East Asian History

Invention of Early Joseon’s identity as a “Lesser Middle Kingdom(小中華)” and the comparative narrativization on “others” in Songs of Flying Dragons(龍飛御天歌)”

Chong Da-Ham

Ever since modern scholarship of the studies of Korean literature and Korean history after 1945 in Korea, the text of Songs of Flying Dragons(龍飛御天歌) has always been interpreted within the narrow nationalist frame which only highlights that the text is to show “unique” origin of Korean identity, only because those small portions of the whole texts were written in Hunmin’chŏng’ūm(訓民正音) alphabet. However, in fact, Songs of Flying Dragons not only includes the texts about Joseon royal house’s “uniquely Korean” identity, but also shows elaborate descriptions and interpretations on identities such as “Middle Kingdom(中華)”, Jurchens, and “Wako” pirates that modern Korean scholarship can hardly think of as “Korean” or “proto-Korean”. This study is to rethink those different identities of others that has been seen as alien and thus secondary in the text of Songs of Flying Dragons by korean nationalist scholarship, and to reinterpret them as the necessary “others” to which Joseon royal house mirrored itself to imagine its own identity and position as “Lesser middle Kingdom(小中華)” by compiling Songs of Flying Dragons, converging into the “universal” Confucian civilization of “Middle Kingdom” and differentiating from the savagery of “barbarians”.


󰡔龍飛御天歌󰡕에 나타난 조선왕실의 “小中華”적 정체성 창출과 타자인식: 그 ‘比較’의 서사를 중심으로

정 다 함

그간 龍飛御天歌에 대한 연구들은, 근대 국민국가의 형성이라는 역사적 맥락 속에서 진행되어 왔기 때문에, 龍飛御天歌를 민족의 “고유”한 정체성과 직결시키는 민족주의적/일국사적 관점을 견지해 왔다. 그러나 龍飛御天歌는, 그 “고유성”을 증명하는 증거로 읽힐 수 있는 내용 못지않게, 사실 그 “고유성”이라는 것이 “中華”와 “女眞族”과 “倭” 등의 이질적 정체성들과 끊임없이 관계를 맺고 있었음을 보여주는 내용으로 가득하다. 그렇다면 민족주의적/일국사적 관점 때문에 해석되기 어려웠던 龍飛御天歌의 이러한 성격을 어떻게 이해해야 할까?
결국 우리는 이 용비어천가가 지니고 있는 조선왕실의 “고유”한 정체성을 보여주는 부분과 그와는 다른 타자들의 “이질적”인 정체성을 보여주는 부분 모두를 함께 이해할 수 있어야 하며, 그러기 위해서는 용비어천가의 찬자들이 어떤 시각과 목적에서 이러한 다양한 타자들을 용비어천가에 등장시켰는가라는 새로운 화두로 이 문제에 접근해야 한다. 이 연구는, 훈민정음으로 쓰인 부분 때문에 한국적 “고유성”을 상징하는 텍스트로 조명되어 온 龍飛御天歌를, 그 텍스트가 담고 있는 조선왕실과 다양한 타자들과의 관계성이라는 역사적 맥락에 초점을 맞춰 다시 읽어봄으로써, 이를 당대 조선 지배층의 세계관 내지 역사인식 내지 타자인식의 틀이 어떻게 창출되었는가를 표상하는 텍스트로서 새롭게 해석해 보려는 시도이다.
기존의 민족주의적/일국사적 관점에 입각하여 진행된 연구지형의 담론지층들을 지식의 고고학을 통해 벗겨내고, 탈중심적/탈경계적/초지역적인 관점을 바탕으로 다시 살펴보았을 때, 용비어천가는, 그간의 민족주의적 관점이 본질화시켜왔던 그 한국적(조선적)인 고유한 정체성이라는 것이 오히려 14세기 말에서 15세기 초반 조선왕실이 동아시아의 여러 타자들과 조우하는 역사적 맥락 속에서 ‘발명된 전통’이었음을 보여주는 텍스트로, 다시 해석될 수 있다. “中華”와 女眞族과 倭寇는, 조선왕실이 이렇게 자기 정체성을 상상할 때에 이를 구체적으로 가늠하기 위해서 비추어보는 거울과 같이 반드시 필요한 타자로서 기술된 존재들이었던 것이다.
龍飛御天歌에서, 조선왕실의 정체성은, 中華의 역대 왕조들의 “보편” 문명과의 유사점을 강조하면서도 이를 위해서라도 반드시 中華와의 최소한의 차이점은 남겨두는 ‘비교’의 방식을 통해, “중화”와 같아질 수는 없더라도 이에 버금가는 상한선의 좌표에 설정되는 것이었다. 동시에 조선왕실의 그 정체성은, 中華의 “보편” 문명의 대척점에 위치한 女眞族과 倭寇와 같은 존재들과의 차이점을 강조하면서도 이를 위해서라도 반드시 이들과의 최소한의 공유지점(유교적 “보편” 가치)은 남겨두는 ‘비교’의 방식을 통해, 이들보다는 그 敎化의 정도에서 훨씬 앞서 있는 하한선의 좌표에 설정되는 것이었다. 결국 용비어천가에 담긴 조선왕실의 고유한 정체성이라는 것도, 그와는 다른 정체성들과의 역동적 관계성 안에서 존재하던 그 정체성을, 유교적/중화중심주의적인 비교와 위계질서의 서사를 통하여 재구성한 것이었다. 그리고 이 과정은 조선이 문명의 중심으로 여기고 있던 중화중심주의를 전유함으로써 스스로를 문명과 반야만의 사이에 위치하는 이른바 “小中華”로 창출해내는 과정에 다름 아니었던 것이다.

Religious and Philosophical Traditions of Korea, by Kevin N. Cawley, London and New York: Routledge, 2019, xxiii + 197 pp.

This volume is a comprehensive intellectual guide to the religio-philosophical landscape of Korean history in the context of East Asian cultural transmission. The six chapters of this textbook for courses on the history of Korean religion, philosophy, or culture demonstrate the transformation and glocalization of both transnational and local religions, such as Buddhism, Confucianism, Daoism, Catholicism, Protestantism, Shamanism, and native new religious movements. What are the religious traditions of East Asia? How did they interact with Korean thought? What geopolitical affect did these regional philosophical movements have on Korean kingdoms and dynasties? How were Korean religions unique? What were the identities of the new religions and how did they emerge in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries? Kevin Cawley explores the cultural and political roles of each religion as the key ideology of given eras of Korean history, from the Three Kingdoms to contemporary times. The author argues not only that Korea’s religious and philosophical traditions will continue to shape the country’s future, but also that perceiving the combination of those traditions is a way of understanding “how Koreans think, live, and practice religions, which in the Korean context is inseparable from a long philosophical tradition” (xvi).
First, in terms of definition, religion and philosophy are regarded as “pathways” towards self-transformation in a Korean/East Asian context. The author warns that insofar as its etymological meaning, the Western word “religion” should not to be applied to East Asia. Rather, it is argued, the ideological traditions of Korea should be understood as cultural ideas (the “Three Teachings” in the form of Buddhism, Confucianism, and Daoism) from ancient China, with shamanism an indigenous concept of the people of the Korean Peninsula. Philosophy in the East Asian context is understood as the set of teachings by morally cultivated scholars, wherein wisdom is seen as a realistic and achievable goal, and “which emphasizes that learning should transform how one thinks” (p. 19). Chapter 2 points out the process of cultural adoptation and interaction whereby Chinese traditions were transmitted to the Korean Peninsula in what the author calls unique “Korean ways.” Although the Legends and History of the Three Kingdoms (Samguk yusa 三國遺事) details the myth of Tan’gun, who is known as the progenitor of the Korean ethnic group, Buddhism and Confucianism were introduced to the peninsula during the Three Kingdoms period (trad. 57 CE–668). Cawley makes particular mention of the Silla military tradition of the Hwarang (“Flowering Youth” knights), who “followed Buddhist precepts and morality in order” to upgrade the prestige of the royal family  for its prestige to further validate their rule” (p. 29). The author explores the Korean monks Wŏnhyo and Ŭisang as Buddhist pioneers. The il-sim (one-mind) teaching of Wŏnhyo is reflected as “t’ong pulgyo” 通佛敎 (being with others), or “integrated Buddhism,” in Silla (617–686), while Ŭisang (625–702) is examined as the founding patriarch of the Hwaŏm 華嚴 lineage (a tradition of Mahayana Buddhist philosophy based on the Avatamsaka Sutra [華嚴經]).
Chapter 3 provides evidence on the emergence of Sŏn (Ch. Chan, J. Zen) Buddhism (with its focus on meditation) during the Unified Silla (668–935) period. The transformative feacture of Sŏn Buddhism tradition becamse integrated with other Buddhist traditions. The works of Ŭichŏn (1055–1101), with their emphasis on kyo (doctrine?), and Chinul (1158–1210), who taught kanhwa Sŏn (a method of meditation through studying or examiningmeaning?), brought about a consolidation in Sŏn thought. The Koryŏ dynasty (918–1392) witnessed the further development of Sŏn Buddhism as it transformed into “hoguk pulgyo” (state-protecting Buddhism). The completion of the Koryŏ Taejanggyŏng (高麗大藏經 (Tripitaka Koreana 高麗大藏經Great Buddhist Scriptures), comprising 81,000 print blocks, demonstrated this close relationship between the state and religion. In the following Chosŏn dynasty (1392–1897) the state ideology transitioned away from Buddhism to Neo-Confucianism. Cawley maintains that Kihwa’s thought of the Way of Humanity (injido 仁之道) was one of the main rejoinders to period socio-religious critiques of Buddhism and Shamanism. Chapter 4 introduces the Ten Diagrams on Sage Learning (Sŏnghak sipto 聖學十圖Korean title) of T’oegye Yi Hwang (1502–1571) and Essentials of the Learning of the Sages (Sŏnghak chibyo  聖學輯要 Korean/hanmun) of Yulgok Yi I (1537–1584) as the canonical texts of the early Neo-Confucian tradition in Korea of the sixteenth century. The metaphysical prosperity of the Chosŏn dynasty then confronted the new thinking called “Western learning” (sŏhak) when Catholic texts, such as Matteo Ricci’s The True Meaning of the Lord of Heaven (Ch’ŏnju sirŭi 天主實義), arrived in Korea via Beijing. Based on Hwang Sayŏng’s Silk Letter, Cawley argues that the method of early evangelization was extended through the publication of the han’gŭl (Korean) Catechism and the work of women (a marginalized group of the society). Tasan Chŏng Yakyong (1762–1836) was also mentioned as one of the Confucian scholars who turned away from the Catholic belief but became a synthesizer of sirhak thought 實學 thought (sil/sir meaning “actual” or “practical,” and hak “studies” or “learning”), a Confucian social reform movement.
In chapter 5, narratives of Tonghak (Eastern learning) is reviewed by Cawley as a reaction to sŏhak (Western learning). Su-un Ch’oe Cheu (1824–1864), the founder of this anti-Catholic movement, had “a sense of hostility toward Western Learning” (p. 118). The movement’s canonical texts, like the Songs of the Dragon Pool (Yongdam Yusa 龍潭遺詞) and the Eastern Scripture (Tonggyŏng Taejŏn 東經大全), expose the key teachings of Korea’s first new religion, including Su-un’s personal experience of encountering God. The practioners of Tonghak y, unlike elsewhere in East Asia, used locally generated talismans and incantations that were “initially two very specific features of the new religion” (p. 122). The key Tonghak doctrine of in nae ch’ŏn 人乃天 (man is heaven) was transmitted into later new religions in a slightly different formation. Cawley’s book addresses the close relationship between Tonghak and the peasant rebellion of 1894 (led by Chŏn Pongjun, a Tonghak follower) in terms of the idea of kaebyŏk 開闢, referring to a new time of “creation.” The Jeungsan (Jeungsan) movement is also explored in case studies of Jeung Ssan Ddo (better known overseas) and Daesoon Jinrihoe (better known in Korea), but the history of the Jeungsan movement can best be traced in the philosophy of its major leaders, including Kang Jeungsan (1871–1909), Cha Gyeongseok (1880–1936), and Jo Cheol-Je Cho Ch’ŏlche (1895–1958). The myth of Tan’gun is re-reformulated pictured by Na Chŏl (1863–1916) in the anti-Japanese new religion of Taejonggyo. Among these new religions, Cawley also discusses the newly arrived Protestants. The Protestant chŏndo puin 傳道夫人 (Bible women), with their enlightened education, proved a useful means of proselytizing, but the choice of terminology for the name of God became a controversial issue among both missionaries and locals.
The final chapter focuses on the complex modernity of Korea in the early and mid-twentieth century. The Korean Buddhists tried to protect their own distinctive legacy from Japanese Buddhist groups in Korea, if one sees The Korea’s independence efforts of the monk Manhae Han Yongun (1887–1944) “in the context of conflict vis-à-vis Japanese colonization” (p. 152). The establishment of Sot’aesan (1891–1943)’s Wŏn Buddhism is another illustration of the creative work of Korean Buddhism under the social and legal oppression involvement of Japanese Buddhism in the Korean peninsula. The Irish scholar investigates the so-called “new post-Christian movements” that emerged during the post-Korean War period, such as Pak T’aesŏn’s (1916–?) Olive Green Church (Ch’ŏndogwan) and Moon Sun Myung’s (1920–2012) Unification Church (T’ongilgyo). The juche (chuch’e) thought of Kim Il-sung, promoting the principles of North Korea’s chaju (independence), charip (self-sustainability), and chawi (self-defense), is included in this study of religious and philosophical traditions. The fact that Korean shamans (mudang), numbering over 300,000 in 2007, no longer limit themselves to physical space, but now promote themselves in cyberspace, is also considered a contemporary pathway for Korean religion.
Thus, Religious and Philosophical Traditions of Korea does not take a political or military perspective on Korean history, rather, it encourages readers to consider the intellectual wisdom and knowledge transmitted from traditional Chinese philosophies. Each generation of the Korean people, who were self-transformative, sublimated these key teachings into their own geopolitical environment as new pathways. This volume contains integral collective and insightful material for those scholars, students, and practitioners in Asian studies, philosophy, sociology, history, anthropology, ethnology, cultural studies, and religious studies.

  David W. Kim
  Australian National University

Tom French believes that China, Japan and South Korea are locked into a spiral of mutual suspicion, insecurity and even hate. So what should they do about it? He believes it’s time to jettison the hyper-nationalism and pursue mechanisms that lift the three countries beyond their troubled pasts.

Ōuchi Yoshitaka's attempted to move Japan's capital to Yamaguchi in 1551. These efforts failed and resulted in his destruction and the death of many courtiers. This hitherto unknown event profoundly influenced the politics of sixteenth-century Japan.

La regione del Belūcistān è, dopo anni di dominazioni straniere, suddivisa all’interno di tre Stati: Iran, Afghanistan e Pakistan. La sua posizione è notevolmente strategica in quanto situata sul lato occidentale del Medio Oriente, possibile punto di sbocco sul mare Arabico e sull’Oceano Indiano per gli stati dell'Asia Centrale e Orientale, area di mare cardine delle tratte delle petroliere che dal Golfo Persico si dirigono verso est. Le popolazioni presenti nella regione subiscono costantemente, da parte dei governi centrali, le violazioni dei propri diritti umani, economici e culturali subendo continue discriminazioni, particolarmente per ciò che concerne la partecipazione alla vita politica e al mercato del lavoro. Tensioni, scontri e guerre, che proseguono a fasi alterne da anni, sono legate principalmente alle richieste, di partiti e movimenti del Belūcistān spesso non uniti e rivali tra loro, di maggiore autonomia economica e politica. La regione, ricca di gas, petrolio e minerali, è da alcuni anni al centro di interessi geostrategici ed economici. Di particolare importanza gli accordi sino-pakistani per la costruzione del megaporto di Gwadar e del China–Pakistan Economic Corridor (CPEC), che ha acutizzato le proteste e le rivolte delle popolazioni locali, accrescendo l’aspirazione indipendentista.

Only excerpts available here. Full text is at https://www.mitpressjournals.org/doi/full/10.1162/jcws_a_00819 (or through library access)
Abstract:
From the late 1950s until 1975, the war between North and South Vietnam had both domestic and international consequences. Unlike the Cold War divide between the United States and the Soviet Union, the war between the Democratic Republic of Vietnam (DRV, the Communist North) and the Republic of Vietnam (RVN, the non-Communist South) was an armed conflict between two polities that both identified themselves as Vietnamese. In this twenty-year-long struggle, the fates of the DRV and the RVN were tied to their success in producing new generations who would subscribe to their respective agendas. This was done through many venues, of which education was one of the most important.
          This article analyzes the educational systems at the primary and secondary school levels in the DRV and RVN after the division of the country, with a special focus on the years between 1965 and 1975. It considers their respective “divorces” from the colonial educational system and explores their goals, their problems, and the means they used to overcome these problems. Moreover, the DRV attempted to create an educational mini-empire with the DRV centered agenda—establishing a Vietnamese-based system in China, bringing into the DRV Laotian children, and exporting their ideology in the educational system established in the NLF-controlled territories of the RVN. The DRV created a rigidly politicized school system focused on the war and the construction of socialism. The RVN, creating an educational antipode of the North, endeavored to separate schools from the war, largely taking politics out of the curriculum and leaving pupils to figure out for themselves the aims of the conflict and their place in it, stranding many of them in ambiguity. If the DRV system was depriving pupils of the means to challenge the government, the RVN was supplying children with such means. Relying on archival materials and published documents, this article compares the educational systems at the primary and secondary school levels in the DRV and RVN after the division of the country, with a special focus on the period 1965–1975.

The article offers a case study in the nature of uses of the European past in East Asia at a time when the search for the knowledge of the West was not yet motivated primarily by any sense of its civilizational, moral, or technological superiority. In the course of the later eighteenth century, as Dutch philological expertise gradually became another available tool – alongside the long-established Sinological erudition – for generating knowledge about the world, commentators around the Japanese archipelago began to turn not only to the medical and astronomical manuals of the occidentals but also to their histories. The translation-cum-commentary Miscellanea from the western seas by Yamamura Saisuke (1801) is a case in point. The text became effectively a crossroads of two philological and historiographical bodies of knowledge that intersected in unexpected ways as the European past was subjected to a reinterpretation in terms of the classical Chinese precedent, while the product of that reinterpretation informed a different understanding of the recent and contemporary historical trajectory of a Japan now exposed to the dynamics of the global European presence.

There is a wide consensus that the modern concept of race originated in Europe, and, by the same token, that in modern times this continent and its overseas offshoots had seen more than their fair share of extreme forms of racism. It is no wonder, then, that Western scholarship has focused on the racial attitudes towards and the impact of these attitudes on groups residing within these geographical domains. Notable among these are Black Africans in North America and Jews in Europe, and, to a lesser extent, also Amerindians and gypsies in these two continents, respectively. And yet, what is often forgotten is that in many cases European race theories targeted humanity in general, and that this broad scope also includes other groups, many of whom are virtually missing from the scholarship on race. Moreover, despite their cardinal role in this regard, Europeans have not been the sole producers of racial theories or the sole promulgators of racist agendas in modern times, and certainly not since the latter half of the nineteenth century. East Asia, as we have demonstrated in our earlier volume, Race and Racism in Modern East Asia: Western and Eastern Constructions (2013), is a pertinent and timely case study for a broader analysis of the way in which the concept of race has developed and expanded and of the way in which the mechanism of racism operates. More specifically, we assert that a careful study of the Western (European and North American) racial views of East Asians alongside the racial theories that emerged in modern East Asia are of exceptional scholarly interest. Such a study is likely to shed light not only on the rise of the concept of race and on the spread of racism in modern times, but also on the turbulent interregional relations between the West and East Asia during the last two centuries as well as on the recent tensions and internal relations between China, Japan, and the two Koreas. In our previous volume, we did this by juxtaposing the constructions of race in these two regions. This structure helped us to present the origins, continuity and developmental similarities within and between the West and East Asia. In the present volume, we seek to go one step further by focusing on topics we dealt with sketchily in the

''Red tide'' has become a familiar shorthand for unusual changes in the color of ocean waters. It is intimately related both to blooms of creatures like dinoflagellates and to the devastating effects they pose to coastal fisheries. This essay tracks the early twentieth century emergence of discolored water as an aquacultural problem, known in Japan as akashio, and its trans-oceanic transformation into the terms and practices of ''red tide'' in the post-World War II United States. For Japan's ''Pearl King'' Mikimoto Kokichi and his contacts in diverse marine scientific communities, the years-long cycle of guarding and cultivating a pearl oyster went together with the ascription of moral qualities to tiny creatures that posed a threat to farmed bayscapes of pearl monoculture. As akashio, discolored water went from curiosity to marine livestock pest, one that at times left dead pearl oysters in its wake. Red tide arose from the sustained study of the mechanisms by which changes in the biological and chemical composition of seawater might become deadly to exclusively-claimed shellfish along Japanese coastlines, but came to be seen as a way to understand aquatic manifestations of harm in other parts of the littoral world.

This paper traces a much overlooked historical  event,  whose impacts threatened to upend the status quo in the Far East and potentially escalate the Anglo-Russian rivalry in Eurasia. With the occupation of Port Hamilton (Geomundo) by a hegemon, Britain, Korea was catapulted into the centre stage of the international system, where it garnered unprecedented attention from major powers. It was also during this period that neutralisation was contemplated both within and without Korea. By exploring this incident through contemporary neutralisation discourse, this work illustrates neutralisation’s role in providing an analytical framework to assess the geopolitical importance of this incident  in  international relations. After suffering a crushing defeat in the Crimean War, Russia was forced to modify its designs in the Mediterranean and adjust itself to a new regional order. Since its room for manoeuvre was constrained by its chief rival, Britain, the Russian government was forced to tread more cautiously in European geopolitics and to refrain from military means in  advancing its interests there. Similarly, the British offensive on Geomundo thwarted Russian expansion into the Far East  and  denied Russia access to the Pacific, allowing Britain to repeat the  feat that it had achieved in the Crimean War.

This article takes a closer look at the internal evolution of the North Korean political system and how it has been subjugated to the personalist regime of the Kim family. The author argues that North Korea should no longer be perceived as a totalitarian regime since it is now a fully entrenched personal regime in the first place. The author investigates how this process of personalization took place in the institutional, ideological and mobilizational dimensions of the DPRK as well as the influence on its international relations (gatekeeping). Based on these insights the author provides some scenarios for endogenous transitions from this regime type and how hereditary succession and personalism affect its survival strategies..

总体而言，经济史的热门议题，土地和农业生产的议题很多开始让位于海洋生产和海洋经济，货币问题渐由货币政策和铸造转向跨区域流通和多国多地比较，GDP核算、国民数据库等议题已渐次让位于平均工资核算（以及算法的优化）。在比较经济史领域，西欧、中东、东亚的比较经济史仍为热门，但重点已由二十年前的“大分流”转变为近八九年流行讨论的“小分流”，因而在中国史层面而言对16世纪以降尤其是1800年以后清代中国与西欧的“分流”更重视，兼以宗教与社会变迁、家庭生活和由粮食及工资估算的生活水平、政府法律和税收研究的推进，更细致更综合的比较经济史得以达到更高的研究水平。不过在中西比较史领域，以上这些研究推进的量变并没有引起质变，相关的政府税收、财政和国家能力的讨论也多少遇到了瓶颈。与之相比，带有发展经济学影响的亚洲国别经济史研究则有显著提升，带有海洋史背景的研究也从造船、风时、港口进一步拓展到货币流动和船员生活等议题，在清代中国方面而言则是更多的文化交流、人员流动、经济联系被揭示出来。

This paper explores the characteristics of the professional identity of the Doctors of Korean Medicine (KMD), a medical profession in South Korea practicing traditional East Asian medicine. They play a primary care role in healthcare, notwithstanding the legally limited purview of their clinical and public health roles. This mainstream position came their way through biomedicalization that occurred in the profession in the context of the country's private sector-led health system. Based on data gathered among KMDs and in state-level policymaking scenes as an insider, this paper aims to illustrate the characteristics of KMDs' identity by attending to multiple levels of their presence as modern medical profession. In doing so, it draws on works that explored medical identity, Simon Sinclair's (1997) Making Doctors: An Institutional Apprenticeship in particular, to show that despite their similarities to biomedical practitioners, KMDs exhibit discriminating characteristics in their professional consciousness.

This article focuses on how political agendas and existing societal circumstances in three Southeast Asian regions impacted the early history of immigrant Hokkiens, one of the most prominent Chinese ethnic groups. The article argues that different Hokkien actions and their outcomes were shaped or highly influenced by the prevailing agenda and political struggles of local rulers and/or colonial powers, resulting in selective adaptive behaviour as ‘challengers’ or ‘cooperators’. There were prominent immigrant Hokkien challengers to the status quo in Manila and elsewhere in the Philippine Islands, but both cooperators with the prevailing status quo and challengers to it were common in Hoi An, Vietnam. By contrast, cooperators were conspicuous in Batavia and in the colonial Dutch East Indies.

CLICK HERE for a freely-available version of the article: https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/share/author/HZ5T4KDSZFJMHVXKJCUN?target=10.1111/hic3.12704

This essay explores the relationships between food and health in Chinese history, from ancient times to the present. It briefly reviews how historians have written about dietary knowledge in China's past, from a midcentury focus on discoveries that prefigured those of modern nutrition science to a more expansive recent understanding of healthy eating. From there, the piece draws on scholarship from the past 2 decades to highlight the complexity of pre-modern Chinese ideas about food and its connection to ritual, social order, moral rectitude, pleasure, and physical and emotional well-being, all of which factored into dietetic prescriptions and prohibitions. Finally, the last section focuses on the modern period. It suggests that while Western foods and nutrition science acquired great prestige in early twentieth-century China, by the early 21st century both had lost some of their luster, and interest in classical and folk understandings of diet—inflected by the postsocialist political and economic order—was again flourishing.

This is the Chinese translation of Chapter 4 of my book Leaving for the Rising Sun (Oxford 2015).
佛教史研究 第1卷
作者：浙江大學東亞宗教文化研究中心等編
I S B N： ISSN 2523-0530
規    格： 平裝本 │18開
類    別： 佛學類
冊    數： 1冊
出版日： 2017/08/31
Page: 317-357
http://www.swfc.com.tw/book_view.php?Vcode=2371

The purpose of this paper is to provide an explanatory account of the role of emotions in the trade dispute between Japan and South Korea which started in July 2019. Building on an integrated approach to the study of emotions in international relations, it argues that the collective experience of emotions in situations of conflict has to be understood in relation to the moralities assumed by the parties involved. It proposes a theoretical framework combining the concepts of mimetic desire and ressentiment coined by René Girard and Friedrich Nietzsche, respectively, in order to problematize the dialectic of power-justice underlying the processes of legitimation and self-justification by the two countries. In this sense, the strong emotional reactivity between both elites and people in South Korea and Japan can be attributed to the contradictions between the desires for superiority and equality channelled by nation-state-centred narratives. It concludes that ending the cycle of emotional reactivity requires both parties to move toward commitments to justice and empathy at the domestic and international levels.

Just as the failure to reconcile views of the past and to address historical injustice has damaged inter-state relations in East Asia, the Goguryeo/Gāogōulì dispute has harmed relations between South Korea and China. In this chapter, we provide a detailed analysis of the dispute, and explore how this contestation has been reconciled through elite settlement, UNESCO's arbitration and the idea of shared history.

Race and Racism in Modern East Asia juxtaposes Western racial constructions of East Asians with constructions of race and their outcomes in modern East Asia. It is the first endeavor to explicitly and coherently link constructions of race and racism in both regions. These constructions have not only played a decisive role in shaping the relations between the West and East Asia since the mid nineteenth century, but also exert substantial influence on current relations and mutual images in both the East-West nexus and East Asia. Written by some of the field's leading authorities, this groundbreaking 21-chapter volume offers an analysis of these constructions, their evolution and their interrelations.


REVIEWS
"In the field of race studies, race and racism in East Asia has generally been little explored. These two books [Michael Keevak’s Becoming Yellow as well] each works to address that gap in scholarship. As a pair they go a long ways toward furthering our understanding of the historical, political, and social significance of the role of race in East Asia. Most significantly, these books help us to understand how prominent a factor race was in armed conflicts in twentieth-century East Asia. The volume is divided into two parts. Part One deals with Western conceptions of East Asians. Part Two, fully half of the volume, deals with questions of race and racism from perspectives located within East Asia, whether China, Korea, or Japan. The format of an edited volume allows for a large scope of overall inquiry as well as a significant degree of specificity within individual essay. …The juxtaposition of essays in Part One brings to light a number of important topics for reflection and future research, not least the large and thorny question of just how inextricably intertwined the connections between racism and rear of decline actually are. … Part two “East Asia Race Theories, Racial Policies and Racism” breaks new ground in the field of race studies in that it is devoted to race from entirely East Asian perspectives (and there are many!)."
— Laura Hostetler, Sino-Western Cultural Relations Journal 37 (2015): 74-84.

"Within the historical research on the topic of racism, East Asia has barely played any role. This volume, the outcome of a multi-year project closes this research lacuna. ... Overall, the volume is superbly edited and easy to read and will undoubtedly remain, until further notice, the standard work on the subject of race in East Asia. For those interested in the historical development of the concept of race and wish to go beyond the European framework, this volume is highly recommended."
— Sven Saaler, Historische Zeitschrift (2014)

"A gigantic volume, its real strong point is its variety, with papers probing such interesting and understudied topics ... The scholarly summaries are very accomplished and provide a wealth of material for understanding that race is neither a fixed nor an atemporal construct, nor is it one that can be simply transferred from Western contexts into Eastern ones. ... The essays represent starting points for a variety of new work as such they are very valuable contributions to the burgeoning field. Highly recommended."
— Michael Keevak, Asian Ethnicity (2014)

"This collection of scholarly works explores racial constructions of East Asians from both external and internal perspectives. ... Not only does this book help readers understand how racial constructions of the West and East Asia interacted in shaping their relationships in the past, but also, more importantly, how these constructions still influence their current relationships in the 21st century. Summing up: Recommended. All levels/libraries."
— A.Y. Lee, Choice, 2013


TABLE OF CONTENTS
List of Illustrations and Tables
Conventions
Preface

1. Modern East Asia and the Rise of Racial Thought: Possible Links, Unique Features, and Unsettled Issues
Rotem Kowner and Walter Demel

PART I: WESTERN RACE THEORIES, RACIAL IMAGES AND RACISM
2. Early Modern European Divisions of Mankind and East Asians, 1500-1750 50
Walter Demel and Rotem Kowner
3. How the “Mongoloid Race” Came into Being: Late Eighteenth-Century Constructions of East Asians in Europe
Walter Demel
4. Between Contempt and Fear: Western Racial Constructions of East Asians since 1800
Rotem Kowner
5. “A Very Great Gulf”: Late Victorian British Diplomacy and Race in East Asia
T.G. Otte
6. Pan-Mongolians at Twilight: East Asia and Race in Russian Modernism, 1890-1921
Susanna Soojung Lim
7. National Identity and Race in Post-Revolutionary Russia: Pil’niak’s Travelogues from Japan and China
Alexander Bukh
8. Class, Race, Floating Signifier: American Media Imagine the Chinese, 1870-1900
Lenore Metrick-Chen
9. Racism for Beginners: Constructions of Chinese in Twentieth Century Belgian Comics
Idesbald Goddeeris
10. Race, Imperialism, and Reconstructing Selves: Late Nineteenth Century Korea in European Travel Literature
Huajeong Seok
11. Race, Culture and the Reaction to the Japanese Victory of 1905 in the English-Speaking World
Philip Towle

PART II: EAST ASIAN RACE THEORIES, RACIAL POLICIES AND RACISM
12. A Certain Whiteness of Being: Chinese Perceptions of Self by the Beginning of European Contact
Don J. Wyatt
13. Racial Discourse and Utopian Visions in Nineteenth Century China
Sufen Sophia Lai
14. The Discourse of Race in Twentieth-Century China
Frank Dikötter
15. Racist South Korea? Diverse but not Tolerant of Diversity
Gi-Wook Shin
16. Skin Color Melancholy in Modern Japan: Male Elites' Racial Experiences Abroad, 1880s-1950s
Ayu Majima
17. Anatomically Speaking: The Kubo Incident and the Paradox of Race in Colonial Korea
Hoi-eun Kim
18. Who Classified Whom, and for What Purpose? The “Japanese” in Northeast China in the Age of Empire
Mariko Asano Tamanoi
19. Race and International Law in Japan’s New Order in East Asia, 1938-1945
Urs Matthias Zachmann
20. East Asia’s “Melting-Pot”: Reevaluating Race Relations in Japan’s Colonial Empire 583
Yukiko Koshiro
21. Categorical Confusion: President Obama as a Case Study of Racialized Practices in Contemporary Japan
Christine R. Yano

Contributors
Bibliography
Index

CHOICE Outstanding Academic Title Award 2016. For more than 1500 years, Confucianism has played a major role in shaping Japan's history - from the formation of the first Japanese states during the first millennium AD, to Japan's modernization in the nineteenth century, to World War II and its still unresolved legacies across East Asia today. In an illuminating and provocative new study, Kiri Paramore analyses the dynamic history of Japanese Confucianism, revealing its many cultural manifestations, as religion and as a political tool, as social capital and public discourse, as well as its role in international relations and statecraft. The book demonstrates the processes through which Confucianism was historically linked to other phenomenon, such as the rise of modern science and East Asian liberalism. In doing so, it offers new perspectives on the sociology of Confucianism and its impact on society, culture and politics across East Asia, past and present.

This paper examines the port transfer process from the 1560s to the 1680s in the context of the regional history of southeast coastal China, southern and northeastern Taiwan, and the northern Philippines. According to the official Chinese, Spanish, and Dutch archives and other non-systematical sources, I reveal that the major trading port on the coast of Fujian shifted from Yuegang to Anhai during those 120 years. I then further argue that the transfer occurred in a pan-piracy order, a system in which economic exchange was dominated by piracy, and was accelerated by the Spanish-Dutch conflict, framing a longue durée (long-term historical structures over events) analysis of the cross-border studies of three research paradigms: history of the Ming-Qing transition and the Southern Ming, history of Sino-Western relations, and Socio-economic studies. From the perspective of longue durée analysis, this port-transfer case shows us mechanisms of historical change under the daily order rather than the immediate causal factors, and how the regional historical study significantly reveals larger structural characteristics.

Key Words: Pirate; Yuegang; Anhai; Order

This thesis aims to respond to the research question, “How was the appropriation of “1968” in South Korea facilitated the emergence of new political subjects and social movements between 1988 and 1997?”, by analyzing the primary and secondary sources concerning the emergence of new student activism and the New Generation as well as the establishment of Civic Movement and Progressive Parties Movement. Through extensive source analysis, this thesis attempts to provincialize “1968”, which considers a series of transitions in this period as one of many translations of “1968” worldwide. In other words, Provincializing “1968” indicates the intertwinement of the transnational activism in the 1960s and local political and cultural contexts, where the appropriation of “1968” influenced South Korean society after its democratization in 1987.

After the introduction, the second chapter introduces the historical background of the South Korean political subjects and social movements and discusses how “1968” was appropriated in South Korea between 1988 and 1997. It briefly describes the political circumstances and transformations since the June Democratic Struggle in 1987, which ended up achieving the democratic reforms on a limited basis. The background also includes the economic circumstances, where South Korea recorded a remarkable development before the critical juncture of the Asian Financial Crisis in 1997. For the process of appropriation, it analyzes three different channels of appropriation; (1) intellectuals who compared the student activism in South Korea and Europe, (2) politicians inspired by the student-worker solidarity in Mai 68, and (3) publications of translated texts.

Chapter 3 analyzes the youth in the “Korean Nineties” as newly emerging political subjects. There were two different aspects of the youth in the 1990s. On the one hand, some branches of student activism, primarily composed of underground vanguards until the 1980s, became public and lawful organizations and appropriated the “1968” as the New Left movement. On the other hand, young people in the 1990s were known as the “New Generation,” differentiating themselves from the older generation. The New Generation presented a unique lifestyle and preference, which incorporated consumerism, individualism, and preference of Western culture. Some experts referred to the “1968” to explain their motivations, highlighting the event’s cultural revolutionary features.

Chapter 4 focuses on the political diversification facilitated by newly established institutions: civic organizations and progressive political parties, representing the expanded demands and identities within the South Korean society after 1987. These organizations also led the South Korean social movements – Civic Movement and Progressive Political Parties Movement – in the 1990s. Both civic organizations and progressive parties mentioned their aims concerning the advanced demands after political democratization in their inauguration declarations, which are investigated as primary sources in this chapter. These sources do not explicitly refer to “1968”, but the diversity of political agendas implies the emergence of new social movements and activists’ vision on the post-democratization society after the ideas of “1968” were appropriated in South Korea.

Chapter 5 provides the result of source analysis on the role of appropriated “1968” on the emergence of new political subjects and social transformation in South Korea between 1988 and 1997. This thesis concludes that appropriation of “1968” facilitated the diversification of political subjects and agendas in South Korea. As South Korean politics and society experienced unprecedented diversification in this period, there were vestiges of appropriation, such as the diversification of political orientation as well as identities, even though South Koreans acknowledged deficient and selective images and slogans of “1968”. The final chapter includes short reflections on the limitation and achievements of the analysis. It also provides a brief suggestion for the following research relevant to the South Korean appropriation of the “1968” and the global history of appropriation in general.

Despite the growing number of publications on the Russo-Japanese War, an abundance of questions and issues related to this topic remain unsolved, or call for a reexamination. This 30-chapter volume, the first in the two-volume project Rethinking the Russo-Japanese War, provides a comprehensive reexamination of the origins of the conflict, the various dimensions of the nineteen-month conflagration, the legacy of the war, and its place in the history of the twentieth century. Such an enterprise is not only timely but unique. It has benefited from a multinational team of thirty-two scholars from twelve nations representing a broad disciplinary background. The majority of them focus on topics never researched before and without exception provide a novel and critical view of the war. This reexamination is, of course, facilitated by a century-long perspective as well as an impressive assortment of primary and secondary sources, many of them unexplored and, in a number of cases, unavailable earlier.


TABLE OF CONTENTS
Acknowledgements; List of Contributors; List of Maps, Tables, Figures; List of Illustrations; Conventions; Introduction; 1 The Memory and Significance of the Russo-Japanese War from a Centennial Perspective; PART I: ORIGINS; I. Geopolitical, Economic, and Intellectual Background; 2 Guarding the Gates of Our East Asia: Japanese Reactions to the Far Eastern Crisis (1897–98) as a Prelude to the War; 3 An Invitation to the Aquarium: Sergei Witte and the Origins of Russia’s War with Japan; 4 “The Unknown Enemy”: The Siberian Frontier and the Russo-Japanese Rivalry, 1890s–1920s; PART II: THE WAR; II. The Military Dimension; 5 The Clash of Two Continental Empires: The Land War Reconsidered; 6. The Secret Factor: Japanese Network of Intelligence gathering on Russia during the War; 7 Chaos versus Cruelty: Sakhalin as a Secondary Theater of Operations; III. The Economic Dimension; 8 The War and the Perception of Japan by British Investors; 9 Realpolitik or Jewish Solidarity? Jacob Schiff’s Financial Support for Japan Revisited; 10 The War, Military Expenditures and Postbellum Fiscal and Monetary Policy in Japan; IV. The Cultural Dimension; 11 The Widow’s Tears and the Soldier’s Dream: Gender and Japanese Wartime Visual Culture; 12 School Songs, the War and Nationalist Indoctrination in Japan; 13 Forgotten Heroes: Russian Women in the War; 14 The Dress Rehearsal? Russian Realism and Modernism through War and Revolution; 15 The Scepter of the Far East and the Crown of the Third Rome: The War in the Mirror of Russian Poetry; ; PART III: REACTIONS AND POSTWAR REPERCUSSIONS; V. The Belligerents: Consequences in Japan and Russia; 16 The Impact of the War on the Constitutional Government in Japan; 17 The Legacy of the War and the World of Islam in Japanese Pan-Asian Discourse: Wakabayashi Han’s Kaikyo Sekai to Nihon ; 18 Soldiers’ Unrest Behind the Front after the End of the War; 19 Imperial Russian War Planning for the Eurasian Space and the Impact of the War; VI. Divided Onlookers: Europe and the War; 20 The War and British Strategic Foreign Policy; 21 British War Correspondents and the War; 22 Participant Observation: Germany, the War, and the Road to a European Clash; 23 Perceptions of Russia in German Military Leadership during the War; 24 A Different View: The War in Austro-Hungarian Political Cartoons; 25 A Reinterpretation of the Ottoman Neutrality during the War; 26 The Jewish Response to the War; VII. Rude Awakening? Asia and the Colonial World; 27 Russo-Japanese Negotiations and the Japanese Annexation of Korea; 28 Japan’s Victory in Philippine, Vietnamese, and Burmese Perspectives; 29 The War and the British Invasion of Tibet, 1904; 30 Distant Echoes: The Reflection of the War in the Middle East; Bibliography; Index

David Kang's explanation for the peace and stability in East Asia that continued from the fourteenth to nineteenth centuries positions itself against mainstream understandings of world order in the field of International Relations, which derive exclusively from the experience of the West. However, Kang's own explanations and theories remain worryingly Eurocentric and are profoundly mimetic of the very approaches he seeks to go beyond. The implications of this Eurocentrism for epistemic and physical violence against ethnic minorities, indigenous peoples, and various others in border-zone areas-in both the West and the East-are dire and merit explicit attention

Le présent chapitre étudie les frontières de Taiwan sous un angle historique, juridique et géopolitique. Nous tenterons d'illus-trer le fait que, selon l'approche adoptée par l'analyste, les fron-tières de Taiwan apparaîtront différemment : tantôt claires, tantôt évasives ; ou tantôt revendiquées, tantôt discrètement construites. politique et territorial qui oppose la Chine populaire (la République populaire de Chine, ci-après, la RPC) et Taiwan (la République de Chine, ci-après, la RDC) depuis le milieu du XX e siècle – et dont les dimensions fondamentales demeurent en place pour l'instant, en dépit d'un réchauffement entre les deux rives depuis 2008 – l'au-dans le détroit entre le continent chinois et cet archipel, et la plu-que par Taiwan, ce qui n'est pas le moindre des paradoxes tant du côté taiwanais, qui tient à son « indépendance », que du côté (1). Car pour-quoi, dans de telles circonstances, nier l'existence d'une frontière ? Si Taiwan se considère comme « indépendante », c'est bien qu'elle (1) La disproportion entre l'île de Taiwan (36 000 km 2) et ses dépendances environnantes, faite de toutes petites îles, est telle que le rapport géographique entre un « continent » et un « archipel » est systématiquement formulé en relation entre le « continent » et « l'île » (ou entre Chine et Taiwan), et l'on oublie la dimension archipélagique, et non pas seulement insu-laire, du régime de Taipei. Cette disproportion autorise même un phénomène linguistique intéressant dans ces îles environnantes rattachées administrativement à Taiwan et à son régime, dans lesquelles les insulaires parlent fréquemment et naturellement du « continent taiwanais » (Taiwan dalu) et non de « l'île de Taiwan » (Taiwan dao).

Every war leaves an imprint in history, but few have had such a pervasive impact in so many respects as the Russo-Japanese War of 1904-1905. Politically, it fatally weakened the Russian Empire while allowing Japan to follow more dangerous paths. Diplomatically, it shook the power balance in Europe and reshaped it in the form of two coalitions, leading to World War I. With regard to the art of warfare, it emphasized the use of trench warfare and machine guns on land and the deployment of battleships and the use of torpedoes at sea.

Yet, despite its importance at the time, it has become very much a forgotten war. So now, about a century after it took place, is a very appropriate time to remind us with a Historical Dictionary of the Russo-Japanese War that provides considerable breadth and depth of coverage based on Japanese, Russian and Western sources. The breadth is accomplished through a wide-ranging introduction, a detailed chronology and an extensive bibliography. The depth comes in the hundreds of entries on military and political leaders, major battles and lesser encounters, tactics and strategy as well as the weaponry and of course the causes and consequences. The result is the first major reference work on the Russo-Japanese War in English and the largest in any language.


REVIEWS
“… as a standard reference, Kowner’s dictionary does an admirable job of providing readers with balanced readable reference work on the Russo-Japanese War.”
John W. Steinberg, Journal of Military History 70 (2006), 1149.

“… Kowner provides what must be the most thorough reference account of the Russo-Japanese War produced in the English language.  … The Historical Dictionary of the Russo-Japanese War will be the reference source of choice for any library where the conflict is the subject of study or research. It also belongs in libraries specializing in military history or East Asian or Russian/Slavic studies.”
Tony Chalcraft, Reference Reviews 20, no. 7 (2006), 52.

“An effort is made to cover the historical significance of the war in terms of both the causes and effects. Not only people, battleships, weapons, and events, but also special topics such as “prisoners of war,” “propaganda,” “military intelligence, and “medical treatment” are found among the entries. Recommended for college and research libraries.”
Junko Stuveras, College and Research Libraries 67 (2006), 474.

“One of the great merits of this book is the editor’s ability to extract and define these current [that will profoundly impact later events], which suddenly places the war in a new, more meaningful context.  … The Historical Dictionary of the Russo-Japanese War will be an indispensable addition to libraries of colleges, universities, and communities seeking to expand their titles in military history. It is especially important because, as noted above, the work is the first such reference volume in English.”
John B. Romeiser, ARBA (2007), 271.

“Kowner has worked prodigiously over the past decade to mark the conflict’s centenary by organizing an international conference, writing a 600-page history and several articles, as well as editing two volumes on the topic, and he is therefore well suited to the task.  … Kowner’s dictionary provides balanced and accurate coverage. He is also careful to point out questions that remain contentious among historians. … It is also unfortunate that the dictionary was unavailable 15 years ago, when I began my own research on the topic. It would have saved me a lot of work.”
David Schimmelpenninck van der Oye, Journal of Slavic Military Studies 20 (2007), 775-776.

“Among the [fourteen] works reviewed, R. Kowner's Dictionary treats the events of 1904-05 most extensively. Based on Western, Russian and Japanese sources, the author approaches the topic very widely. … Such an extensive work from the pen of a single author, even if this could be based on the advice of numerous colleagues, is an almost a superhuman accomplishment.”
Gerhard Krebs, Nachrichten der Gesellschaft für Natur- und Völkerkunde Ostasiens/Hamburg (OAG) 183-184 (2008), 193.

I have attempted in this undergraduate thesis to comprehensively understand the Japanese raid on Hong Kong and their occupation during the Asia-Pacific War not only by examining the background of the incursion and the situation under which Japan was put when the war broke out, but also by carefully scrutinising the policies and the orders issued by the Japanese authority and their association with the Chinese gentry in Hong Kong to successfully control the city. For the former, it is safe to understand that the diplomatic and military strategy of the southern expansion doctrine (nanshinron) and

Drawing upon a unique and untapped reservoir of newspapers, magazines, novels, government documents, photographs and illustrations, this book traces the origin, pinnacle, and ultimate demise of a commercial dance industry in Shanghai between the end of the First World War and the early years of the People's Republic of China.

Delving deep into the world of cabarets, nightclubs, and elite ballrooms that arose in the city in the 1920s and peaked in the 1930s, the book assesses how and why Chinese society incorporated and transformed this westernized world of leisure and entertainment to suit its own tastes and interests. Focusing on the jazz-age nightlife of the city in its "golden age," the book examines issues of colonialism and modernity, urban space, sociability and sexuality, and modern Chinese national identity formation in a tumultuous era of war and revolution.

“This is the first meet managed entirely by Chinese. This is symbolical of New China, it is in keeping with the Nationalist movement. We are in our way adjusting ourselves to meet the demands of a modern world! We in our way are working for our own national salvation to be attained only by our strenuous efforts. You represent the flower of young manhood of the renascent Orient, alert, physically fit, and under keen self-discipline. You, together with our own young men, represent the hope of the Pacific. You will, I trust, learn from each other, and try to understand and appreciate each other’s national aspirations and problems. You have a golden opportunity to learn from each other during this congenial gathering. You will carry the spirit of fairplay that characterizes clean amateur sportsmanship and friendly rivalry into your future life work; fair play that is essential in international dealings, and in everything concerning human intercourse. It does not matter much whether games are lost or won, if they are fairly and well played. A game can be honorably lost the same as it ought to be justly won. To you collectively and individually this meet means much, but to the future of friendly international relations among the three nations represented, perhaps it means more.”

The Japanese and Korean sea women (Ama in Japanese and Haenyeo in Korean), female free-divers who make their living by harvesting shellfish and seaweed, have recently been spotlighted as examples of indigenous peoples that embody the intangible cultural heritage of humanity. Focusing on the role of science in this envisioning, this paper explores how Japanese imperial research on the physiology of the woman divers was revitalized in the form of a trans-pacific scientific collaboration after World War II. In the prewar period, Gitō Teruoka (1889-1966) studied the Japanese diving women as "primitive" industrial laborers from the perspective of German labor physiology (Arbeitsphysiologie). Hermann Rahn (1912-1990) at the University of Buffalo, New York, revamped Terouka's prewar research as part of his environmental physiology and created a research network, albeit a selective one, among US, Japanese, and South Korean physiologists in the postwar period. Examining the network-making process led by the founding scholar in environmental physiology through the 1965 symposium on the Ama of Japan, this paper will reveal that a shift in understanding of the "primitive" in the Cold War context renewed scientific interest in the diving women and played a central role in the formation of the trans-pacific network.

This paper explores South Korean heritage practices aimed at erasing the colonial past from the national heritage landscape, in the course of a social movement to uncover the historical truth and create accurate representations of the past. I argue that in the 1990s, the state repudiated historic sites that were perceived as tainted by the colonial rule, because it believed them to materialize a distorted historical narrative. The state-led correction of this narrative aligned the heritage landscape with the rhetoric of colonial resistance and the representation of the nation-state as being perpetually characterized by independence and resistance. The Office of Cultural Properties, the governmental agency dealing with the management of national heritage, identified patrimonial sites that were allegedly tarnished by the colonial past and subverted their importance through various forms of erasure and forgetting. The paper investigates these practices, ranging from renaming sites and demoting the heritage status of monuments, to iconoclastic gestures such as celebrated demolitions of colonial architecture. The analysis of South Korea's treatment of its colonial heritage illustrates the silencing of difficult memories in the process of decolonization, and the central place heritage occupies not only in identity formation, but also in breaking with the past in the course of decolonization.

This article demonstrates historically and statistically that conversionary Protestants (CPs) heavily influenced the rise and spread of stable democracy around the world. It argues that CPs were a crucial catalyst initiating the development and spread of religious liberty, mass education, mass printing, newspapers, voluntary organizations, and colonial reforms, thereby creating the conditions that made stable democracy more likely. Statistically, the historic prevalence of Protestant missionaries explains about half the variation in democracy in Africa, Asia, Latin America and Oceania and removes the impact of most variables that dominate current statistical research about democracy. The association between Protestant missions and democracy is consistent in different continents and subsamples, and it is robust to more than 50 controls and to instrumental variable analyses.

This article uses legal archives from Liangshan 梁山 county, Shandong, to explore the ambiguous position of rural markets in China during the Great Leap Forward campaign (1958–1962). These testimonies, though sparse, show that negotiations at a local, indeed personal, level underpinned the symbiosis between the “second economy” of illicit trade and the party-state’s putatively socialist political economy. Liangshan’s gray market bridged the gap between the party-state’s Sputnik promises and catastrophic realities, contributing twofold to the party-state’s political survival. First, illicit commerce helped famine survivors, including local cadres, obtain desperately needed sustenance; these cadres’ support of trading villagers despite top-down restrictions on such transactions likely helped them retain local moral authority after the Leap. Second, the intermittent formal prosecution of “profiteers” in the ritualized space of the county courtroom projected justice, stability, and coercive power, which also contributed to the party’s continuing hold on authority.