convergence (universal
civilization/imperium) and divergence (accommodations/sovereignty)
within the East Asia of the time. This paradigm will help us to look not
only at the dynamic workings of globalism and localism in East Asia, but
also the larger scale of the convergence-divergence frame in the
historiography of world history.

Collective Identity in the Context of Late Chosŏn

Since the 1980s, Korea historians in Western scholarship have made

significant progress in examining Korean history in the context of East
Asia. The development has had great impact on Korean scholarship’s
awareness of the growing demand for a constructive dialogue between
world history and Korean history. Still, Korea historians, if unwittingly,
have tended to follow the footsteps of the conventional Eurocentric
interpretation that dichotomizes China/Japan as a familiar Other and
Korea as an unfamiliar Other within East Asia.
 Kwon Nae-hyun & Joseph Jeong-il Lee 85

This dual demarcation of Otherness has created a betwixt-and-between

image of Korea, by which means the status of Korea has been posited
somewhere in the middle of China, whose all-around influence faded
away only after the late 19th century and Japan, whose modernizing
muscle gave formidable shape to the history of early modern Korea.22
The Eurocentric modernist interpretation also has a direct bearing on
colonialist historiography, which copies the hierarchy of superior/impact
and inferior/response between Europe and the rest of world into that
between Japan and the rest of Asia and which produces Nipponcentrism
in East Asia.23
The demarcation of Otherness in Korean history has caused Korean
historians, mostly armed with nationalism, to seek after both self-reliance
as opposed to imperial China and indigenous prototypes of the modern
within the course of pre-modern Korean history. 24 This nationalist
defense for a non-marginalized history of Korea comes in step with their
attempt to discover an essential core of Korean-ness throughout Korean
history. The Korean nation has been held as the primary agent
encompassing the whole spectrum of individuals, class, and state, all of
which are actually defined and patterned on Eurocentric terms.
Regardless of diverse viewpoints in historiography, fact and interpretation
are totalized into a history of the Korean nation. Accordingly, as much as
colonialist historiography, nationalist historiography operates on the
essentializing mechanism of the Eurocentric paradigm.
What we can’t dismiss is the fact that the opposing language and
criticism themselves hinge on the Eurocentric orbit so any immediate
counterarguments might steep an indelible centrality of the European
model as an ideal reference point in Korean history. Obsessions with how
to overcome the colonialist narrative involves the pitfall of ‘a definitional
dependence’ between nationalist scholarship and colonialist scholarship.25
The reason is that despite the highly discordant relationship, nationalism
and colonialism hinge upon ‘the shared roots of both these modes of
thought in the ideologies of capitalist modernity.’26
However, pinpointing the hermeneutical dialectics of nationalism and
86 Global History and East Asia: A Late Chosŏn Perspective

colonialism comes under the sway of convergence, in which the European

originality of modernization/modernity is oftentimes over-valorized. Yet,
as mentioned in the previous section, divergence is another fulcrum of
modernization/modernity, which centrifugal force gives concrete and
deep-seated shape to diverse facets of a modern civilization in accord
with the structural contingency and historical actuality of each locale.
Some scholars have been indicating that even the West has seriously
wrestled with the question of divergence within itself. 27 With the
Weberian emphasis on the inner world of human agency, S. Eisenstadt
believes that divergence is central to explaining the specific and practical
working of modernization/modernity and to understanding the current
plurality of modern civilization. This renewed attention to diversity and
plurality encourages him to argue for ‘a highly selective incorporation
and transformation’ of modern civilization whose specific form and
content are determined in a complexity of interpretations by human
players.
As a high pitch of divergence, Eisenstadt also takes into consideration
multifarious cultural programs. Particularly, the invention of collective
identity comes into completion via a connection between center-periphery
relations in the political arena and three layers of primordiality, civility,
and transcendental/sacredness in the cultural arena. What is remarkable is
that he envisages the formation of collective identity as an artificial
project in the intersection of symbolic space and institutional
mechanism.28 The interlocking of political and cultural elements is tied to
the unfolding of ‘the divisions of labor, the control over recourses, and
social differentiation,’ all of which run in concurrence with the changing
compound of centers and sub-centers.29
It seems that the politico-cultural synthesis proposed by Eisenstadt can
serve as a useful analytic tool to examine the issue of collective identity in
late Chosŏn, particularly between the 17th and 18th centuries. First and
foremost, Chosŏn had a clear set of center-periphery relations. As a self-
sufficient agricultural polity, the state held a well-organized central
bureaucracy, under which local administration systematically operated, and
 Kwon Nae-hyun & Joseph Jeong-il Lee 87

raised Confucianism as their orthodoxy, supporting civil government.30

Internationally, the center-periphery relations of domestic politics were also
connected with the move of the China-led world system.31 Aforementioned,
North China was confirmed as the geopolitical and civilizational center of
the continental East Asia. As late as the 16th century, the Mongols and
Jurchens in continental East Asia were powerful contingents with the
result that the defensive line of Chosŏn was mainly concentrated along
the northern border.
The state and ruling elites at the political center maximized the
peristaltic nature of center-periphery relations between domestic politics
and geopolitics, in which process the discourse on an independent
community of Chosŏn was vigorously resuscitated. Holding to a strong
sense of collective identity was effective in integrating any decentralizing
voice in society and retuning numerous local practices according to a state
orthodoxy modeled on a Confucian mode of civilization.32 Promoting the
collective identity of Chosŏn as a distinctive another realm of Confucian
civilization (So Chunghwa; 小中華) also helped confirm the sovereignty
of Chosŏn next to Ming China in the world of Confucian civilization,
which rhetoric downplayed the hostile (semi-)nomadic neighbors,
Mongols and Jurchens in particular, as uncivilized.33
Late Chosŏn had a two-tiered structure of center-periphery relations
containing domestically the power structure of Chosŏn and internationally
the Qing-led continental system of East Asia.34 The two state-driven
projects of centralization and cultural policy kept on the move even after
the Japanese invasions (1592-1599) and Manchu invasions (1627, 1636).
Political and institutional readjustments made it possible for the political
center to survive wars, domestic unrest, and natural disasters in the late
16th and early 17th centuries.35 Numerous cultural programs fueled by the
ethos of Confucian civilization were vigorously taken down to every
corner of society.36 The state also experienced an intense ideological
confrontation with Qing, the erstwhile Jurchens thought of as being
inferior to Chosŏn for a long time. The political center waged cultural
loyalism towards the late Ming and reinforced the Chosŏn version of
88 Global History and East Asia: A Late Chosŏn Perspective

Confucian civilization in the Qing-centered East Asian world.37

In this aspect, it can be postulated that Confucian civilization—a
concrete historical entity applicable in late Chosŏn to the notion of
civility—functioned as the major medium by which means Qing and late
Chosŏn, on the one hand, and the political center and localities, on the
other, could communicate with each other. Still, the passionate spread of
Confucian ideology into the rest of the society was far from mere
Sinicization. Instead, along with ample debates on how to make a balance
between tradition/nativism and universal/Confucianism the political
center continued to arrange both institutional and symbolic devices for the
accommodation of Confucian civilization according to the demands of
their own agenda.38 The complicated internal and external structure of
power relations informs us of the way in which we should contextualize
the symbolic capital of civility within the context of late Chosŏn and
continental East Asia.
The other symbolic capital of primordiality can also be reexamined via
the window of this politico-cultural collaboration made in late Chosŏn. To
be certain, this was hardly looked upon as a pristine category of universal
human value or a non-Confucian, de-Sinicized essence of Chosŏn
uniqueness. Between the 17th and 18th centuries, the state and ruling elites
mounted ideological propaganda in which to rediscover various facets of
knowledge about Chosŏn in such fields as customs, ecology, terrain,
history, ethnicity, and language in Confucian terms and to articulate the
innate disposition of the Chosŏn people in embodying Confucian
civilization.39 Finding the natural aptitude of Chosŏn toward the exercise
of Confucian civilization became the springboard for answering to what
degree the original uniqueness of Chosŏn people could be viewed as
proto-Confucian. In short, Confucian vocabularies became integral to
defining that which was of Chosŏn.40
But, the anthropo-geographical line of discursive practice, however,
was at no time exercised in a simple Sinophile tendency or Confucian
penchant. What should not be discounted here is the heft of the anti-Qing
culturalist battlefield in which the ultimate objective for shining a
 Kwon Nae-hyun & Joseph Jeong-il Lee 89

Confucian naturalness was to rephrase Confucian civilization on their

own and to affirm the dynastic establishment of Chosŏn in the Qing-
centered world order of continental East Asia. The interlocking of
Chosŏnness and Confucian affinity was meant to bring Jurchenness and
barbarism into bold relief, to pronounce the collective identity of Chosŏn
as the extant legitimate participant in the post-Ming preservation of
Confucian civilization, and to typify a tenacious presence of her polity
vis-à-vis Pax Manjurica in continental East Asia. Domestically, this
measure helped the state to brag to the rest of society about the survival of
Chosŏn amid the geopolitical turmoil of the Ming-Qing transitional
period. 41 Hence, as well as civility, the dualistic center-periphery
relations also conditioned the topology of primordiality in the case of late
Chosŏn.
Meanwhile, Eisenstadt recounts the importance of universalism/
transcendence as another symbolic capital of collective identity. In
medieval Europe, religion was the main source of universalism/
transcendence. From the 16th century, Europe witnessed the development
of discursive practice on universality/transcendence associated with the
dramatic course of wars including bellum sacrum. In the process, the vital
reconstructions of centers and collective identities came into being, and
the emergence of the modern nation-state was made possible.
Continental East Asia did not experience any serious interstate
religious wars. Still, the Qing emperors of Jurchen/Manchurian origin
vigorously produced their cosmic and celestial charisma by utilizing
various symbolic and cultural sources, based on sage-rulership from
Confucian civilization, and claimed ownership of a universal empire and
civilization in continental East Asia.42 Again, for the state and ruling
elites of late Chosŏn, the most pressing question at present was how to
address the universality of Confucian civilization in the reality of Chosŏn
suffering from the culturalist offensive of Pax Manjurica.
The intellectual community of late Chosŏn extensively developed the
discussion of Confucian universal (li; 理) and charted a metalanguage
able to delineate the relationship between universal and specific, part and
90 Global History and East Asia: A Late Chosŏn Perspective

whole, transcendental and immanent, totality and individuality, presentist

and transhistorical, theory and praxis, and self and other.43 By so doing,
the Sa ruling elites expanded the concept of universality into the universal
practice of Confucian civilization beyond time and space, specifically out
of imperial China, sufficient to objectify the position of Qing and Chosŏn
on the same level of comparison.44 At the same time, the sophisticated
command of universality also helped create a middle ground of
engagement that localized contentious voices of any social group eager to
transcend or disown the establishment in domestic politics. Likewise, it
can be said that the use of universalism/transcendence did much towards
engendering an ideological cohesiveness in domestic order and couching
the collective identity of Chosŏn under the universal façade of Confucian
civilization in counter to the poltico-cultural hegemony of Qing in
continental East Asia.
Hence, without drawing on a mechanist mode of imitation or
transplantation of Confucian civilization, the political center orchestrated
the symbolic capitals of civility, premordiality, and transcendence,
coterminous with the binary structure of domestic and geopolitical power
relations, and revived a competitive self-reliant realm of Confucian
civilization, or another realm of Confucian civilization (So Chunghwa) in
continental East Asia.45 The court debate over the ritual ceremony for
Paektu Mountain—the highest and northernmost mountain in Korea—
exemplifies the operation of this identity politics.46 Along with the state-
authorized ceremony for Halla Mountain—the second highest and
southernmost mountain in Korea—the Paektu ceremony became the chief
symbolic resource of state rituals for natural entities and spirits, which
had been performed as the main civilizational projects long before the
period of Chosŏn.47
Significant in the debate of the Paektu ritual was the ongoing
negotiation between one symbolic meaning of the mountain as the
ancestral mountain of the whole country and the other as the origin of the
royal family equivalent to the most dignified form of metaphor.48 The
recognition of Paektu Mountain as the originator of all mountains and
 Kwon Nae-hyun & Joseph Jeong-il Lee 91

rivers in her realm, connected tightly with geomancy theories that existed
in the previous Koryŏ, was rendered as the most geographically primal
reference point of holiness. At the same time, the political center also
toiled to attach the other vein of charisma to the mountain by way of
recognizing it and its environs as the time-honored sanctuary from where
the ancestors of the royal family came.
The two interpretations above set the stage for the creation of a spatio-
temporal sacredness of Chosŏn’s origin, which could be shared by the
whole nation. From the perspective of the political center, then, this
attribute of sharability could be converted into a common selfhood pivotal
to reinforcing a sense of belonging that encompassed the time and space
of Chosŏn. So, the Paektu ceremony served as an effective ideological
means of fashioning a highly integrative scale of symbolic magnetism for
statewide unity and of funding the representational asset to refurbish the
territoriality—the epitome of collective identity—of late Chosŏn.
Validating the territoriality of a greater transcendental Chosŏn via the
symbolic act of the Paektu ceremony also concerned the geopolitical
relationship between Qing and Chosŏn.49 The emphatic interest of the
Peking government in incorporating Manchuria into Qing effectuated the
absence of bumper zones between Chosŏn and the nomadic forces in
continental East Asia. In fact, the Border Stone at Paektu Mountain
ignited and held the sensitive borderline dispute between the two sides.50
And, the imperial ceremony for Paektu Mountain by the Qing court,
conducted from the reign of the Kangxi Emperor (r. 1651-1722), meant
an official recognition of the mountain as the sacred origin of the imperial
house. This act, again, reflected the troubled reality of Pax Manjurica that
the state and Sa ruling elites of Chosŏn had to face.
At the same time, given the fact that Manchuria covers in good part the
time and space of ancient Chosŏn, the assertive step of Qing was seen as a
serious encroachment on the history of Chosŏn and the sacrosanct dignity
of the royal house. This sentiment of psychological infringement sufficed
to trigger a traumatic juncture reminiscent of her devastating defeat from
the Manchu invasions in 1637, the collapse of Ming in 1646, and the
92 Global History and East Asia: A Late Chosŏn Perspective

following decadence of Confucian civilization. As a response, there

emerged a growing consensus at the political center that at least half of
Paektu Mountain should appertain to the boundary of Chosŏn. The
reinforcement of border patrols and defensive lines were deliberated in
multiple ways at court.51 What was also promoted especially among the
central elites were travelogue/reportage on the mountain and its surrounding
areas, and historiographies, including the geography, territory and manners
of ancient Chosŏn beyond the Korean Peninsular. These travelogues and
historiographies are all attributable to fleshing out the historical, cultural,
and political identity of Chosŏn.52
Once more, as in the case of the Paektu ceremony we should not
discount the fact that flashing natural, spiritual, cultural, and historical
resources on the construct of Chosŏn sovereignty in the 17th and 18th
centuries was interrelated with the center-periphery relations on intrastate-
and interstate-levels, and the symbolic codifications of primordiality,
civility, and sacredness/transcendence. This interactive yet intricate
process of distinguishing Self from Other motivates us to promulgate the
claim that the considerable development of collective identity in late
Chosŏn had less to do with the prototype of modern national consciousness,
as has been widely supported by Korean historians, than it did with the
dual mechanism of center-periphery relations inseparable from the
discursive practices of civilization, borders, and past.53 This perspective
directs towards a more constructive methodology in which to contextualize
discursive practices of late Chosŏn on collective identity in continental
East Asia.

Concluding Remarks

In this paper, we have touched on the issue of collective identity in late

Chosŏn and, if only briefly, entertained the possibility of reckoning a non-
West trajectory in the construction of modern civilization. By so doing,
different from the established modernist or new globalist approaches, we
 Kwon Nae-hyun & Joseph Jeong-il Lee 93

argue for a concurrence of convergence and divergence in examining the

historical process of modern civilization. This approach enables us to
envision a truer sense of world history that opens up a coexistence of
West-focused, Asia-focused, East Asia-focused, China-focused, and
Korea-focused perspectives with mutual respect. The Chosŏn-focused
perspective, then, also can spell out divergence and help chart a concrete
yet sharable category of comparison between Chosŏn, particularly from
the 17th and 18th centuries, and other locales in a reciprocal and
multidimensional way of thinking. The overall sketch of the themes and
studies—including continental orientation of East Asia, the Paektu
ceremony, Confucian civilization, and the divergence theory of
Eisenstadt—drawn in this article is an inchoate attempt to expand the new
approach to the matter of collective identity into more concrete research
to come.

Notes :

1 Prasenjit Duara, Rescuing History from the Nation: Questioning Narratives of

Modern China (The University of Chicago Press, 1995).
2 Pamela K. Crossley, What is Global History? (Cambridge, UK: Polity, 2009);
Bruce Mazlish, The New Global History (Routledge, 2006); Christopher
Chase-Dunn and E.N. Anderson, eds., The Historical Evolution of World-
Systems (NY: Palgrave Macmillan, 2005); J.M. Hobson, The Eastern Origins
of Western Civilisation (Cambridge, UK and NY: Cambridge University Press,
2004); Andre Gunder Frank, Re-orient: Global Economy in the Asian Age
(Berkeley: University of California, 2003); Patrick Manning, Navigating
World History: Historians Create a Global Past (NY: Palgrave Macmilan,
2003); Kenneth Pomeranz, The Great Divergence: China, Europe, and the
Making of the Modern World Economy (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University
Press, 2000); R. Bin Wong, China Transformed: Historical Change and the
Limits of European Experience (Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press, 1997);
Marshall G. S. Hodgson, Rethinking World History (Cambridge, UK and NY:
94 Global History and East Asia: A Late Chosŏn Perspective

Cambridge University Press, 1993).

3 There is a sense in which world history is oftentimes categorized into modern
times while global history is categorized into post-modern times. Pamela Kyle
Crossley, What is Global History?; Bruce Mazlish and Akira Iriye, The
Global History Reader (NY: Routledge, 2004). Though beyond the scope of
this paper, more should be discussed with respect to the definition and
categorization of two histories in two separate venues.
4 For more reference to the academic literature on the ‘Age of Indian Ocean,’
see Michael Pearson, The Indian Ocean (NY: Routledge, 2003); Michael Adas,
ed., Islamic and European Expansion: The Forging of a Global Order
(Philadelphia: Temple University Press, 1993); Jerry H. Bentley, Old World
Encounters: Cross-Cultural Contacts and Exchanges in Pre-Modern Times
(NY: Oxford University Press, 1993); K.N. Chaudhuri, Asia before Europe:
Economy and Civilisation of the Indian Ocean from the Rise of Islam to 1750
(Cambridge, UK and NY: Cambridge University Press, 1991).
5 R. Bin Wong, China Transformed: Historical Change and the Limits of
European Experience (Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press, 1997).
6 As a means of understanding the 21st-century globalization, there has a
discussion on glocalization. Jamie Peck and Henry Wai-chung Yeung, eds.,
Remaking the Global Economy: Economic-geographical Perspectives (London:
Sage, 2003); Mike Featherstone, Scott Lash, and Roland Robertson, eds.,
Global Modernities (London: Sage Publication, 1995).
7 One of the scholars who emphasizes the importance of divergence and the
presence of several modern civilizations in global history is S. N. Eisenstadt.
Divergence and plurality go against “[t]he so-called convergence of modern
society which was very prevalent in early studies of modernization. While,
true enough with the passing of time, there developed in all these studies a
growing recognition of the possible diversity of transitional societies, it was
still assumed that such diversity could disappear, as it were, at the end-stage of
modernity. But, as is well known, and as has been abundantly analyzed in the
literature, the ideological and institutional developments in the contemporary
world have not upheld this vision, and the fact of the great institutional
variability of different modern and modernizing societies-not only among the
“traditional,” but also among the more developed, even highly industrialized
societies- become continuously more and more apparent, calling for a new
perspective.” S. N. Eisenstadt, “Modernity and the Construction of Collective
 Kwon Nae-hyun & Joseph Jeong-il Lee 95

Identities,” International Journal of Comparative Sociology 39, no. 1 (1998):

139.
8 Shmuel N. Eisenstadt, Wolfgang Schluchter and Björn Wittrock, eds., Public
Spheres & Collective Identities (New Brunswick, NJ: Transaction Publishers,
2001), 4.
9 Eisenstadt, 138.
10 Wong, 88-122.
11 Ibid., 82-83.
12 For instance, Paul Cohen writes: “The modernization, or tradition-modernity
approach, with deep roots in nineteenth-century Western attitudes towards
culture, change, China, and the West, sins in imposing on Chinese history an
external-and parochially Western- definition of what change is and what kinds
of change are important. Implicitly, if not explicitly, it concentrates more on
asking of Chinese history questions posed by modern Western history-whether,
for example, China could have generated on its own a modern scientific
tradition and an industrial revolution or why it didn’t- and less on asking
questions posed by Chinese history itself. The underlying assumption is that
modern Western history is the norm, with the corollary assumption that there
is something peculiar or abnormal about China requiring special explanation.”
Paul A. Cohen, Discovering History in China: American Historical Writing on
the Recent Chinese Past (NY: Columbia University Press, 1984), 3-4.
13 Jacob Selwood, Diversity and Difference in Early Modern Europe (Aldershot,
UK: Ashgate, 2009); István Keul, Early Modern Religious Communities in
East-Central Europe: Ethnic Diversity, Denominational Plurality, and
Corporative Politics in the Principality of Transylvania, 1526-1691 (Leiden
and Boston: Brill, 2009); Jaroslav Miller, Urban societies in East-Central
Europe : 1500-1700 (Aldershot, UK: Ashgate, 2008); Almut Bues, ed., Zones
of Fracture in Modern Europe; the Baltic Countries, the Balkans, and
Northern Italy (Wiesbaden: Harrassowitz Verlag, 2005); M.L. Bush, ed.,
Social Orders and Social Classes in Europe since 1500 : Studies in Social
Stratification (Harlow and Essex, London: Longman, 1992).
14 Pamela Crossley also addresses the significance of narrational questions in the
study of global history. See Crossley, What is Global History?, 4-10 and 102-
120.
15 Min Deak-kee [Min Tŏkki], “Chung·kŭnse Tong Asia ŭi haegŭm chŏngch’aek
kwa kyŏnggye insik” [The ocean prohibition policy and recognitions of
96 Global History and East Asia: A Late Chosŏn Perspective

borders in East Asia during the Middle Age and the Early Modern Period],
Han Il kwangye sa yŏn’gu 39 (2011): 103-129.
16 Admiral Zheng He’s (1371-1433) maritime expedition ended in 1434, and the
navy was remobilized in preparation for the possible massive attack of the
Oirat Mongols in the north. For more information, refer to Louise Levathes,
When China Ruled the Seas: The Treasure Fleet of the Dragon Throne, 1405-
1433 (NY: Oxford University Press, 1997).
17 David M. Robinson, ed., Culture, Courtiers, and Competition: The Ming
Court (1368-1644) (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Asia Center, 2008);
Peter C. Perdue, China Marches West: the Qing Conquest of Central Eurasia
(Cambridge, MA: Belknap Press of Harvard University Press, 2005); David
Christian, A History of Russia, Central Asia, and Mongolia, vol I (Maiden,
MA: Blackwell Publishers, 1998); Fred W. Bergholz, The Partition of the
Steppe: The Struggle of the Russians, Manchus, and Zunghar Mongols for
Empire in Central Asia (NY: Peter Lang, 1993); Thomas J. Barfield, The
Perilous Frontier: Nomadic Empires and China (Maiden, MA: Blackwell,
1989). As of the early 18th century, the court and ruling elites of Korea also
formulated several scenarios in which they regarded the Mongols—not
England, the Netherlands, or Japan—as a realistic post-Qing hegemon in
imperial China. In the Chosŏn court, information on the relationship between
the Mongolian kings and the Qing court was one of the key military and
security issues at that time. The defensive lines were vigilantly prepared along
with the border facing Manchuria. For more reference, see Pae Usŏng, Chosŏn
hugi ch’ŏnha kwan kwa kukt’o kwan ŭi pyŏnhwa (Seoul: Ilchisa, 1998); Song
Miryŏng, “17-18segi Chosŏn chŏngbu ŭi Mongol ihae” [Understanding of the
Chosŏn government on Mongols in the 17th and 18th centuries], Chungguk sa
yŏn’gu 62 (2009): 138-167.
18 In the case of global silver flows, global historians have taken little note of the
critical role that North China played in forming a regional connection of silver
trade with Korea and Japan at that time.
Pak Pŏm, “17-8segi Ŭijubu ŭi kyŏngje sanghwang kwa chaejŏng unyŏng ŭi
pyŏnhwa” [The economic climate of Ŭijubu and change of finance management
during the 17~l8th century], Chosŏn sidae sa hakpo 58 (2011): 97-137; Kim
Yangsu, “Chosŏn hugi yŏkkwan ŭi chunggae muyŏk kwa woeganyujibi” [The
merchant trade of official interpreters and the maintenance expenses of the
Japanese residency in Pusan(倭館) in the Latter Period of the Chosŏn dynasty],
 Kwon Nae-hyun & Joseph Jeong-il Lee 97

Yŏksa wa silhak 32 (2007): 639-671; Kwon Nae-Hyun, Chosŏn hugi

Pyŏng’ando chaejŏng yŏn’gu (Seoul: Chisik Sanŏpsa, 2004); Yu Sŭngju and
Yi Ch’ŏlsŏng, Chosŏn hugi Chungguk kwa ŭi muyŏk sa (Seoul: Kyŏngin
Munhwa Sa, 2002); Yu Sŭngju, Chosŏn sidae kwang’ŏp sa yŏn’gu [Studies on
mining industry in Late Chosŏn] (Seoul: Koryŏ Taehakkyo Ch’ulp’anbu,
1993).
19 Benjamin A. Elman, John B. Duncan and Herman Ooms, eds., Rethinking
Confucianism : Past and Present in China, Japan, Korea, and Vietnam (Los
Angeles: UCLA Asian Pacific Monograph Series, 2002).
20 For instance, Peter I. Yun critically rethinks the excess of Sinocentrism in the
historiography of foreign relations among East Asia historians in West. Peter I.
Yun, “Sŏgu hakkye chogong chedo iron ŭi Chungguk chungsimjŏk munhwa
ron pip’an” [Critical review on the Sinocentric culturalism – focusing on the
tributary system in western scholarship], Asea yŏn’gu 45, no. 3 (2002): 269-
290.
21 Elman, Duncan, and Ooms, eds., Rethinking Confucianism : Past and Present
in China, Japan, Korea.
22 Andre Schmid, Korea Between Empires, 1895-1919 (NY: Columbia University
Press, 2002), 9-17. Not a few historical works in Western scholarship have
tended to remain silent regarding this sandwich mentality. What is worse,
among East Asia historians in Western scholarship, there has long been a
tendency in the study of Japanese history to understate Japan's historical
relations with Korea and to overemphasize Korea's relations with China. For
instance, see D.R. Howland, Borders of Chinese Civilization: Geography and
History at Empire’s End (Durham, NC: Duke University Press, 1996). At the
same time, there is also a recent presentist tendency in the study of Chinese
history that not only distorts the Chinese past in but also minimizes important
historical differences between China and Korea. For these reasons, pre-
modern Korean history has been wedged between Pax Sinica and Pax
Nipponica. Yi Chŏngch’ŏl, “Introduction,” in The Institutional Basis of Civil
Governance in the Chosŏn Dynasty, ed. John B. Duncan et al (Sŏngnam,
Republic of Korea: the Academy of Korean Studies, 2009), 9-10.
23 Stefan Tanaka, Japan’s Orient: Rendering Pasts into History (Berkeley:
University of California Press, 1993), 31-227.
24 Schmid, Korea Between Empires, 264-268.
25 Schmid writes: “What constitutes minjok history is in part defined as what
98 Global History and East Asia: A Late Chosŏn Perspective

colonial history is not… In this way, more than half a century after liberation,
colonial history still exists as one of the fundamental parameters of Korean
historiography, to the extent that it is difficult to imagine a minjok history
without reference to its counterpart.” Ibid., 265.
26 Ibid., 266.
27 Benjamin Schwartz writes: “One could of course extend ad infinitum the
discussion of the tensions, conflicts, and incommunicabilities, within the
world of modernity. One could point to such diverse phenomena as the
complete noncommunication between the worlds of Anglo-American
linguistic philosophers and French existentialists; to the ambiguous relations
to modernization of the various movements spawned by Freud in spite of his
own self-conception as a thoroughly modern engineer of the soul. Enough has
been said, it seems to me, to make it quite clear that the word “modernity”
refers to no simple entity…. Yet whatever may be the underlying common
premises, the horizontal tensions and conflicts among the various currents and
countercurrents of the modern world make it impossible to think of modernity
as any kind of completed or synthetic whole.” Benjamin I. Schwartz, “The
Limits of “Tradition Versus Modernity” as Categories of Explanation: The
Case of the Chinese Intellectuals,” Daedalus 101, no. 1 (1972).
28 S.N. Eisenstadt, “Modernity and the Construction of Collective Identities,”
International Journal of Comparative Sociology 39, no. 1 (1998): 139-144.
29 Ibid., 140-144.
30 John B. Duncan, The Origins of the Chosŏn Dynasty (Seattle, WA: University
of Washington, 2000); Kim Tae-Yeong, “Chujahak segye kwan kwa Chosŏn
sŏngnihak ŭi chuche ŭisik” [World view of Chujahak and self reliant
consciousness of Chosŏn sŏngnihak], Taedong munhwa yŏn’gu 37 (2000): 5-
71.
31 Pae Usŏng , Chosŏn hugi ch’ŏnha kwan kwa kukt’o kwan ŭi pyŏnhwa (Seoul:
Ilchisa, 1998); Kang Sŏkhwa, “Chosŏn hugi pukpang yŏngt’o ŭisik,” Hanguk
sa yŏn’gu 129 (2005): 95-115; Kim Hyŏnyŏng, “Chosŏn hugi choch’ŏng
pyŏn’gyŏng ŭi in’gu wa kukk’yŏng ŭisik,” Han’guk saron 41: 109-144; Han
Myŏnggi, “Chaejo chiŭn kwa Chosŏn hugi chŏngch’i sa,” Taedong munhwa
yŏn’gu 59 (2007): 191-230; Yŏn Kapsu, “Yŏngjo Tae taech’ŏng sahaeng ŭi
unyŏng kwa taech’ŏng kwan’gye e taehan insik [Envoy dispatched to Qing
perceptions of the relation with Qing during King Yeongjo Period],” Han’guk
munhwa 51 (2010): 29-63; and Kye Seung-Bum [Sŭngbŏm], “Chosŏn hugi
 Kwon Nae-hyun & Joseph Jeong-il Lee 99

Taebodan ch’inhaeng hyŏnhwang kwa kŭ ch’ŏngch’i•munhwajŏk hamŭi”

[The Altar of Great Gratitude (Taebodan): Its political and cultural aspects in
late Chosŏn Korea], Yŏksa wa hyŏnsil 75 (2010): 165-200.
32 Kim Paekch’ǒl, “Chosŏn ŭi Yugyojŏk isang kukka mandŭlgi” [Creation of a
Confucian ideal state during the Chosŏn era ― rediscovery of implications for
Western Zhou and Yao and Shun], Kukhak yǒn’gu 17 (2010): 247-290.
33 Pae Usŏng, “Chosŏn hugi chisikin ŭi hanŏ insik kwa manjuŏ” [The
intellectuals’ view on the colloquial Chinese and the Manchu language in late
Chosŏn Korea], Chosŏn sidae sa hakpo 43 (2007): 133-166; ______, “Manju
e kwanhan chisik kwa Chosŏn hugi sahoe” [Knowledge on Manchuria and the
late Chosŏn dynasty], Yŏksa hakpo 208 (2010): 235-270.
34 Kwon Nae-Hyun, “Chosŏn-Qing Relations and the Society of P’yŏngan
Province During the Late Chosŏn Period,” in The Northern Region of Korea:
History, Identity, and Culture, ed. Sunjoo Kim (University of Washington
Press, 2010).
35 Kim Paekch’ǒl, “Chosŏn hugi Sukchong Tae kukpŏp ch’egye wa Chŏnnok
t’onggo ŭi pyŏnch’an” [The National Law System during King Sukjong’s age,
of the latter half period of the Chosŏn dynasty, and the Compilation of
Chŏnnok Tonggo(典錄通考)], Kyujanggak 32 (2008): 63-107; O Int’aek,
“Sukchong Tae kukhaeng kiuje e nat’anan hanjae taeŭng pangsik ŭi
chŏngch’isŏng” [The political character of the response to the drought
calamity according to the Rite to Pray for Rain during the reign of Sukjong],
Yŏksahak yŏn’gu 29 (2007): 171-195; Kim Paekch’ǒl, “Chosŏn hugi Sukjong
Tae Sugyo Chimnok p’yŏnch’an kwa kŭ sŏngkyŏk ch’egae punsŏk ŭl
chungsim uro” [The Publication of『Sugyo Chimnok] during the reign of
King Sukjong, and its significance—focusing on the examination of its
structure], Tongbang hakchi 140 (2007): 131-194; Lee Sang-Sik [Yi Sangsik],
“Chosŏn Sukchong Tae kunsabuilch’e ron ŭi chŏn’gae wa wanggwŏn
kanghwa [On the unfolding of the doctrine of trinity” (King-Master-Father)
and the strengthening of the royal authority under King Sukjong], Han’guk sa
hakpo 20 (2005): 165-192; Song Ch’ansŏp, “Sukchong Tae chaejong ch’ui wa
kyongja yangjon” [Changes in finances and the land survey of 1720 during the
reign of Sukjong], Yŏksa wa hyǒnsil 36 (2000): 110-139; Kwon Nae-Hyun,
“Sukchong Tae chibang t’onch’i ron ŭi chŏn’gae wa chŏngch’aek unyŏng”
[Discourse on local control and policy management under King Sukchong],
Yŏksa wa hyǒnsil 25 (1997): 87-112.
100 Global History and East Asia: A Late Chosŏn Perspective

36 Sun Joo Kim, Marginality and Subversion in Korea: the Hong Kyŏngnae
Rebellion of 1812 (Seattle: University of Washington Press, 2007); Kim
Kyŏngok, Chosŏn hugi tosŏ yŏn’gu [Studies on islands in late Chosŏn] (Seoul:
Hyean, 2004); Son Sŭngch’ŏl, “Chung•kŭnse Chosŏn in ŭi tosŏ kyŏngyŏng
kwa kyenggye insik koch’al” [The management of islands and boundary
perception of medieval and modern Chosŏn], Han Il kwangye sa yŏn’gu 39
(2011): 205-259; Chosŏn ŭn chibang ŭl ŏttŏkke chibaehaennŭn ga [How did
Chosŏn govern localities] (Seoul: Akanet, 2003); Kang Sŏkhwa, Chosŏn hugi
Hamgyŏng do wa Pukpang yŏngt’o ŭisik [Hamgyŏng province and
consciousness on northern territories in Late Chosŏn] (Seoul: Kyengsewŏn,
2000).
37 Kwon Oh-Young [Kwŏn Oyŏng], “Namhan sansŏng kwa Chosŏn hugi ŭi
Taemyŏng ŭiri” [Nanham sansŏng and Taemyŏng ŭiri during the late Chosŏn
dynasty], Han’guk silhak yŏn’gu 8 (2004): 213-258; Noh Tae-Hwan [No
T’aehwan], “Sukjong•Yŏngjo Tae Taemyŏng ŭiri ŭi sahoe•chŏngch’ijŏk
kinŭng” [The socio-political functions of the Taemyŏng ŭiri discourse under
Sukjong and Yŏngjo], Han’guk munhwa 32 (2003): 153-179; Cho Yŏnghi,
“Yŏngjo ŏje wa ‘p’ungch’ŏn’ kŭrigo ‘p’ungch’ŏn’ ŭi chŏn’gohwa yangsang”
[P’ungch’ŏn in King Yŏngjo's Writings and its literary development during
the late Chosŏn Period], Changsŏgak 20 (2008): 117-142; Hŏ T’aeyŏng, “17
segimal-18 segich’o chonju ron kanghwa wa sam’guk chiyŏnŭi ŭi yuhaeng”
[The consolidation of the theory of esteem China and propagation of ‘The
Romance of Three Kingdoms’ in late 17th and early 18th century Korea],
Han’guk sa hakpo 15 (2003): 131-157; No Hyegyŏng, “Yŏngjo Tae hwangjoin
e taehan insik” [The conception of “Hwangjoin” during the reign of King
Yŏngjo], Tongyang kojŏn yŏn’gu 37 (2009): 127-159; Chong Okch’a, Chosŏn
hugi Chosŏn chunghwa sasang yŏn’gu [Studies on self-reliant discourses on
Confucian civilization of Chosŏn during late Chosŏn] (Seoul: Ichisa, 1998).
38 Martina Deuchler, The Confucian Transformation of Korea (Cambridge, MA:
Council on East Asia Studies at Harvard University, 1992); JaHyun Kim
Haboush, “Constructing the Center: The Ritual Controversy and the Search
for a New Identity in Seventeenth-Century Korea,” in Culture and the State in
Late Chosŏn Korea, eds., Jahyun Kim Haboush and Martina Deuchler
(Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Asia Center, 1999), 46-90.
39 Joseph Jeong-il Lee, “Historicist View and Confucian Repertoire in Late
Chosŏn: A Southerner Prism,” International Journal of Korean History 14
 Kwon Nae-hyun & Joseph Jeong-il Lee 101

(2009): 187-215; Jang Yoo-Seung [Chang Yusŭng], “Yi Chonghwi ŭi chaguk

sa insik kwa sojunghwa chuŭi” [Yi Chonghwi’s awareness of the country`s
history and self-consciousness of small China], Minjok munhwa yon’gu 35
(2007): 40-82; Cho Songsan, “Choson hugi sorongye ŭi tongum insik kwa
humnin chŏngum yŏn’gu” [Research on Soron faction’s recognition of
Chosŏn’s Chinese character sound and hum-min-chŏng-ŭm in the latter half of
the Chosŏn dynasty], Han’guk sa hakpo 36 (2009): 87-118.
40 Martina Deuchler, “The Practice of Confucianism: Ritual and Order in
Chosŏn Dynasty Korea,” in Rethinking Confucianism: Past and Present in
China, Japan, Korea, and Vietnam; Joseph Jeong-il Lee, “Patterning a Chosŏn
-focused Discoursein Yi I’s Understanding of Li,” Journal of Asian History 46,
no. 1 (2012): 37-57.
41 Use of anti-Qing ideology and Ming loyalism in the context of domestic
politics are well addressed by Han Myonggi and Noh Tae-hwan. See Han
Myonggi, “Chaejo chiŭn kwa Chosŏn hugi chŏngch’i sa— Imjin woeran~
Chŏngjo Tae rŭl chungsim ŭro” [Political roles and significances of “Chaejo
chiŭn” in late Chosŏn Korea], Taedong munhwa yŏn’gu 59 (2007): 191-230;
Noh Tae-Hwan, “Sukchong·Yŏngjo Tae Taemyŏng ŭiriron ŭi chŏngch’i·saheojŏk
kinŭng [The Socio-Political functions of Taemyeong Euiri discourse(對明義理論)
in Sukjong(肅宗)·Yŏngjo(英祖)],” Han’guk munhwa 32 (2003): 153-179;
Han Myonggi, “Myŏngch’ŏng kyoch’egi tongbu ga chilsŏ wa Chosŏn
chibaech’ŭng ŭi taeŭng” [Chosŏn's response to the changes of situations
during the period of dynasty change form Ming to Qing], Yŏksa wa hyŏnsil 37
(2000): 124-148; _______, “Imjin woeran sigi ‘chaejo chiŭn ŭi hyŏngsŏng
kwa kŭ ŭimi” [During the Japanese Invasion of Korea in 1592, the formation
and political meaning of 'Chaejo chiun'], Tongyang hak 29 (1999): 119-136.
42 Willam T. Rowe, China’s Last Empire: The Great Qing (Cambridge, MA:
Belknap Press of Harvard University Press, 2009); Mark C. Elliott, Emperor
Qianlong: Son of Heaven, Man of the World (NY: Pearson Longman, 2009);
Pamela K. Crossley, A Translucent Mirror: History and Identity in Qing
Imperial Ideology (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1999).
43 By and large, in modern Korean historiography a sentiment of rejection has
emerged against Chosŏn Confucianism portrayed conventionally as invariably
dogmatic, Neo-Confucian in specific, and conservative in comparison to Qing
or Tokugawa Confucianism. This negative picture has been referred to as one
major reason for the absence of epistemological change open to new modern
102 Global History and East Asia: A Late Chosŏn Perspective

ideas from the the larger world beyond China in the 17th and 18th centuries.
See Martina Deuchler, “Despoilers of the Way – Insulters of the Sages:
Controversies over the Classics in Seventeenth-Century Korea,” in Culture
and the State in Late Chosŏn Korea, 99-131. Peter Bol defines Neo-
Confucianism as identity that stretches to transhistorical and transnational
levels in the intellectual history of imperial China. This approach is greatly
helpful in exploring the trait of Confucian fellowship or comradeship in
traditional East Asia and enunciating differing perceptions of the realm of the
Confucian civilization in the region. See Peter Bol, Neo-Confucianism in
History (Cambridge, MA: The Harvard University Asia Center, 2008), 108-
111.
44 Joseph Jeong-il Lee, “Patterning a Chosŏn-focused Discourse in Yi I’s
Understanding of Li,”; Cho Sŏngsan, Chosŏn hugi nangnonye hakp’ung ŭi
hyŏngsŏng kwa kyŏngse ron yŏn’gu [Studies on the scholarship and statecraft
of the Nak school during late Chosŏn] (Seoul: Chisik Sanŏp Sa, 2007).
45 For more reference to the self-reliant discourse of Chosŏn, see Huh Tae-yong
[Hŏ T’aeyŏng], Chosŏn hugi Chunghwaron kwa yŏksa insik [Sinocentrism
and memory during late Chosŏn period] (Seoul: Akanet, 2009); Chong Okcha,
Chosŏn hugi Chosŏn chunghwa sasang yŏn’gu (Seoul: Ichisa, 1998).
46 Kwon Nae-Hyun, “Chosŏn Yŏngjo Tae Paektu sanje sihaeng nonjaeng –
ch’amyŏ inmul ŭi chujang ŭl chungsim ŭro” [Disputes about holding rituals at
Paektusan during King Yŏngjo’s reign of Chosŏn dynasty—–focusing on
opinions of the participants], Han’guk inmul sa yŏn’gu 15 (2011): 273-301.
47 Agnes Kim , “Koryŏ sidae kaegyŏng iltae myŏngsan daech’ŏn kwa kukka
chejang” [Great mountains and streams and national ritual sites in Kaegeong
during the Koryŏ dynasty], Yŏksa wa kyŏnggye 82 (2012): 1-45; ______,
“Chosŏn sidae sansin sungbae wa Chirisan ŭi sinsa” [Worship of mountain
spirits and ritual shrines on Chirisan during the Chosŏn dynasty], Yoksa hak
yŏn’gu 39 (2010): 86-119 Park Mi-Ra [Pak Mira], “Samguk•Koryŏ sidae ŭi
chech’ŏn ŭirye wa munje” [Heaven worship in the Three Kingdoms and
Koryŏ], Sŏndo munhwa 8 (2010): 7-30; Kim Ch’anggyŏm, “Silla Chungsa ŭi
sahae wa haeyang sinang” [Four seas of Silla Chung’sa and maritime beliefs],
Han’guk kodae sa yŏn’gu 47 (2007): 159-196.
48 Kwang Seok-Hwa [Kwang Sŏkhwa], “Chosŏn hugi Paektu san e taehan insik
ŭi pyŏnhwa” [The perception about the Mt. Paektu in the late Chosŏn dynasty],
Chosŏn sidae sa hakpo 56 (2011): 195-224.
 Kwon Nae-hyun & Joseph Jeong-il Lee 103

49 Kwon Nae-Hyun, “Changes in the Perception of Baekdusan during the Late

Period of Joseon,” The Review of Korean Studies 13, no. 4 (2010): 73-103.
50 Ibid.; Sŏ Kilsu, Paektu san kukkyŏng yŏn’gu (Seoul: Yŏyudang, 2009).
51 Kang Seok-hwa, “Chosŏn hugi ŭi pukppang yŏngt’o ŭisik” [The perception of
the northern territory during late Chosŏn ], Han’guk sa yŏn’gu 129 (2005): 95-
115; ______, “Chosŏn hugi Pyŏng’an do chiyŏk Ammok kangbyŏn ŭi pangŏ
ch’egye” [The defense system of the Yalu river during the late Chosŏn Period],
Han’guk munhwa 34 (2004): 167-199; Pae Usŏng, Chosŏn hugi ch’ŏnha kwan
kwa kukt’o kwan ŭi pyŏnhwa (Seoul: Ilchisa, 1998).
52 Sung, Dang-Je, “Yakch’ŏn Nam Kuman ŭi kot’o hoebogŭiji – pyŏnbang
umyŏngsi rŭl chungsimŭro” [Regaining the native land lost—Nam Gu-man`s
frontier poetry], Hanmun hakpo 10 (2004): 143-166; Suh In-Won, “Igye Hong
Yangho ŭi yŏksa insik” [Hong Yang-ho’s historical view], Tongguk sahak
29.1 (1995): 91-116; Choe U-Young, “Hong Yangho ŭi munhaksagye e
nat’anan yŏksa ŭisik” [Historical consciousness in Hong Yangho’s Literature],
Mogwon’omunhak 8 (1989): 157-172.
53 Recently, some Korean scholars also have problematized the nationalist
interpretation concerning the question of collective identity in late Chosŏn.
Huh Tae-yong, “A Critical Review on the Issue of Proto-Nationalism during
Late Chosŏn,” International Journal of Korean History 12 (2008): 89-112.

Submission Date: 2012. 5. 27. Completion Date of Review: 2012. 7. 1.

Accepted: 2012. 8. 13.
104 Global History and East Asia: A Late Chosŏn Perspective

<Abstract>

Global History and East Asia:

A Late Chosŏn Perspective

Kwon Nae-hyun
Joseph Jeong-il Lee

Some Asia historians have recently argued for a new understanding of global
history by reexamining how the European countries took the lead in making
modern civilization and capitalism, specifically concentrating on historical
exchanges between Europe and Asia from the 17th to 18th centuries. The European
countries, according to these scholars, learned far more from their contact with
Asia than is conventionally known, to the point of building the groundwork for
the early shape of modern civilization in Europe. This way of looking at Europe
and China on the same level is relevant both for a future-oriented discussion on
symmetric perspectives in the shape of early modern history. However, global
historians do not seem to effectively deal with the problem of the established
Eurocentric interpretation. In this paper, we argue that the globalist frontage on
convergence is not to neglect divergence but maintain the co-operation of
convergence and divergence together from a balanced perspective. To be specific,
the analytic unit of comparison should move further into the history of Asia, East
Asia, and even more specific narrower locales so as to shed light on the working
of convergence and divergence in the unfolding of modern civilization. The above
approach behooves us to catechize afresh such crucial subject matters as power
relations, cultural order, collective identity and historiography 1) within the
context of specific locale, 2) in the historical setting of continental East Asia, and
3) along with the advent of modern civilization. In light of this, we revisit the
issue of collective identity in late Chosŏn from the 17th to 18th centuries, and
briefly discuss how Chosŏn actors, specifically state and ruling elites, developed
 Kwon Nae-hyun & Joseph Jeong-il Lee 105

the collective identity of Chosŏn herself without breaking the long-standing

partnership with the China-led world order and civilization in continental East
Asia. This paper stays away from any debate over a Korean prototype of modern
nation-state or a pristine non-Confucian nativism contrary to Confucianism during
the periods. Instead, it takes on the issue in such a way as to understand the vivid
process of interactions displaying one layer of convergence (universal civilization/
imperium) and divergence (accommodations/sovereignty) within the East Asia of
the time. This paradigm will help us to look not only at the dynamic workings of
globalism and localism in East Asia, but also the larger scale of the convergence-
divergence frame that opens up a coexistence of the West-focused, Asia-focused,
East Asia-focused, China-focused, and Korea-focused perspectives in a truer
sense of world history.

Keywords : Collective Identity, Convergence, Divergence, Eurocentrism, Global

History, Historiography of World History, Late Chosŏn
106 Global History and East Asia: A Late Chosŏn Perspective

<국문초록>

조선후기에서 보는 동아시아와 지구사 서술

권내현(고려대학교 역사교육과 교수)

이정일(동북아역사재단 연구위원)

16세기 이후 제국주의 확장과 더불어 서구가 쌓아 올린 근대 학문의 체계와 이

론은 19세기 보편의 이름으로 변색되면서 서구중심주의를 탄생시켰다. 세계사 서
술에 있어서도 보편화된 서구중심주의적 관점이 그대로 투영되었고 이 과정에서
서구, 보편, 발전, 근대가 한 축을 형성하고 비서구, 특수, 지속, 전근대가 또 다른
축을 형성하면서 있다-없다/이다-아니다의 이분법적 사고가 형성됐다.
최근 서구학계에서는 기존의 근대화, 문명, 민족-국가 등 서구중심주의가 수반
하는 이분법적 사고를 폭넓게 비판해 오고 있다. 아시아사의 경우 16세기부터 18
세기까지 전지구적 팽창을 시도하는 일부 서구 국가들에 의해 주도된 근대문명의
건설이 인도, 중국, 동남 아시아 등 아시아 지역과의 상호교류 속에서 탄생된 사
실에 주목하는 연구성과들이 도출되고 있다. 관점의 전도를 통하여 이 시기를 재
평가하려는 시도는 세계사 서술의 폭을 넓힐 수 있다는 점에서 긍정적이다. 그러
나 서구중심주의의 도식화와 본질화에 대한 근본적인 문제제기가 이루어 지지 못
했다. 따라서 기존의 수렴이론(convergence)을 벗어나기 보다는 오히려 서구의 우
위성을 용인하는 결과를 초래하고 있다. 지구사 담론을 주창하는 중국사 전공자들
이 조선을 포함한 당시 동아시아사 문맥에 대한 충분한 고려 없이 중국과 서구
양자 간 평면적 비교연구에 몰두하면서 새로운 지구사 서술을 모색하려는 것도
이러한 문제점을 극명하게 보여주고 있는 것이다.
서구 한국사 분야 또한 서구/비서구의 이분법적 패러다임에서 벗어나기 위해서
수렴에 대해서 보다 신중하게 접근해야 한다. 양적으로나 질적으로 괄목할 만한
성장을 보여왔음에도 불구하고 이 지역 한국사 분야는 서구중심주의에서 파생된
‘중국사와 일본사 중간쯤의 한국사 像’이 여전히 무비판적으로 수용되고 있다. 이
는 서구중심주의와 중·일중심주의의 이중적 굴절이 불식되지 못하고 있는 구미
아시아사 학계의 현실을 반영하고 있는 것이라 할 수 있다. 특히 정체성 연구의
 Kwon Nae-hyun & Joseph Jeong-il Lee 107

경우 민족-국가의 형성과 서구중심적 근대주의를 바탕으로 근대/전근대, 서구/비서

구라는 이분법적 사고에 기반하여 청과 도쿠가와 시대의 탈주자학적 흐름-근대로
의 수렴-과 조선후기 주자학적 편향-근대로의 수렴 부재-을 대비시켜 왔다.
본고는 17-18세기 조선의 다양한 역사주체들이 어떻게 국내상황과 국제상황에
대응하는 과정에서 조선적 정체성을 재구성하고자 했는가에 초점을 맞춘다. 그리
고 조선 내부의 문맥, 동아시아의 문맥, 지구사적 문맥이라는 다면적인 차원에서
수렴 뿐 아니라 분산(divergence)에 대해서도 논할 수 있는 비교방법론의 가능성
을 펼치고자 한다. 이런 측면에서 볼 때, ‘완성된 근대’라는 틀에서 구축된 수렴이
론을 지양하려는 아이젠슈타트의 연구는 기존의 서구중심주의적 해석과 차별성을
가진다고 할 수 있다. 그는 근대문명의 역사적 전개에 있어 끊임없이 변화하는 운
동성, 다양성, 차이를 발견하고 그 동력으로서 역사주체들 간 상관관계에 주목함
으로써 수렴의 중요성을 부각시켰다. 더욱이 근대 민족-국가론의 핵심이 되는 집
단적 정체성 형성 문제를 서구중심적 도식화에서 벗어나 중심-주변의 역학관계(정
치)와 문명성, 원초성, 초월성의 세 가지 표상들-civlity, primordiality, transcendence-
(상징) 간 배합 속에서 입체적으로 조명하고자 하는 점에서 열린 방법론을 추구하
고 있다.
실제로 17-18세기 동아시아의 대외관계에 대한 보다 적극적인 해석이 가미된다
면 이러한 접근은 조선의 주체의식 내지는 집단적 정체성에 대한 연구에 생산적
으로 활용될 수 있으리라 생각한다. 현 국내학계에서는 해방 이후 견지된 민족주
의 사관에 대한 재고 속에 동아시아와 조선후기의 문맥에 대한 새로운 이해를 토
대로 한국사 서술을 재구성하고 있다. 양난 이후 중앙정부의 다양한 국책사업 실
행과 지방행정체재 재조직 그리고 기층 민들의 대응에 대한 실증적 분석이 밀도
있게 이루어지고 있다. 문치주의의 구체적 작동과 그 이념적 발산 효과를 재조명
하는 연구들이 나오고 있다. 이와 관련해서 夷狄 청 중심의 동아시아 세계질서로
의 재편과정에 맞서는 조선후기 (유교)문명론과 자타인식론의 발전에 대해서도 심
층적인 연구들이 다각적으로 진행되고 있다. 한 예로 이 시기 조선적 고유성, 자
연성, 독자성 담론의 심화 현상에 대해서 원민족주의론이 아닌 새로운 해석이 등
장하고 있다. 이기논쟁이나 호락논쟁 등 유교보편주의의 초월성 문제를 포함하는
당시 지성사 연구에서도 기존의 탈주자학적 경향에 대한 집착과는 달리 국내정치
의 역학관계, 조청관계 및 현실인식과 연계해서 당대적 의미를 조명하는 연구들이
나오고 있다.
따라서 국내학계의 진전은 조선후기 정체성 담론 전개를 하나의 고착화 된 형
태가 아닌 국내외적 중심-주변의 역학관계와 문명, 원초, 초월의 상징기제들과의
상호작용 속에서 분석할 수 있는 학적 조건들을 마련해 가고 있다고 할 것이다.
108 Global History and East Asia: A Late Chosŏn Perspective

앞으로 분산에 대한 보다 체계적이고 심도 있는 이론 개발과 조화를 이룬다면, 이

는 정체성 문제를 조선 내부의 문맥, 동아시아의 문맥, 지구사적 문맥이라는 3차
원적인 관점에서 통찰하여 이 시기 세계사 서술에 있어 수렴과 분산의 동시적 전
개를 균형적 시각에서 바라 볼 수 있는 비교방법론을 모색하는 데 도움이 될 것
이다. 나아가 상호이해의 세계사 서술 속에서 어떻게 조선후기의 역사가 다른 지
역의 다양한 역사들과 소통할 수 있을 것인가에 대한 전망을 타진하는 데도 기여
할 것이다.

주제어: 분산, 서구중심주의, 수렴, 세계사 서술, 역사주체, 정체성, 조선후기,

지구사

* The publication of this article was supported by a Korea University Grant.

**Professor Kwon Nae-hyun works in the Department of History Education, at Korea University. Research Fellow, Lee Jeong-il, currently works at the Northeast Asian History Foundation. Dr. Lee was a research professor at Tong Asia Munhwa Kyoryu Yŏn’guso (Institute for East-Asia Cultural Exchange), Korea University.

*** Please note that the Romanization systems employed in this paper are the McCune-Reischauer for Korean and the Pinyin for Chinese (diacritical marks omitted). Unless otherwise mentioned, transliterated terms in this article are Korean.

1 Prasenjit Duara, Rescuing History from the Nation: Questioning Narratives of Modern China (The University of Chicago Press, 1995).

2 Pamela K. Crossley, What is Global History? (Cambridge, UK: Polity, 2009); Bruce Mazlish, The New Global History (Routledge, 2006); Christopher Chase-Dunn and E.N. Anderson, eds., The Historical Evolution of World-Systems (NY: Palgrave Macmillan, 2005); J.M. Hobson, The Eastern Origins of Western Civilisation (Cambridge, UK and NY: Cambridge University Press, 2004); Andre Gunder Frank, Re-orient: Global Economy in the Asian Age (Berkeley: University of California, 2003); Patrick Manning, Navigating World History: Historians Create a Global Past (NY: Palgrave Macmilan, 2003); Kenneth Pomeranz, The Great Divergence: China, Europe, and the Making of the Modern World Economy (Princeton, NJ:

Princeton University Press, 2000); R. Bin Wong, China Transformed: Historical Change and the Limits of European Experience (Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press, 1997); Marshall G. S. Hodgson, Rethinking World History (Cambridge, UK and NY: Cambridge University Press, 1993).

3 There is a sense in which world history is oftentimes categorized into modern times while global history is categorized into post-modern times. Pamela Kyle Crossley, What is Global History?; Bruce Mazlish and Akira Iriye, The Global History Reader (NY: Routledge, 2004). Though beyond the scope of this paper, more should be discussed with respect to the definition and categorization of two histories in two separate venues.

4 For more reference to the academic literature on the ‘Age of Indian Ocean,’ see Michael Pearson, The Indian Ocean (NY: Routledge, 2003); Michael Adas, ed., Islamic and European Expansion: The Forging of a Global Order (Philadelphia: Temple University Press, 1993); Jerry H. Bentley, Old World Encounters: Cross-Cultural Contacts and Exchanges in Pre-Modern Times (NY: Oxford University Press, 1993); K.N. Chaudhuri, Asia before Europe: Economy and Civilisation of the Indian Ocean from the Rise of Islam to 1750 (Cambridge, UK and NY: Cambridge University Press, 1991).

5 R. Bin Wong, China Transformed: Historical Change and the Limits of European Experience (Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press, 1997).

6 As a means of understanding the 21st-century globalization, there has a discussion on glocalization. Jamie Peck and Henry Wai-chung Yeung, eds., Remaking the Global Economy: Economic-geographical Perspectives (London: Sage, 2003); Mike Featherstone, Scott Lash, and Roland Robertson, eds., Global Modernities (London: Sage Publication, 1995).

7 One of the scholars who emphasizes the importance of divergence and the presence of several modern civilizations in global history is S. N. Eisenstadt. Divergence and plurality go against “[t]he so-called convergence of modern society which was very prevalent in early studies of modernization. While, true enough with the passing of time, there developed in all these studies a growing recognition of the possible diversity of transitional societies, it was still assumed that such diversity could disappear, as it were, at the end-stage of modernity. But, as is well known, and as has been abundantly analyzed in the literature, the ideological and institutional developments in the contemporary world have not upheld this vision, and the fact of

the great institutional variability of different modern and modernizing societies-not only among the “traditional,” but also among the more developed, even highly industrialized societies- become continuously more and more apparent, calling for a new perspective.” S. N. Eisenstadt, “Modernity and the Construction of Collective Identities,” International Journal of Comparative Sociology 39, no. 1 (1998): 139.

8 Shmuel N. Eisenstadt, Wolfgang Schluchter and Björn Wittrock, eds., Public Spheres & Collective Identities (New Brunswick, NJ: Transaction Publishers, 2001), 4.

9 Eisenstadt, 138.

10 Wong, 88-122.

11 Ibid., 82-83.

12 For instance, Paul Cohen writes: “The modernization, or tradition-modernity approach, with deep roots in nineteenth-century Western attitudes towards culture, change, China, and the West, sins in imposing on Chinese history an external-and parochially Western- definition of what change is and what kinds of change are important. Implicitly, if not explicitly, it concentrates more on asking of Chinese history questions posed by modern Western history-whether, for example, China could have generated on its own a modern scientific tradition and an industrial revolution or why it didn’t- and less on asking questions posed by Chinese history itself. The underlying assumption is that modern Western history is the norm, with the

corollary assumption that there is something peculiar or abnormal about China requiring special explanation.” Paul A. Cohen, Discovering History in China: American Historical Writing on the Recent Chinese Past (NY: Columbia University Press, 1984), 3-4.