Boundless Winds of Empire: Chosŏn Korea and the Construction of Ming Empire

Date(s)： 2024/07/26

Time： 10:00~12:00

Venue： Archives 2nd Conference Hall

Host： Prof. Wu Jen-shu ( Research fellow and Deputy Director, IMH, AS)

Speaker：Prof. 王思翔（美國加州大學洛杉磯分校亞洲語言與文化學系副教授）

Organizer： 中央研究院明清研究推動委員會、IMH

Abstract:
The Chosŏn Dynasty of Korea (1392-1910) enjoyed two centuries of unbroken peace with the Ming empire in China (1368–1644). These relations have usually been understood as resulting from a Ming-centered Chinese World Order supported by the institutions of the tributary system. But this view obscures how the Chosŏn court and its envoys exercised enormous agency in shaping the terms and rationales of this relationship. This lecture explores the rhetorical strategies employed in Chosŏn diplomacy, particularly in the poetry and diplomatic correspondence. It argues how the Chosŏn court crafted with Ming envoys and rulers central aspects of Ming imperial ideology. As co-constructors and stakeholders, Chosŏn envoys insisted on integrating Chosŏn, or the "Eastern Country", into the civilizational ecumene inherited from the sages of antiquity. Besides a claim of cultural authority, the Chosŏn also used it to ward off the specters of imperial irredentism over the Korean Peninsula. The ideological underpinnings of Chosŏn-Ming tributary relations, far from a ready-made system derived from timeless Confucian principles or a coherent Ming vision of world order, emerged in part from the diplomatic dialogues over the meaning of the classical past and its political legacies.