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Status seeking in hierarchy: Korea and Vietnam under Chinese hegemony in early modern Asia
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Status seeking in hierarchy: Korea and Vietnam under Chinese hegemony in early modern Asia
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Status Seeking in Hierarchy:
Korea and Vietnam under Chinese Hegemony
in Early Modern Asia
In Young Min
A Dissertation Presented to the
Faculty of the Graduate School
University of Southern California
In Partial Fulfillment of the Requirements for the Degree
Doctor of Philosophy
(Political Science and International Relations)
August 2018
1
2
Table of Contents
Abstract ...................................................................................................................... 3
Chapter 1: Introduction .............................................................................................. 5
Chapter 2: Identity Strategy and Status Seeking under Hierarchy ..........................20
Chapter 3 Korea’s Identity Strategy under Ming Hegemony ..................................44
Chapter 4 Korea’s Identity Strategy under Qing Hegemony...................................74
Chapter 5 Vietnam’s Quest for Identity in Southeast Asia....................................102
Chapter 6 Conclusion .............................................................................................127
Bibliography ...........................................................................................................131
3
Abstract
Status Seeking in Hierarchy:
Korea and Vietnam under Chinese Hegemony
in Early Modern Asia
In Young Min
Doctor of Philosophy in Political Science and International Relations
University of Southern California
Professor David C. Kang, Chair
This dissertation is about secondary states’ status seeking strategies under Chinese
hegemony in early modern East Asia. The primary goal of the dissertation is to examine the
causes of varying status seeking strategies of China’s tributary states, and how that in turn
shaped the nature of international hierarchy during the Ming and the Qing. More specifically, I
ask the following questions in the dissertation: Why do some secondary states actively seek their
place in hierarchy while others do not? Under what conditions do secondary states choose
different types of status seeking strategies?
To answer these theoretical questions, I compare Korea and Vietnam and their
relationship vis-à-vis the Ming and the Qing China. Both Korea and Vietnam were considered as
the most loyal and culturally similar tributaries. They both rarely questioned Chinese suzerainty
and accepted their kingdoms’ vassal status. They also actively sought recognition from Chinese
emperors for their right to survival. Their relationships with Chinese states were relatively
durable for centuries. Yet while Korean elites actively pursued status as a model tributary state,
Vietnamese elites were never fully convinced that China was to be regarded as the only suzerain.
Vietnamese rulers, in fact, proclaimed themselves as “emperor” internally, while calling
themselves as “king” only when communicating with China. Korea’s status seeking strategy
4
secured it a firm place under the Chinese hegemony and even “co-constructed” the Chinese
empire.
Then why Korea and Vietnam, despite their formal commitment to tributary obligations,
chose different strategies of status seeking? I hypothesize that the interplay between material and
ideational factors can explain varying status seeking strategies of secondary states in hierarchy.
To be specific, status seeking strategies reflect both agentic choice of ruling elites and
geopolitical structure in which they make such choice. In this way, I emphasize the interplay
between material and ideational factors in analyzing secondary states’ status seeking behavior.
Using evidence from comparative case studies, this dissertation shows that Korea and Vietnam
were situated in distinctive geopolitical context that affected their choice of how to define and
secure their identities vis-à-vis China. Vietnam was a frontier state in a way Korea was not.
Unlike Korea, therefore, Vietnam was repeatedly contested by the non-Confucian polities who
shared its frontiers. While Vietnam vied for imperial recognition and protection from China, its
elites chose to seek status through competition against its non-Confucian neighbors. Korea’s
stable territoriality, in contrast, allowed it to actively pursue status through transforming itself to
the most Sinicized tributary.
The contribution of this dissertation is twofold. First, it adds nuance of the dynamics of
secondary states response to Chinese hegemony to the growing body of literature on Asian IR
history by showing that response to Chinese hegemony was not uniform even among the most
loyal tributary states, Korea and Vietnam. While I join the recent trend in the literature that puts
analytical weight on the role of secondary states under Chinese hegemony, this dissertation
represents a departure from it by highlighting the interplay between material and ideational
factors. The dissertation also moves beyond the Korea/Japan dyad as cases for comparison by
analyzing Korea and Vietnam. Second, this dissertation speaks to the literature on hierarchy and
status seeking. It seeks to correct the great power-centered view by showing that secondary states
also pursue status and that it has important implications for the dynamics of international
hierarchy.
5
Chapter 1: Introduction
One of the most pressing issues that international relations scholars is facing today is how
the rise of China will shape regional and international order. Much ink has already been spilled
on this topic and will likely be in the future as China becomes more and more wealthy and
powerful. It is often forgotten in these debates, however, the “rise of China” is not an accurate
description of what we have been witnessing. China is returning to its historical position as the
center of the world, as its name “middle kingdom” indicates. As Andre Gunder Frank has shown
in his masterful book, at least until well into the eighteenth century, China was the most
economically advanced country in the world and enjoyed positive balance of trade with the West
until the early nineteenth century.
1
The historical memory of hegemonic China still lingers in the
minds of not only Chinese but its neighbors as well. When China’s neighbors talk about the
prospects of regional order, historical memory of Sinocentric international order often serves as a
reference point for discussion.
Pioneered by David Kang, international relations scholars have increasingly turned their
attention to the historical international order centered on powerful China during the past decade.
2
1
Andre Gunder Frank, ReORIENT: Global Economy in the Asian Age (University of California Press, 1998), 35.
2
David C. Kang, “Hierarchy, Balancing, and Empirical Puzzles in Asian International Relations,” International
Security 28, no. 3 (January 1, 2004): 165–80, https://doi.org/10.1162/016228803773100110; David C. Kang, China
Rising: Peace, Power, and Order in East Asia (Columbia University Press, 2008); David C. Kang, East Asia Before
the West: Five Centuries of Trade and Tribute (New York: Columbia University Press, 2010); David C. Kang,
“Hierarchy and Legitimacy in International Systems: The Tribute System in Early Modern East Asia,” Security
Studies 19, no. 4 (November 23, 2010): 591–622, https://doi.org/10.1080/09636412.2010.524079. There are some
other pioneering works that engaged East Asian history from rather different angles. See Alastair Iain Johnston,
Cultural Realism: Strategic Culture and Grand Strategy in Chinese History (Princeton, N.J.: Princeton University
Press, 1998); Victoria Tin-bor Hui, “Toward a Dynamic Theory of International Politics: Insights from Comparing
Ancient China and Early Modern Europe,” International Organization 58, no. 1 (2004): 175–205,
6
Kang has challenged the Eurocentric assumptions in mainstream IR’s prediction that Asia’s
future will resemble Europe’s past as more powerful China seeks to redefine the regional order
in East Asia. Drawing from East Asia’s historical experience, he and others have rejected
universal claims of mainstream IR that balancing naturally predominates over bandwagoning,
and that organizing principle of international system is always determined by the notion of
anarchy. In fact, the historical experience of East Asia can provide enormous wealth of cases and
patterns that may be potentially distinctive from existing IR theories largely derived from
European experience. This line of research has the potential to force IR scholars to revisit and
revise some of the Eurocentric IR theories that have been accepted as holding universal
application across time and space.
3
As Alastair Iain Johnston has argued, “ignoring East Asian
cases in IR might mean that many of the claims in transatlantic IR theory today have external
validity problems, and including these cases/observations might mean out theories of IR require
serious revision.
4
Kang also believes that the emerging scholarship on this topic has the
“potential to influence some of the most central questions in international relations: the nature of
the state, the formation of state preferences, and the interplay between material and ideational
factors.”
5
One of the most significant contributions of this research tradition so far is the thesis that
East Asia for five centuries before the European expansion into the region has achieved
strikingly stable international order, which is a stark contrast to the contemporaneous European
https://doi.org/10.2307/3877892; Victoria Tin-bor Hui, War and State Formation in Ancient China and Early
Modern Europe (New York: Cambridge University Press, 2005).
3
Barry Buzan and Richard Little, International Systems in World History: Remaking the Study of International
Relations (New York: Oxford University Press, 2000); Amitav Acharya and Barry Buzan, Non-Western
International Relations Theory: Perspectives On and Beyond Asia (Routledge, 2009).
4
Alastair Iain Johnston, “What (If Anything) Does East Asia Tell Us About International Relations Theory?,”
Annual Review of Political Science 15, no. 1 (2012): 56, https://doi.org/10.1146/annurev.polisci.040908.120058.
5
David C. Kang, “International Relations Theory and East Asian History: An Overview,” Journal of East Asian
Studies 13, no. 2 (2013): 182.
7
international system characterized by frequent wars and struggle over power. What may be
called as “Confucian Long Peace” under Ming and Qing hegemony is attributed to international
hierarchy based on shared Confucian culture and value.
6
Although the use of force was not
completely absent in East Asia, it usually occurred between China and its non-Confucian
neighbors along its northern and western borders. Sinicized states, such as Korea, Japan and
Vietnam, “possessed a shared sense of legitimacy that presupposes, in the context of
Confucianism, that relations operate within an accepted hierarchy.”
7
In other words, there was a
clear hierarchy with China at the top and others below it based on cultural similarity.
Latest contribution to this subject adds nuance to Kang’s rather broad perspective on the
general patterns in East Asian history by focusing on relational aspect and domestic politics
within the secondary states under Sinocentric hierarchy. Feng Zhang, in his analysis of grand
strategies of China and its neighbors in early Ming (1368-1424), develops a “relational theory of
grand strategy” where Confucian values and norms play as much role as considerations of power
and material interests.
8
His empirical examination of early Ming’s interactions with Korea, Japan
and Mongol qualifies Kang’s argument that China enjoyed peaceful relations with Sinicized
states while its interactions with the nomads were rather conflictual. Zhang shows that China and
its neighbors adopted various strategies ranging from instrumental to expressive and the adoption
of these strategies was conditioned by the degree of the conflict of interest in particular
relationships. He finds that concern about Confucian propriety was more prominent in Sino-
Mongol relations than in Sino-Korean and Sino-Japanese relations.
6
Robert E. Kelly, “A ‘Confucian Long Peace’ in Pre-Western East Asia?,” European Journal of International
Relations 18, no. 3 (September 1, 2012): 407–30, https://doi.org/10.1177/1354066111409771.
7
Kang, “Hierarchy and Legitimacy in International Systems: The Tribute System in Early Modern East Asia,” 593.
8
Feng Zhang, Chinese Hegemony: Grand Strategy and International Institutions in East Asian History (Stanford,
California: Stanford University Press, 2015).
8
Ji-Young Lee and Seo-Hyun Park sharpen our understanding of the historical East Asia
by emphasizing the importance of domestic legitimation politics within China’s smaller
neighbors.
9
The assumption here is that Sinocentric hierarchy in East Asia was only made
possible by voluntary acceptance of secondary states. After all, the very notion of hegemony
entails lesser powers’ compliance with the predominant power without coercion. At the heart of
Lee’s analysis is the claim that Sinocentric order was in a significant degree shaped by secondary
states’ pursuit of political legitimacy in domestic power struggles. Korea and Japan adopted
contrasting strategies towards China because Chinese symbolic domination had different social
meanings in Korea and Japan. Park, in a similar vein, emphasizes the importance of domestic
political debates within secondary states over how to deal with China, with a particular attention
on the concepts of sovereignty and autonomy. Hierarchical orders, she argues, “endure not
because of voluntary consent but because the constraints of hierarchy are socially recognized fact
and they provide meaning for leaders’ actions and words.”
10
In sum, we have seen increasing number of IR scholars doing theoretically significant
and empirically detailed research on the subject of historical East Asian international relations.
Thanks to them, we now have a better grasp of the Sinocentric internal order that characterized
East Asia for at least five centuries before its encounter with the West. What is largely missing in
the literature, however, is the role of identity. Those who see historical Sinocentric order as
based on shared Confucian values and norms rarely go beyond the claim that culture served as
the basis for stable hierarchic relations. Others who argue that this cultural theory needs to be
filtered through domestic politics of China’s smaller neighbors are equally ignorant of the role of
9
Ji-Young Lee, China’s Hegemony: Four Hundred Years of East Asian Domination (Columbia University Press,
2016); Seo-Hyun Park, “Imagined Hierarchy: Sovereign Autonomy and Status in East Asian International
Relations” 2016.
10
Park, “Imagined Hierarchy: Sovereign Autonomy and Status in East Asian International Relations,” 24.
9
identity in legitimation politics. May aim in this dissertation is to analyze Sinocentric
international order through the lens of identity. I argue that identity perspective on historical East
Asia has many benefits to offer by enriching our understanding of Sinocentric order and also by
shedding new light on the important questions of how international hierarchies emerge and
endure.
The Puzzle
According to much discussed framework by noted historian John K. Fairbank, the
Sinocentric international system in early modern East Asia consisted of three groups of political
units.
11
Korea, Vietnam and Ryukyu Islands were considered as part of the Sinic Zone—loyal
tributaries that shared Confucian classical teachings, Chinese writing system, the official
examination system and bureaucracy. The Inner Asian Zone consisted of nomadic and semi-
nomadic tribal units along the Great Wall frontier. Political units that fall into this group, such as
Tibet and Mongol, were at the edge of the Chinese civilization. Outside of this Inner Asian Zone
was the Outer Zone of barbarians that eventually included various European states. Japan
occupied an interesting place in this hierarchical international system. In fact, Japan during the
Muromachi (Ashikaga) bakufu, from fourteen to fifteenth century, received investiture from
Ming China, thus placed itself in the Sinic Zone. Later in the late sixteenth century, however,
Japan waged a war against Korea, challenging China’s predominant position in the East Asian
international system.
11
John K. Fairbank, “A Preliminary Framework,” in The Chinese World Order: Traditional China’s Foreign
Relations, ed. John King Fairbank (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1968).
10
Among the Sinicized states, Korea had a special place as a “model tributary” within
Sinocentric order.
12
The foundation of Chosŏn Dynasty was itself predicated on the idea that
small country should serve the great. Yi Song-gye, the founder of Chosŏn, sent his tributary
envoy to Ming’s Hongwu emperor right after the declaration of the foundation of new dynasty.
This swift move was to secure domestic legitimacy of the nascent regime by receiving
recognition of the Ming emperor.
13
Yet, this strategic choice by founders of Chosŏn Korea was
not based on the Confucian belief that the Ming was the rightful holder of legitimate authority.
The fact that Korea was in preparation to attack the strategically important region of Liaodong
vindicates this lack of ideological nature in its tributary commitment. Korea’s tribute relations
with Ming China during fifteenth and sixteenth centuries were indeed based as much on practical
reasoning as ideological devotion. As Peter Yun writes, “while Chosŏn officials advocated the
policy of acknowledging Ming suzerainty, their reasoning was based on the simple fact that the
Ming was a bigger and stronger state. They were proud of Korea’s own history and culture that
set it apart from China and other East Asian state. In their view, Korean kings were even entitled
to preside over the ritual of the worship of Heaven that was the prerogative claimed only by the
Chinese emperor.”
14
Korean elites during this period also used the idea of Sino-centric hierarchic
system as a means of checking the power of the throne.
15
By the seventeenth century, however, Korea’s tributary relations with the Ming came to
be ideological to the point that Korea sided with the Ming in face of more powerful Qing. The
12
Donald N. Clark, “Sino-Korean Tributary Relations under the Ming,” in The Cambridge History of China Vol. 8,
ed. Denis C. Twitchett and Frederick W. Mote (New York: Cambridge University Press, 1998).
13
김한규, 한중 관 계사 ( 아르 케, 1999), 570.
14
Peter I. Yun, “Rethinking the Tribute System: Korean States and Northeast Asian Interstate Relations, 600-1600”
(University of California, Los Angeles, 1998), 16, ProQuest Dissertations & Theses Full Text.
15
Pow-Key Sohn, “Power versus Status: The Role of Ideology during the Early Yi Dynasty,” Tongbang Hakchi 10
(1969).
11
idea of serving the great, which started as a pragmatic strategy, became to receive almost
dogmatic devotion from Korean elites in the seventeenth century. In the end, Korea’s adherence
to what its elites regarded as the only rightful ruler, the Ming, came with unbearable high price.
As a result of Korean elites’ denial to conform to the new reality of power transition from Ming
Dynasty to Qing Dynasty in China, it had to suffer from two invasions by powerful Qing armies,
which only ended with the Korean king’s humiliating personal kowtow before the Qing
conqueror. Even more puzzling is the Korean behavior under Qing hegemony. Even after the
demise of the Ming, Korean elites openly derided the Qing as barbarians and even prepared for
military operation against the Qing despite massive disparity in military power and no prospect
for success. The legitimacy of Ming China, in other words, was so deeply internalized among
Korean elites that its position within hierarchy could not be replaced by anyone else—no matter
how powerful they are.
The case of Chosŏn Korean becomes even more prominent once we compare it with
Vietnam—China’s another tributary state which also belonged to the Fairbank’s category of
Sinic zone. Both Korea and Vietnam were considered as the most loyal and culturally similar
tributaries. They both rarely questioned Chinese suzerainty and accepted their kingdoms’ vassal
status. They also actively sought recognition from Chinese emperor for their right to survival.
Their relationship with Chinese states were relatively durable for centuries. Yet while Korean
elites actively pursued internalization of Confucian norms as their identity strategy, Vietnamese
elites were never fully convinced that China was to be regarded as the only suzerain. Vietnamese
rulers, in fact, proclaimed themselves as “emperor” internally, while calling themselves as
“king” only when communicating with China. Korea’s status seeking through socialization
secured it a firm place under the Chinese hierarchy and, in Sixiang Wang’s words, even “co-
12
constructed” the Ming to both its benefits and perils.
16
Ever since Dinh Bo Linh’s time, in
Vietnam, Vietnamese elite called China the “northern country” while referring themselves as the
“southern country,” thus established the sense of parity in its relations with China. This idea of
equality with China has “continued unaltered up to the twentieth century.”
17
Against this historical backdrop, this dissertation attempts to provide possible
explanations for the following puzzles: why did the founders of Chosŏn Korea choose to
voluntarily subordinate itself to the Ming China? Why did Korea develop such an ideological
commitment to its status as China’s sincere tributary state? Why did it risk its very survival to
keep its ideological commitment to the Ming during the period of transition of power from the
Ming to the Qing? How do we account for Korea’s unwillingness to conform to the new reality
of Qing hegemony? Why did Vietnamese rulers, in the contrary, proclaimed themselves as
emperor, while seeking investiture as king from Chinese emperor? In other words, why did
Korea work so diligently to maintain its identity as the most Confucianized state while Vietnam
strived to maintain its distinctive identity? What explains these two culturally similar states
disparate identity strategies? These are essential questions to be answered for the better
understanding of the dynamics of Sinocentric international order that existed at least for five
centuries in early modern East Asia. What follows is an attempt to provide possible answer to
these empirically and theoretically important questions.
16
Sixiang Wang, “Co-Constructing Empire in Early Choson Korea: Knowledge Production and the Culture of
Diplomacy, 1392-1592 - ProQuest Dissertations & Theses Global - ProQuest” (Columbia Unviersity, 2015),
http://search.proquest.com.libproxy2.usc.edu/pqdtglobal/docview/1695739770/569572CFF1A04B96PQ/7?accounti
d=14749.
17
Insun Yu, “Lê Văn Hưu and Ngô Sĩ Liên: A Comparison of Their Perception of Vietnamese History,” in Viet
Nam: Borderless Histories, ed. Nhung Tuyet Tran and Anthony Reid, 1 edition (Madison: University of Wisconsin
Press, 2006), 67.
13
The Argument
This dissertation puts forth several arguments regarding the dynamics of international
hierarchy in early modern East Asia. First of all, I argue that placing central causal emphasis on
the role of state identity can shed a new light on behavioral variations across East Asia’s
secondary states. Despite recent renaissance in the study of historical East Asian international
relations from diverse theoretical perspectives, it is surprising that state identity has not been
taken seriously in the extant literature. Although Kang’s works can be broadly categorized as
taking constructivist approach, they do not go beyond making claim that shared Confucian
values played major role in sustaining peaceful relations between China and its weaker
neighbors.
18
More recent contributions to this literature are neither explicit in acknowledging the
role of identity, though they all seem to be conscious that identity politics is an essential part of
hierarchy in East Asian history. Drawing on social identity theory and ontological security, I
argue that a focus on how state identity is formed and persist will help improve our
understanding of the historical international relations of East Asia.
There is a consensus among IR scholars now that identity is as important causal variable
as power and interests in understanding international politics, and traveling back in time does not
mean the issue of identity can just be ignored.
19
In the most basic sense, having an identity
implies having a sense of self. Identity, according to Wendt, is a “relatively stable, role-specific
understandings and expectations about self,” and is inherently relational and thus socially
18
Kang, East Asia Before the West: Five Centuries of Trade and Tribute; Kang, “Hierarchy and Legitimacy in
International Systems: The Tribute System in Early Modern East Asia.”
19
Rawi Abdelal et al., “Identity as a Variable,” Perspectives on Politics 4, no. 04 (2006): 695–711,
https://doi.org/10.1017/S1537592706060440; Felix Berenskoetter, “Identity in International Relations,” in The
International Studies Encyclopedia, ed. Robert A. Denemark, 1 edition, vol. 6 (Chichester, West Sussex, U.K. ;
Malden, MA: Wiley-Blackwell, 2010).
14
constructed.
20
In the context of international relations, identities intricately related to how a
political actor perceives the world around it and how she defines her place within it. Traditional
East Asian societies, in fact, had an acute sense of who they were and were very much concerned
with their place within the world around them, their status under international hierarchy.
21
I also argue that China’s smaller neighbors played as much important role as China itself
did in understanding Sinocentric order in early modern East Asia, thus deliberately taking a
peripheral perspective. In so doing, I join the recent efforts by both historians and IR scholars to
correct Sinocentrism and provide balanced framework for analyzing historical East Asia.
22
Theoretically, the relationships of hierarchy by nature requires actors that are entitled to issue
commands and those who feel the obligation to comply. As Jason Sharman notes, however, “the
desire to lead seems unremarkable given our expectations of self-interested, egoistic behavior;
deference to the authority of others in the international system is much more of a puzzle.”
23
China, as the most powerful state within the system, consciously sought an identity strategy to
cast itself as the ‘Middle Kingdom’ (zhongguo, 中 國), embodying the legitimate authority to
govern ‘all under heaven” (tianxia, 天下).
24
This dissertation shows that China’s less powerful
20
Alexander Wendt, “Anarchy Is What States Make of It: The Social Construction of Power Politics,” International
Organization 46, no. 2 (1992): 397.
21
For the importance of identity in Western context, see Richard Ned Lebow, A Cultural Theory of International
Relations (New York: Cambridge University Press, 2009).
22
Evelyn S. Rawski, Early Modern China and Northeast Asia (Cambridge University Press, 2015); Zhang, Chinese
Hegemony, 2015; Lee, China’s Hegemony; Park, “Imagined Hierarchy: Sovereign Autonomy and Status in East
Asian International Relations.”
23
J.C. Sharman, “International Hierarchies and Contemporary Imperial Governance: A Tale of Three Kingdoms,”
European Journal of International Relations 19, no. 2 (2013): 192.
24
Joseph Mackay, “The Nomadic Other: Ontological Security and the Inner Asian Steppe in Historical East Asian
International Politics,” Review of International Studies FirstView (September 2015): 1–21,
https://doi.org/10.1017/S0260210515000327.
15
neighbors were also engaged in identity politics through which they pursued varied identity
strategies to define and secure who they are.
Substantively, I claim that the choice founders of Chosŏn Korea made at the end of the
fourteenth century and during its infancy to become a loyal tributary state of the Ming
constituted a deliberate identity strategy. As social identity theory suggests, states consciously
seek self-definition and self-esteem, and thus choose certain strategies to obtain and secure their
identities.
25
Secondary states under hierarchy, in particular, seek status through imitating the
predominant state. The Korean elites who laid the foundation of Chosŏn actively pursued the
strategy of sadae ( 事大), or serving the great policy, by adopting a Confucian identity. Yet, the
hegemonic discourse within Korea in early Chosŏn period reveals little Confucian idealism. As
historian Peter Yun has argued, the “ideological embrace of the China-centered tribute system
came gradually in step with the growing acceptance of the Neo-Confucian orthodoxy, and it was
a slow process that took more than two centuries.
26
My focus on identity, in this sense, does not
preclude acknowledging the importance of other causal factors.
27
I do not put forth a simple
claim that Korea’s behaviors can be explained only through the lens of identity. Rather, the
argument is based on the interplay between material and ideational factors. Korea’s status
seeking through sadae policy depended as much on the elites’ perception of geopolitical power
25
Deborah Welch Larson, “How Identities Form and Change: Supplementing Constructivism with Social
Psychology,” in Psychology and Constructivism in International Relations, ed. Vaughn P. Shannon and A. Kowert
Paul (Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Press, 2012),
https://www.press.umich.edu/3212291/psychology_and_constructivism_in_international_relations; Deborah Welch
Larson and Alexei Shevchenko, “Managing Rising Powers: The Role of Status Concerns,” in Status in World
Politics, ed. T. V. Paul, Deborah Welch Larson, and William C. Wohlforth (New York: Cambridge University
Press, 2014).
26
Peter Yun, “Confucian Ideology and the Tribute System in Choson-Ming Relations,” Sachong 55 (2002): 70. See
also Yun, “Rethinking the Tribute System: Korean States and Northeast Asian Interstate Relations, 600-1600.”
27
Rudra Sil and Peter J. Katzenstein, “Analytic Eclecticism in the Study of World Politics: Reconfiguring Problems
and Mechanisms across Research Traditions,” Perspectives on Politics 8, no. 02 (2010): 411–31,
https://doi.org/10.1017/S1537592710001179.
16
configuration as on deliberate identity strategy. Chosŏn Korea, in other words, was in part forced
to become a loyal tributary state.
Then the question is why did Korea develop such an ideological commitment to its status
as China’s sincere tributary state by the seventeenth century to the point of supporting Ming in
face of much more powerful Qing. I argue that Korea’s distinctive geopolitical context, coupled
with its identity strategy, made possible such a deep ideological commitment among Korean
elites. As Ian Hurd points out, compliance under hierarchy becomes norm when it is “no longer
motivated by the simple fear of retribution, or by calculation of self-interest, but instead by an
internal sense of moral obligation.”
28
This dissertation shows that Korea and Vietnam were
situated in distinctive geopolitical context that affected their identity strategies. As distinguished
historian Alexander Woodside has argued, Vietnam was a frontier state in a way Korea was not.
Vietnam’ political identity, as a result, was “repeatedly jostled and contested by the entirely non-
Confucian peoples who shared their extended frontiers.”
29
While Vietnam vied for recognition
and protection from China, seeking status through socialization under Chinese hierarchy was not
an imperative choice to be made in its competition vis-à-vis its non-Confucian neighbors.
Korea’s stable ‘territoriality,’ in contrast, allowed it to pursue more active status seeking strategy
thought transforming itself to be the model tributary state.
Chapter Outlines
28
Ian Hurd, “Legitimacy and Authority in International Politics,” International Organization 53, no. 2 (1999): 387,
https://doi.org/10.2307/2601393.
29
Alexander Woodside, “Territorial Order and Collective-Identity Tensions in Confucian Asia: China, Vietnam,
Korea,” Daedalus 127, no. 3 (July 1, 1998): 202.
17
This dissertation is divided into six chapters, including the introductory chapter. Chapter
2 presents my argument that the interplay between geopolitical condition and identity strategy is
key to understanding distinctive identities that led to divergent patterns in Sino-Korean and Sino-
Vietnamese relations. To develop this account theoretically, I turn to two related theoretical
frameworks, social identity theory and ontological security. While social identity theory helps us
explain why secondary states may pursue identity strategy of socialization and seek status in
hierarchy, the notion of ontological security provides grounds for understanding persistent
identity. Yet identities are not produced in vacuum; they are constructed under particular
geopolitical settings.
In chapter 3,4, and 5, case studies on Korea and Vietnam offer historical analyses of
distinctive strategies to define and secure their identities under Ming and Qing hegemonies.
Chapter 3 explores Chosŏn Korea’s attempt to define and secure its identity vis-à-vis the Ming. It
shows that the founders of Chosŏn Korea sought to define who they were in terms of its
relationship with the Ming, and the sadae policy it adopted was a deliberate strategy of identity
building. This identity strategy was inextricably linked to Korea’s status seeking as the model
tributary state. Korea’s identity building was in part defined by the geopolitical configuration
surrounding the founding of Chosŏn dynasty. This chapter also shows that, especially after the
Japanese invasion of Korea, its status as the model tributary state became so important for its
sense of self among its core elites that they even risked their own survival when the Ming’s
power was in clear decline.
Chapter 4 analyzes Korea’s identity strategy under the new Qing hegemony. The demise
of the Ming dynasty in 1644 was truly a traumatic event for Korea. It was not so much simply a
replacement of leadership in the central kingdom as the disintegration of the Confucian world
18
order in which Korea had a firm place as the most civilized tributary state, if not on par with
China. When the barbaric Manchus conquered the Ming, therefore, Korean elites’ sense of
anxiety became acute as it undermines very foundation of Korean identity. Even after the
collapse of the Ming dynasty, however, Korea was not able to adjust itself to the new
geopolitical reality of the Qing as the new suzerain. The idea of “Northern Expedition” is just
one of the examples that represents the degree of identity crisis the Korean elites had to deal
with. This chapter shows that we cannot attribute Korea’s failure to cope with the rise of the
Manchus during the early seventeenth century to its inability to objectively perceive the
geopolitical realities. Having enjoyed a privileged status as the model tributary state under Ming
hegemony, appeasing the barbarian Manchus, let alone subordination, was tantamount to
compromising the very essence of Korean identity. It was far more important for the Korean
elites to preserve their security as being, or ontological security, the most civilized vassal in the
hierarchy of Sinocentric world order than to prolong their mere physical security.
While Korean elites pursued complete internalization of Confucian norms as their
identity strategy, Vietnamese rulers were never fully convinced that China was to be regarded as
the only legitimate suzerain. Chapter 5 turns to the case of Vietnam and argues that it was
situated in distinctive geopolitical context that affected its choice of identity strategy. Vietnam
was a frontier state in a way Korea was not. Vietnam’s political identity, as a result, was
repeatedly jostled and contested by the mostly non-Confucian peoples who shared its extended
frontiers. While Vietnam vied for recognition and protection from China, seeking status through
socialization under Chinese hierarchy was not an imperative choice to be made in its competition
vis-à-vis its non-Confucian neighbors.
19
In the final chapter, which concludes this dissertation, extends the discussion to the
contemporary international politics, highlighting theoretical insights drawn from the cases
studies on early modern international order in East Asia.
20
Chapter 2: Identity Strategy and Status Seeking under Hierarchy
Hierarchy in International Relations
Following Kenneth Waltz, the nature (ordering principle in Waltz’s term) of international
system has typically been presented as anarchy—the absence of central government—in
international relations scholarship.
30
Each of the political units in international politics “is the
equal of all the others”; “none is entitled to command; none is required to obey.”
31
In contrast,
hierarchy defines domestic political structure. Political units within domestic politics “stand vis-
à-vis each other in relations of super- and sub-ordination.”
32
Hierarchy and functional
differentiation is central feature of domestic political order, while whatever differentiation exists
in international level is reducible to distribution of power among sovereign states.
33
As
increasing number of scholars has turned their attention to a variety of hierarchic relationships in
international politics, however, the Waltzian dichotomy of anarchic international structure and
hierarchic domestic order has been put under scrutiny. Jack Donnelly, for example, convincingly
argues that “the opposite of anarchy is not hierarchy but ‘archy’, government, rule, political
30
Kenneth N. Waltz, Theory of International Politics (Reading, MA: Addison-Wesley, 1979).
31
Waltz, 83.
32
Waltz, 81.
33
In anarchic system, “authority quickly reduces to a particular expression of capability.” Waltz, 88.
21
authority.”
34
In other words, anarchy and hierarchy are not analytically incompatible—thus,
‘hierarchy in anarchy’ or ‘hierarchy under anarchy’ is possible.
35
Partly fueled by the unprecedented unipolar moment after the collapse of the Soviet
Union and the ‘American empire’ debate after the Iraq War, the concept of hierarchy has
increasingly become an important research topic in the field of international relations.
36
Yet the
idea of hierarchy is anything but new. In fact, various forms of hierarchic relations have either
explicitly or implicitly been at the center of analysis in international relations scholarship.
Hegemonic stability theory posits that the stability of international system is highly dependent
upon the hegemon—a predominant state such as Britain under Pax Britannica and the U.S. under
34
Jack Donnelly, “Sovereign Inequalities and Hierarchy in Anarchy: American Power and International Society,”
European Journal of International Relations 12, no. 2 (June 1, 2006): 139–70,
https://doi.org/10.1177/1354066106064505; Jack Donnelly, “Rethinking Political Structures: From ‘Ordering
Principles’ to ‘Vertical Differentiation’ – and Beyond,” International Theory 1, no. 01 (2009): 49–86.
35
John M. Hobson and J. C. Sharman, “The Enduring Place of Hierarchy in World Politics: Tracing the Social
Logics of Hierarchy and Political Change,” European Journal of International Relations 11, no. 1 (March 1, 2005):
63–98, https://doi.org/10.1177/1354066105050137.
36
Alexander Cooley, Logics of Hierarchy: The Organization of Empires, States, and Military Occupations (Ithaca,
NY: Cornell University Press, 2005); Donnelly, “Sovereign Inequalities and Hierarchy in Anarchy: American Power
and International Society”; Evelyn Goh, “Great Powers and Hierarchical Order in Southeast Asia: Analyzing
Regional Security Strategies,” International Security 32, no. 3 (January 1, 2008): 113–57,
https://doi.org/10.1162/isec.2008.32.3.113; Evelyn Goh, “Hierarchy and the Role of the United States in the East
Asian Security Order,” International Relations of the Asia-Pacific 8, no. 3 (September 1, 2008): 353–77,
https://doi.org/10.1093/irap/lcn011; Hobson and Sharman, “The Enduring Place of Hierarchy in World Politics:
Tracing the Social Logics of Hierarchy and Political Change”; Kang, “Hierarchy and Legitimacy in International
Systems: The Tribute System in Early Modern East Asia”; Kang, “Hierarchy, Balancing, and Empirical Puzzles in
Asian International Relations”; Edward Keene, “A Case Study of the Construction of International Hierarchy:
British Treaty-Making Against the Slave Trade in the Early Nineteenth Century,” International Organization 61, no.
02 (2007): 311–39, https://doi.org/10.1017/S0020818307070117; David A. Lake, “Anarchy, Hierarchy, and the
Variety of International Relations,” International Organization 50, no. 1 (1996): 1–33,
https://doi.org/10.2307/2706997; David A. Lake, “Escape from the State of Nature: Authority and Hierarchy in
World Politics,” International Security 32, no. 1 (July 1, 2007): 47–79, https://doi.org/10.1162/isec.2007.32.1.47;
David A. Lake, Hierarchy in International Relations (New York: Cornell University Press, 2009); David A. Lake,
“Legitimating Power: The Domestic Politics of U.S. International Hierarchy,” International Security 38, no. 2
(October 1, 2013): 74–111, https://doi.org/10.1162/ISEC_a_00139; Daniel H. Nexon and Thomas Wright, “What’s
at Stake in the American Empire Debate,” American Political Science Review 101, no. 2 (2007): 253–71,
https://doi.org/10.2307/27644444; Sharman, “International Hierarchies and Contemporary Imperial Governance: A
Tale of Three Kingdoms”; Janice Bially Mattern and Ayşe Zarakol, “Hierarchies in World Politics,” International
Organization 70, no. 3 (ed 2016): 623–54, https://doi.org/10.1017/S0020818316000126; Ayşe Zarakol, Hierarchies
in World Politics (Cambridge University Press, 2017).
22
Pax Americana—who provides public goods and maintains international order.
37
Power
transition theory also suggests that unequal distribution of power in international system is more
conducive to peace and stability.
38
John Ikenberry, albeit from a liberal perspective, puts forward
a similar idea that international order is maintained by benign hegemonic power through
institutions that create a ‘constitutional order.’
39
The idea of hierarchy has also not uncommonly
been smuggled into realist theorizing. When John Mearsheimer talks about ‘great power
politics,’ he implicitly acknowledges the fact that some states assume functionally different role
within international system.
40
Even Waltz himself ironically admits that great powers hold
special responsibilities that lesser powers do not.
41
One common definition denotes hierarchy as an international system based on rank-order
of states.
42
The rank of a state within the hierarchy is determined by its relative status compared
to others. Although a rank order of states can be created and maintained through purely coercive
means in theory, we seldom see hierarchical relations solely based on brute force of dominant
power. Hierarchy, then, is inherently a relational and social concept, and it involves authority
relations. It exists not only when there is power asymmetry among political units but also when a
dominant actor exercises political authority over subordinates. Political authority can be defined
as rightful or legitimate rule.
43
In international relations, authority relationship implies that the
37
For hegemonic stability theory, see Robert Gilpin, War and Change in World Politics (New York: Cambridge
University Press, 1981); Robert O. Keohane, After Hegemony: Cooperation and Discord in the World Political
Economy (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1984); Stephen D. Krasner, “State Power and the Structure of
International Trade,” World Politics 28, no. 3 (April 1, 1976): 317–47, https://doi.org/10.2307/2009974.
38
For power transition theory, see A. F. K. Organski, World Politics (New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 1968); Ronald L.
Tammen et al., Power Transitions: Strategies For the 21st Century (New York: Chatham House, 2000).
39
G. John Ikenberry, After Victory: Institutions, Strategic Restraint, and the Rebuilding of Order After Major Wars
(Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 2000).
40
John J. Mearsheimer, The Tragedy of Great Power Politics (New York: W. W. Norton, 2001).
41
Waltz, Theory of International Politics, 198.
42
Kang, “Hierarchy and Legitimacy in International Systems: The Tribute System in Early Modern East Asia”;
Lebow, A Cultural Theory of International Relations; William C. Wohlforth, “Unipolarity, Status Competition, and
Great Power War,” World Politics 61, no. 01 (2009): 28–57, https://doi.org/10.1017/S0043887109000021.
43
Lake, Hierarchy in International Relations, 17.
23
dominant state has the right to issue commands, while the subordinate states bear obligation or
duty to comply. By definition, any political authority rests on whether subordinate states view
political authority exercised by the dominant power. Legitimacy is an inherent component of
authority relationship, which can be defined as the “normative belief by an actor that a rule or
institution ought to be obeyed.”
44
Hierarchy, therefore, is a social phenomenon that involves
exercise of political authority based on legitimacy. Under hierarchy, as John Hobson and J. C.
Sharman writes, “some are entitled to command and some are required to obey, and that both
sides recognize as legitimate the social logic of this unequal situation.”
45
Extant scholarship on hierarchy, authority and legitimacy can be divided into two broad
theoretical camps. Rationalist scholars emphasize rational choice made by both the dominant and
subordinate states and the contractual nature of hierarchic relationship. David Lake, for example,
argues that “legitimacy is rooted in a social contract in which the dominant state provides a
political order to the collection of individuals who compose the subordinate state, and those
individuals confer rights on the dominant state to restrict their behaviors and extract resources
necessary to produce that order.”
46
The key component in this formulation is that the dominant
state and a subordinate state reach an agreement through negotiation based on cost-benefit
analysis. In other words, authority relationship, from rationalist point of view, is “an equilibrium
produced and reproduced through on-going interactions.”
47
Following this logic, hierarchy is
defined as a continuous variable depending on the degree of political authority the dominant state
exercise over the subordinate state. Alexander Cooley and Hendrik Spruyt also follow the similar
44
Hurd, “Legitimacy and Authority in International Politics,” 381.
45
Hobson and Sharman, “The Enduring Place of Hierarchy in World Politics: Tracing the Social Logics of
Hierarchy and Political Change,” 69.
46
Lake, Hierarchy in International Relations, 8.
47
Lake, 29.
24
rationalist logic as Lake in explaining imperial arrangements and negotiations over foreign
military bases: “Just as firms in the private sector choose from a number of possible governance
arrangements, international actors also choose institutional arrangements—in this case carious
modes of integration and governance—because they represent the best political option from a
restricted set of institutional alternatives.”
48
Lake also develops a theory of domestic politics of legitimating hierarchy based on
rationalist assumption of bargaining between the dominant and the subordinate.
49
Building on the
experience of the U.S. during the post-war period, Lake contends that the legitimacy of authority
relations is determined primarily by the gains subordinate states reap from hierarchy, and the
distance between the policy preferences of the dominant and subordinate states. When the gains
from hierarchy are sufficiently large in favor of the subordinate, or when the dominant and the
subordinate share similar preferences, hierarchy is more likely to be legitimate and the regime
type of subordinate state is more likely to be democratic. On the contrary, when the gains from
hierarchy are relatively small and only benefit small elites, or their policy preferences are
different, hierarchy is less likely to be legitimate and the subordinate state is more likely to be
autocratic. The key link in this logic is domestic political institutions. As Lake writes, “how the
benefits are distributed internally is a function of the domestic regime, and the domestic regime
in turn affects whether hierarchy is possible and to what degree.”
50
Despite their appeal as parsimonious causal theories, however, rationalist
conceptualization of hierarchy and legitimacy highlights only a small portion of more complex
48
Alexander Cooley and Hendrik Spruyt, Contracting States: Sovereign Transfers in International Relations
(Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 2009), 31; Cooley, Logics of Hierarchy: The Organization of Empires,
States, and Military Occupations.
49
Lake, “Legitimating Power: The Domestic Politics of U.S. International Hierarchy.”
50
Lake, 89.
25
social phenomenon. Lake’s narrow conception of hierarchy, for example, not only precludes
hierarchy based on coercive power by the dominant state, but it also fails to capture authority
relations based on shared beliefs and identity.
51
As clearly argued by J. C. Sharman, rationalist
contractual theory is inherently ill-equipped to explain concepts such as legitimacy which depend
on the logic of appropriateness, not on the rationalist logic of consequences.
52
In other words,
“the system of hierarchy cannot be explained in a functionalist manner.”
53
In a similar vein,
Alastair Iain Johnston also points out that Lake’s theory obscures processes of socialization,
internalization, and habituation that affect the duration of the ‘contract’ between the dominant
power and smaller subordinate states.
54
Hierarchy relations may not be established without at
least implicit exchange of provision of order and promise of subordination. Yet, Lake’s
contractual theory does not tell us much about social aspect of hierarchy. Hierarchy, in Lake’s
narrow conceptualization, is “anything more than [pure] market exchange, of selling sovereignty
in return for security or economic benefit.”
55
Rationalist perspective alone cannot be used to explain Sino-centric hierarchy in early
modern East Asia, either. Albeit famous Fairbankian assertion that the “tribute was a cloak for
trade,”
56
this rationalist view masks the historical fact that many of the elites in China’s tributary
states sincerely held a normative belief in the rightfulness of Sino-centric hierarchy, regardless of
the economic benefits they gained from China. Korea, for example, even put its very survival at
risk due to its adherence to the legitimate ruler within hierarchy. From a rationalist cost-benefit
51
Paul K. MacDonald and David A. Lake, “The Role of Hierarchy in International Politics,” International Security
32, no. 4 (April 1, 2008): 171–80, https://doi.org/10.1162/isec.2008.32.4.171.
52
Sharman, “International Hierarchies and Contemporary Imperial Governance: A Tale of Three Kingdoms.”
53
Sharman, 198.
54
Johnston, “What (If Anything) Does East Asia Tell Us About International Relations Theory?,” 61; Lake,
Hierarchy in International Relations, iv.
55
Sharman, “International Hierarchies and Contemporary Imperial Governance: A Tale of Three Kingdoms,” 197.
56
J. K. Fairbank and S. Y. Teng, “On The Ch’ing Tributary System,” Harvard Journal of Asiatic Studies 6, no. 2
(1941): 139, https://doi.org/10.2307/2718006.
26
calculation, moreover, Japan would have reaped as much economic gains as Korea did from
paying deference to China by sending tributary mission.
Another approach to hierarchy comes from constructivist school of international
relations. Constructivist accounts of hierarchy and legitimacy differ from rationalist approach in
that they do not take preferences of actors involved as exogenously given. Constructivist scholars
of hierarchy generally emphasize the role of intersubjectivity and socially shared knowledge in
constituting the identities and interests of both the dominant state and the subordinate state in
forming hierarchy in international relations. Alexander Wendt and Daniel Friedheim, for
example, while acknowledge that “the actors in informal empire make rational choices under
constraints, engage in exchange relations, and encounter principal-agent problems”, contend that
“an important feature of such system is also the negotiation of the terms of each actor’s
individuality.”
57
Their case study on relations between the Soviet Union and East Germany
shows that hierarchy was created and maintained by the production and reproduction of
consenting identities and legitimacy. Similarly, Hobson and Sharman show how imperialism
during eighteenth and nineteenth centuries can be explained by looking at identity formation
process. They convincingly argue that “it was not simply a preponderance of material power that
made imperialism inevitable. The British (and others) engaged in imperialism not simply
because ‘they could’ (as materialists assume). Rather they engaged in it because they believed
they should.”
58
Edward Keene, yet again, contributes to this constructivist literature on hierarchy
through his empirical study of the treaty system that the British established in the early
57
Alexander Wendt and Daniel Friedheim, “Hierarchy under Anarchy: Informal Empire and the East German
State,” International Organization 49, no. 4 (1995): 720, https://doi.org/10.2307/2706923.
58
Hobson and Sharman, “The Enduring Place of Hierarchy in World Politics: Tracing the Social Logics of
Hierarchy and Political Change,” 87.
27
nineteenth century with the purpose of abolishing the slave trade.
59
He reveals that the question
of identity was much more important than considerations for power and wealth in making British
anti-slave trade treaty system.
Historical East Asia in International Relations
IR scholars have increasingly turned to East Asia's traditional tribute system as a site for
theorizing hierarchy from constructivist perspectives.
60
David Kang is the most central scholar in
this endeavor to broaden our understanding of international systems beyond the anarchy derived
from European history.
61
At the crux of Kang’s argument is the notion that premodern East Asia
achieved a surprisingly stable system under sino-centric hierarchy based on shared Confucian
values and practices. Hierarchy here is defined as a distinctively normative international order
that “involves more than material power; it also involves a set of norms—social order—that
secondary states find legitimate, thus making it a social system as well.”
62
Sino-centric hierarchy
preserved regional peace throughout five centuries under Ming and Qing hegemony, not because
China was able to coerce or bribe its weaker neighbors, but because of shared norms and values
59
Keene, “A Case Study of the Construction of International Hierarchy: British Treaty-Making Against the Slave
Trade in the Early Nineteenth Century.”
60
Not all scholars are comfortable with constructivist interpretation of the tribute system. See ,for example, Yuan-
Kang Wang’s book which applies neorealist theory. Yuan-kang Wang, Harmony and War: Confucian Culture and
Chinese Power Politics (New York: Columbia University Press, 2010).
61
Kang, East Asia Before the West: Five Centuries of Trade and Tribute; Kang, “Hierarchy and Legitimacy in
International Systems: The Tribute System in Early Modern East Asia”; Ji-Young Lee, “Diplomatic Ritual as a
Power Resource: The Politics of Asymmetry in Early Modern Chinese-Korean Relations,” Journal of East Asian
Studies 13, no. 2 (2013): 309–36.
62
David C. Kang, “China, Hegemony, and Leadership in East Asia,” in Responding to China’s Rise, ed. Vinod K.
Aggarwal and Sara A. Newland, The Political Economy of the Asia Pacific 15 (Springer International Publishing,
2015), 31, http://link.springer.com/chapter/10.1007/978-3-319-10034-0_2.
28
manifested by institutions of tributary diplomacy regulating relations between them. The
ideational bond among the members of the "Confucian society" matured to the point that war
became "so unlikely as to be almost unthinkable."
63
As Kang clearly states, however, it was a
separate peace between China and its Confucianized neighbors including Korea, Vietnam and
even Japan who eagerly followed Chinese model. The lack of equivalent cultural affinities was a
source of sustained conflict between China and its non-Confucian nomadic neighbors in Central
Asia.
64
More recent research on historical East Asian international relations go beyond the debate
between rationalist vs. constructivist and material vs. Ideational approaches to hierarchy and
seeks to shed light on some important variables such as relationality and domestic politics of
secondary states that have previously been neglected. In challenging the Eurocentrism in the
existing IR scholarship, Feng Zhang shows that the premodern regional relations in East Asia
under Chinese hegemony was characterized not only by instrumental rationality, but more
importantly by expressive rationality, which embodies “Confucian relational affection and
obligation.”
65
Zhang contends that the grand strategic choices of Ming and its weaker neighbors
were determined by the interplay between the degree of conflict of interests and reciprocity of
strategies. When the conflict of interest is intense between Ming and its neighbors, Ming tended
to adopt instrumental strategies based on consequentialist means-ends calculation and self-
interest maximization. When the conflict of interest is not acute, in contrast, Ming was content
with pursuing expressive strategies of Confucian affection towards its neighbors. In turn, the
63
Kang, East Asia Before the West: Five Centuries of Trade and Tribute, 11.
64
Robert Kelley confirms this separate peace among Confucianized states with more robust empirical examination.
Kelly, “A ‘Confucian Long Peace’ in Pre-Western East Asia?”
65
Zhang, Chinese Hegemony, 2015, 7.
29
weaker neighbors developed their own grand strategies in response to the Ming’s strategic
choices, which ranges from identification to isolation.
Contrary to both the adherents of the Confucian peace thesis, who make a broad
argument that the premodern regional relations were undergirded by shared Confucian
consensus, and the realists, who consider Confucianism as a residual variable, Zhang argues that
Confucian norms and values serve as the “major causal variable in accounting for the strategy of
expressive hierarchy, but it plays only an ideological, and thus a noncausal, role in the strategy of
instrumental hierarchy."
66
According to his empirical analysis, expressive strategies accounted
for 21 percent of the total number of 354 years, compared to 79 percent of years where
instrumental strategies were more predominant.
67
While majority of years under consideration
were defined by the pursuit of self-interests by both China and its neighbors, expressive
rationality was still essential part of the regional politics.
Zhang views such patterned relations under Chinese hegemony as constituting the
institutions of an international society that is akin to the normative order that shaped the
European international society examined by English School scholars. Drawing in particular on
Christian Reus-Smit’s theory of constitutional structure of international society, Zhang argues
that Chinese hegemony during the early Ming rested on the moral purpose of promoting a
universal ethical world order based on Confucian propriety and relational principle of serving the
great by the small and loving the small by the great.
68
That the East Asian region under Ming
hegemony constituted its own international society based on distinctively normative beliefs and
principles is perhaps the most important contribution of Zhang’s book.
66
Zhang, 44.
67
Zhang, 177.
68
Zhang, 153–73.
30
Despite its theoretical ambition and careful case studies, Zhang’s analysis of early Ming’s
interaction with its neighbors has some limitations due to the problems inherent in its
conceptualization of rationality as embodying both instrumental and expressive causes. For
example, where do we draw the line between instrumental and expressive rationality?
Instrumental strategy and expressive strategy are both compatible with using coercive measures.
Then, how do we discern a coercive strategy driven by expressive rationality from one driven by
instrumental rationality?
69
In the same manner, how do we know secondary states' submission to
China is actually motivated by expressive as opposed to instrumental rationality? Although he
depicts Korea's strategy as driven by expressive rationality since the founding of Chosŏn,
historians have long claimed that it was not until late sixteenth century that Korea started to
consider its relations with China as one of propriety.
70
Notwithstanding its rhetoric, Korea was
much more concerned about possible punitive measures from China and its self interest than
Confucian obligation to serve the great.
While Zhang takes a relational approach and explores how interactions shape grand
strategies of both China and its neighbors, other recent works emphasize the role of China’s
weaker neighbors in constructing international hierarchy in early modern East Asia. Ji-Young
Lee seeks to address the question of why was Chinese hegemony accepted to varying degrees to
different actors under similar structural conditions.
71
She argues that the variation in the ways
neighboring states responded to powerful China depended on the interplay between their
domestic political needs and the degree to which Confucian values resonate with local notions of
legitimacy. When seeking validation and recognition from Chinese symbolic power was useful
69
Zhang, 41.
70
Yun, “Rethinking the Tribute System: Korean States and Northeast Asian Interstate Relations, 600-1600.”
71
Lee, China’s Hegemony.
31
in domestic political struggle for legitimacy, China’s neighboring states voluntarily accepted
Chinese suzerainty without coercion. But when recognizing symbolic domination of China was
not useful for political purpose within neighboring states and even potentially had negative
effects, defiance was the behavioral outcome. Lee compares contrasting strategies that Japanese
and Korean elites adopted under Ming and Qing China and explores not only the contrasting
patterns compliance but also variations over time within Japan and Korea.
More specifically, Korean elites needed to legitimize their rule through reference to
China’s symbolic authority, whereas Japanese elites could legitimize their rule through reference
to Japan’s own institution of higher authority, which was Japanese emperor. Korean rulers were
expected to legitimate their rule through reference to China’s symbolic authority, and the term
such as “serving the great” exemplified such prevailing idea. Although nominal in nature,
therefore, investiture from the Chinese emperor was considered as moral basis of legitimate rule
within Korea. The absence of such recognition could even mean the ruler no longer holds
legitimate right to govern. In Japan, however, seeking recognition from China could bring about
exactly opposite consequences. Japanese rulers were expected to legitimate their rule through
reference to its own imperial institution, which embodied Japan’s unique ideology that viewed it
as the “country of gods.” This is why Ashikaga Yiohimitsu, who received the title from Chinese
emperor appointing him as "king of Japan," had to confront heavy criticism from later
generations.
The important theoretical implication of Lee’s analysis is that hierarchy under Chinese
hegemony was to a significant degree shaped by the ways in which China’s symbolic dominance
was accepted, challenged, or ignored by its weaker neighboring states. Her analysis corrects the
tendency to see hierarchy as a product of the dominant state’s material power or culture by
32
convincingly showing that that hierarchy “is constructed in interaction with other actors' pursuit
of domestic legitimation.”
72
In this vein, stability of the Sino-centric hierarchy depended in large
part on the symbolic power of China contingent upon its weaker neighbors' decision to comply
based on their domestic political considerations. Repeated performances of tribute practices
sealed China's symbolic domination by regulating socially acceptable behaviors and thus
sustained the system.
Concurring Lee’s notion that domestic politics of China’s weaker neighbors played
crucial role in sustaining international hierarchy in premodern East Asia, Seo-hyun Park argues
that how leaders choose to conceptualize and contest state sovereignty in relations with dominant
power determines the stability of international hierarchy.
73
At the heart of Park’s analysis is the
concept of sovereign autonomy, which is the language articulating the problem of status seeking
under international hierarchy. Although the term itself emerged as the central concept for
debating security strategies in the critical juncture of the late nineteenth century, it did not
happen in vacuum. The notion of sovereign autonomy had been a crucial part of security debates
in premodern East Asia. Unlike Westphalian notion of legal sovereignty that treats states
formally equal, Park argues that sovereign autonomy in East Asia has been understood as “status
to be negotiated through relations with other dominant powers in the international system.”
74
In
traditional East Asia before the arrival of Western powers in nineteenth century, China served as
the primary frame of reference against which secondary states such as Japan and Korea define
their respective status through confirming or contesting their respective sovereign autonomy. It
72
Ji-Young Lee, “Hegemonic Authority and Domestic Legitimation: Japan and Korea under Chinese Hegemonic
Order in Early Modern East Asia,” Security Studies 25, no. 2 (April 2, 2016): 322,
https://doi.org/10.1080/09636412.2016.1171970.
73
Park, “Imagined Hierarchy: Sovereign Autonomy and Status in East Asian International Relations.”
74
Park, 24.
33
was through such domestic legitimacy politics, Park shows, that hierarchical order in traditional
East Asia endured beyond the coercion of China.
Park views the contrasting strategic positions taken by Japan and Korea as the
consequence of domestic legitimacy politics, less of their different structural conditions such as
geographical proximity to China. Shared sense of threat and pressure, she claims, did not
produce identical responses from Japan and Korea. While Korea, with the rise of Chosŏn in late
fourteenth century, voluntarily chose the path of integration to Sinocentric order, Japan defied
Chinese hegemony and maintained only indirect relations with China for the purpose of
economic gains through trade. The choice between integration and insulation represented
competing modes of status seeking within the social context of international hierarchy. Korea’s
integration strategy allowed it to maintain its political and cultural identity, whereas acceptance
of vassal status of China was incompatible with Japan’s distinctive notion of political
independence. In other words, Korea and Japan chose contrasting strategies of integration and
insulation respectively depending on the distinctive meaning of, and how to best achieve,
sovereign autonomy under international hierarchy.
In fact, Park’s analysis pertains more to the postwar East Asia as Japan and South Korea
debates their foreign policy strategies under the constraint of alliance relations with the U.S. The
type of status seeking strategy advocated by Japanese and Korean leaders have had major
consequences for stability of alliance and international hierarchy. They relied on varied
interpretations of sovereign autonomy, at times explicitly challenging existing notion of
autonomy, to further their domestic political legitimacy. This very act of contestation, however,
is what renders durability to hierarchical order, which is “reproduced through legitimating
34
practices that involve both confirmation and contestation of the dominant power’s authority.”
75
International hierarchy thus serves as a reference point for leaders in secondary states who are
engaged in the contest of political legitimacy, and this, in turn, becomes the foundation of a
durable hierarchical order.
Lee and Park both bring domestic politics of secondary states to the forefront of their
analyses of traditional hierarchical order in East Asia. In both accounts, hierarchical order is
deeply social because it is in large part based on symbolic domination (in Lee’s work) or
imagination (in Park’s work). It was through recognition from its weaker neighbors that China’s
hegemony became stable and durable. By highlighting how China’s material and ideational
power is filtered through the domestic political considerations of Japan and Korea in making
hierarchy, they also allow greater agency to the lesser powers under hierarchy.
76
Japan and Korea
were not just passive recipient of hegemonic norms and values; they actively sought to
manipulate the symbolic power of China to their own benefits. The key theoretical implication is
that the secondary states’ strategies are just as important as those of the predominant power in
sustaining hierarchical order. By doing so, Lee and Park subscribe to a more mutable conception
of culture (as opposed to a monolithic and essentialized conception of culture that informed
previous scholarship such as Kang’s) that allows dynamic normative contestation between the
suzerain and the vassals rather than static one-way socialization.
77
Although these recent research fill the gap in the field by turning our attention to
previously neglected variable of domestic legitimation politics in secondary states, some of their
75
Park, 46.
76
See also Sixiang Wang’s dissertation for co-construction of Ming empire. Wang, “Co-Constructing Empire in
Early Choson Korea.”
77
Park writes that “Confucianism was not a singular or homogeneous normative framework. Confucian thought was
divided into various schools and subject to change and compromise.” Even at the height of Confucianization in
Chosŏn Korea, it “differed significantly from China in many practices.” Park, “Imagined Hierarchy: Sovereign
Autonomy and Status in East Asian International Relations,” 71.
35
theoretical claims are not specified enough and empirically challengeable. First, they give too
much agency to China’s smaller neighbors, not enough to the overall structure of power
asymmetry. As Brantly Womack shows, it is disparity in capacities that creates systemic
differences in interests and perceptions between the predominant power and the weaker powers.
78
China’s weaker neighbors may have exercised agency over their strategic choices, but only to a
certain degree, and under conditions of asymmetry. Although Chosŏn Korea was not coerced to
recognize Ming’s suzerainty, but it was in a way forced to choose to be Chinese tributary by
structure of asymmetry. Non-compliance, in other words, was off the table for the leaders of
Korea not because of social context and constraint, but due more fundamentally to material
structure. Japan, in contrast, had luxury of running away from China’s influence thanks to its
geographic distance from China.
Secondly, the comparison between Japan and Korea entails the problem of
overdetermination for the reason stated above. Japan and Korea were put under different degree
of potential threat from China due to Korea’s geographical proximity to China. Japan’s leaders,
in fact, were more concerned with threat from rivals within Japan than one from China.
79
The
founders of Chosŏn Korea, in contrast, constantly reminded themselves that if they failed to
fulfill the propriety of serving the great, China would send a punitive expedition against Korea.
They simply were not facing comparable material conditions. It is not to deny that China was
capable of projecting its power over narrow sea separating the Korean peninsula and Japan.
Chinese rulers, however, were well aware of the Mongol’s failed attempt to conquer Japan. What
78
Brantly Womack, China and Vietnam: The Politics of Asymmetry (New York: Cambridge University Press,
2006); Brantly Womack, Asymmetry and International Relationships (Cambridge University Press, 2016).
79
Park writes that: “The founders of Tokugawa Japan and Chosŏn Korea faced very different challenges in their
establishing of new political regimes and reordering of society. The Key division between Japan and Korea was the
source of threat to the regime. Tokugawa bakufu, as had been previous regimes in Japanese history, was constantly
under the threat of civil war.” Park, “Imagined Hierarchy: Sovereign Autonomy and Status in East Asian
International Relations,” 72.
36
John Mearsheimer would call the “stopping power of water” made more sense centuries ago in
East Asia than it is in contemporary world. Japan, in this sense, has always been, at best, at the
margin of the sino-centric order. As John Fairbank correctly observes, it only briefly joined the
Sinic Zone but mostly belonged to the Outer Zone, along with Southeast Asian states (except
Vietnam) and European states.
80
Lastly, measuring compliance based on tribute practices may mask the fact that there
could have been different motivations for submission not only across countries but also across
time within a given country. In Lee’s analysis, Sino-Korea relations is depicted as quite stable
over time as Korea paid tribute to and received investiture from both Ming and Qing. Yet
Korea’s relations vis-à-vis Qing was qualitatively different from its predecessor as Qing was
seen as barbarian that would soon demise due to its lack of appreciation of Confucian values.
Park also paints premodern Sino-Korean relations as stable and durable despite some ruptures
around the time of transition between Ming and Qing dynasties. She also claims that Chinese
recognition was essential source of domestic legitimacy for Korea’s rulers even under the
barbarian Qing. Yet this sketchy description of Korea’s compliance under Qing does not
correctly reflect the qualitative difference of Chosŏn’s compliance to Ming and Qing. Even
during Ming’s reign, the nature of Korea’s compliance has dramatically changed from
opportunistic and strategic to sincere and genuine. Even though Park claims to show the
qualitative variation in the rhetoric of sovereign autonomy (as opposed to the degree of
autonomy), her analytical framework does not capture this nuance.
80
Fairbank, “A Preliminary Framework.” For opposing view, see, for example, Nishijima Sadao’s works. 니 시 지 마
사다오, 일본 의 고대 사 인 식: ’ 동아 시 아 세계 론’ 과 일본, trans. 송완 범 ( 역 사비평 사, 2008).
37
Small States Status Seeking as Identity Strategy in Hierarchy
Survey of the extant literature reveals that the role of identities of actors that comprise the
Sinocentric international order has not been the subject of systematic examination. I argue that
we can better grasp the dynamics of hierarchy in early modern East Asia by paying more
attention to varied identities and how they produced different patterns behaviors in China’s
smaller neighbors. In a fundamental sense, identity, as David Campbell notes, “is an inescapable
dimension of being. Nobody could be without it.”
81
In international politics, just as in domestic
society, identities are “necessary to ensure predictable patterns of behavior. A world without
identities is a world of chaos, a world of pervasive and irremediable uncertainty, as world much
more dangerous than anarchy.”
82
In particular, preferences of states and their behaviors are
constituted by identities.
83
Identity, in other words, needs to be treated as a variable and an
empirical question to be addressed within a particular historical context.
84
This dissertation puts forth a novel claim that the interplay between geopolitical condition
and identity strategy is key to understanding the collective identities that led to divergent patterns
in Sino-Korean and Sino-Vietnamese relations in early modern Asia. To develop this account
theoretically, I turn to two related conceptual frameworks. First, the social identity theory
stipulates that there are two fundamental motivations behind individuals: “to define ourselves
81
David Campbell, Writing Security: United States Foreign Policy and the Politics of Identity (U of Minnesota
Press, 1992), 8.
82
Ted Hopf, “The Promise of Constructivism in International Relations Theory,” International Security 23, no. 1
(1998): 174–75, https://doi.org/10.2307/2539267.
83
Peter J. Katzenstein, The Culture of National Security: Norms and Identity in World Politics (Columbia
University Press, 1996).
84
Rawi Abdelal et al., “Identity as a Variable,” Perspectives on Politics 4, no. 4 (2006): 695–711.
38
and to enjoy positive self-esteem.”
85
Individuals—and groups for that matter—are motivated to
achieve identities that is positively distinctive relative to others.
86
While constructivists like
Alexander Wendt suggests that collective identities are formed and can be transformed through
interactions, social identity theory, as Deborah Larson and Alexei Shevchenko point out, implies
that states “deliberately attempt to improve their status”, thus their identities.
87
Constructivist
framework, they argue, “does not give sufficient weight to the role of state agency in selecting an
identity as well as aspiring to a particular status.”
88
Social identity theory is also better suited for
the study of international hierarchy. Constructivists generally overlook the disparity in power
and status that constitute state identities. There are “hierarchies of both status and power,
differences that shape state interactions and identities,” and “what states want depends on their
relative power.”
89
One of the relevant observation from psychology is that under the condition of
hierarchy people may display a tendency for out-group favoritism visa-vis groups of higher
rank.
90
While social identity theory helps us explain why secondary states may pursue identity
strategy of socialization and seek status as a loyal follower, the notion of ontological security
provides firm ground on which to build an explanation of persistent identity. According to
ontological security approach, actors seek not just their physical security, but also security of
their identities.
91
Ontological security, as opposed to security as survival, is security as being and
85
Jacques E. C. Hymans, “Applying Social Identity Theory to the Study of International Politics: A Caution and an
Agenda” (International Studies Association convention, New Orleans, Louisiana, 2002), 5.
86
Henri Tajfel and John Turner, “An Integrative Theory of Intergroup Conflict,” in The Social Psychology of
Intergroup Relations, ed. William G. Austin and Stephen Worchel (Brooks/Cole Publishing Company, 1979).
87
Larson and Shevchenko, “Managing Rising Powers: The Role of Status Concerns,” 38.
88
Larson and Shevchenko, 38.
89
Larson, “How Identities Form and Change: Supplementing Constructivism with Social Psychology.”
90
Hymans, “Applying Social Identity Theory to the Study of International Politics: A Caution and an Agenda,” 12–
13.
91
Brent J. Steele, “Ontological Security and the Power of Self-Identity: British Neutrality and the American Civil
War,” Review of International Studies 31, no. 3 (July 1, 2005): 519–40; Ayşe Zarakol, “Ontological (In)Security and
39
it entails having a consistent sense of self and having that sense affirmed by others. Ontological
security-seeking, therefore, “is the drive to minimize hard uncertainty by imposing cognitive
order on the environment” because “agency requires a stable cognitive environment.”
92
Actors do
so by establishing stable relationships with their surroundings and routinizing them. In other
words, actors are ontologically secure when they chose a course of action that is comfortable
with their sense of identity. When an actor has to choose a course of action that is incongruent
with their sense of self, they experience what Anthony Giddens calls ‘shame,’ which “bites at the
roots of self-esteem.”
93
One important implication the literature yields is that ontological security
may not align with physical security. As Jennifer Mitzen has noted, “even a harmful or self-
defeating relationship can provide ontological security, which means states can become attached
to conflict.”
94
I do not claim, however, that identity can explain it all. As Georg Sorenson has argued,
“the ideas and shared knowledge which are in focus in constructivist analysis never operate
outside a specific material context.”
95
Chosŏn founders’ conscious identity strategy was not
produced in a vacuum. Its subordination to the Ming was in part forced by the particular
geopolitical structure of the time. As historian Peter Yun has put it, “without a separate
Manchurian power that used to form the triangular interstate relations, Chosŏn had to deal with
Ming China directly across its northern border, and this new geopolitical power configuration
State Denial of Historical Crimes: Turkey and Japan,” International Relations 24, no. 1 (March 1, 2010): 3–23,
https://doi.org/10.1177/0047117809359040; Ayşe Zarakol, “States and Ontological Security: A Historical
Rethinking,” Cooperation and Conflict, July 11, 2016, 0010836716653158,
https://doi.org/10.1177/0010836716653158; Mackay, “The Nomadic Other.”
92
Jennifer Mitzen, “Ontological Security in World Politics: State Identity and the Security Dilemma,” European
Journal of International Relations 12, no. 3 (September 1, 2006): 342, 346,
https://doi.org/10.1177/1354066106067346.
93
Steele, “Ontological Security and the Power of Self-Identity,” 526.
94
Mitzen, “Ontological Security in World Politics,” 342.
95
Georg Sørensen, “The Case for Combining Material Forces and Ideas in the Study of IR,” European Journal of
International Relations 14, no. 1 (March 1, 2008): 21, https://doi.org/10.1177/1354066107087768.
40
meant that the Korean state could no longer sustain its role in triangular interstate relations by
exploiting the Continental rivalry. Chosŏn had to play by the rules imposed by its bigger
neighbor. In other words, it was forced to become a model tributary.”
96
Vietnam, in contrast,
faced more intensified threat from their regional neighbors than from China after its liberation
from Ming occupation.
97
Drawing on these theoretical insights, this dissertation seeks to examine the following
hypotheses. First, secondary states deliberately seek positively distinctive identity through status
seeking under hierarchy. Status seeking of secondary states is achieved through socialization and
emulation of the predominant state.
98
Second, secondary states’ identity strategy is influenced by
particular geopolitical configuration and their place within it. Under certain geopolitical
condition, in which threat from the predominant state is more imperative, the elites of secondary
states are more likely to pursue status as loyal follower. Third, when identities of the elites of
secondary states are under threat, they may seek ontological security, as opposed to physical
security.
Research Design
In this dissertation, I conduct qualitative case studies based primarily on discourse
analysis and process tracing. Discourse here is broadly defined as an ensemble of ideas and
96
Yun, “Confucian Ideology and the Tribute System in Choson-Ming Relations,” 70.
97
Min Shu, “Balancing in a Hierarchical System: Pre-Colonial Southeast Asia and the Tribute System,” Waseda
Global Forum 8 (2012); Min Shu, “Hegemon and Instability: Pre-Colonial Southeast Asia under the Tribute
System,” WIAS Research Bulletin 4 (2012).
98
Iver B. Neumann and Benjamin de Carvalho, “Introduction: Small States and Status,” in Small State Status
Seeking: Norway’s Quest for International Standing, ed. Benjamin de Carvalho and Iver B. Neumann (Abingdon,
Oxon ; New York, NY: Routledge, 2014).
41
concepts that produces social meaning. Discourse analysis is, therefore, the “qualitative
contextualization of texts and practices in order to describe social meanings.”
99
It is particularly
useful for studying the content of identity. Process tracing is also well suited for the study of the
long span of history and how identity persists or changes across time. It is useful in delineating
the causal mechanism by which how identities are formed and change, or endure.
100
It should be
noted here that this dissertation is not aimed at producing universally applicable theories. My
purpose is to look into the causal mechanisms of historically contextualized phenomena, which
may have implications for international relations theory in general and our understanding of East
Asian history in particular. The merits of tracing causal mechanism, as Jon Elster has pointed
out, is “not that it can be universally applied to predict and control social events, but that it
embodies a causal chain that is sufficiently general and precise to enable us to locate it in widely
different settings.”
101
In other words, this dissertation is based on the premise that the “historical
mode of explanation based on context and narrative, allied to a social-scientific mode of enquiry
centered on eventfulness and ideal-typification” can be both empirically and theoretically fruitful
endeavor.
102
In the following chapters, I compare Korea and Vietnam under the Ming and Qing
domination and identify how they defined themselves against China under the condition of
hierarchy. So far, Korea and Japan have been the standard set of comparison in the study of
premodern international relations of the region.
103
One of the common assumptions behind these
99
Abdelal et al., “Identity as a Variable,” 2006, 702.
100
Andrew Bennett and Jeffrey T. Checkel, Process Tracing (Cambridge University Press, 2014).
101
Jon Elster, Political Psychology (New York: Cambridge University Press, 1993), 5.
102
George Lawson, “The Eternal Divide? History and International Relations,” European Journal of International
Relations 18, no. 2 (2010): 205, https://doi.org/10.1177/1354066110373561.
103
David C. Kang, “Authority and Legitimacy in International Relations: Evidence from Korean and Japanese
Relations in Pre-Modern East Asia,” Chinese Journal of International Politics 5, no. 1 (March 1, 2012): 55–71,
https://doi.org/10.1093/cjip/pos002; Zhang, Chinese Hegemony, 2015; Lee, China’s Hegemony; Park, “Imagined
Hierarchy: Sovereign Autonomy and Status in East Asian International Relations.”
42
existing research is the similarity in structural conditions that Korea and Japan faced during the
early modern period. As I have argued above, however, since the Mongol’s reign over China
during the Yuan dynasty, it became evident that Korea was under the different level of structural
pressure. Unlike Japan, Korea did not have the luxury of choosing from a set of options—one of
which was to completely withdraw from the Sino-centric international order. To repeat, Korea
and Japan were not put under comparable material conditions as many have so far assumed. I
argue, therefore, that comparison between Sino-Korean and Sino-Vietnamese dyads make much
more sense especially from the identity perspective, as they were both considered as the most
Sinicized vassals.
For empirical evidence, I examine the official annals of Korea, the Veritable Records of
the Chosŏn Dynasty (Chosŏn Wangjo Sillok; 朝 鮮王朝 實錄) and other primary secondary
sources.
104
As the official accounts of activities of the state, the Veritable Records was written by
professional historiographers bearing the title of ‘official historian’ on a daily basis. They
provide surprisingly detailed information about almost every aspect of important domestic affairs
and foreign relations. Mostly importantly for the purpose of this dissertation, the Veritable
Records offers valuable opportunity to look into the internal debates within Korea—or the lack
thereof—with regards to its relations with China. Furthermore, they document the decision-
making process from a relatively objective vantage point. On the one hand, this is due to a
peculiar culture of East Asian historiography. The purpose of writing history in East Asia was
based on the Confucian belief that “historical facts constituted the only certain and immutable
reality.”
105
Histogriographical objectivity, therefore, became the most cherished goal of
104
“ 朝 鮮 王 朝 實錄 Veritable Records of the Joseon Dynasty,” n.d.
105
Masayuki Sato, “Historical Thought and Historiography: East Asia,” in International Encyclopedia of the Social
& Behavioral Sciences (Second Edition), ed. James D. Wright (Oxford: Elsevier, 2015), 48–53.
43
historians in East Asia, compared to Europe. On the other hand, Korea took this notion seriously
and pushed it to the extreme. When senior court officials compiled the annals of a deceased king,
the next king was not allowed to look at those annals to prevent him from altering what they
contained. There were only few instances over five hundred years of the Chosŏn dynasty where
the records were revealed to a king.
106
In fact, the Veritable Records even transcribe a king’s
order to the official historians not to record what he had just said.
Beside the Veritable Records, I also utilize other primary sources including the writings
of key figures among Korean elites. Secondary sources such as books and journal articles written
by historians in both Korean and English are analyzed as well for further information. On
Vietnam, I primarily rely on secondary sources for the lack of comparable primary sources.
106
Don Baker, “Writing History in Pre-Modern Korea,” in The Oxford History of Historical Writing (Oxford:
Oxford University Press, 2012), https://doi.org/10.1093/acprof:osobl/9780199219179.003.0006.
44
Chapter 3 Korea’s Identity Strategy under Ming Hegemony
Introduction
This chapter examines Chosŏn Korea’s identity strategy under Ming’s hegemony from
the late fourteenth century to the early seventeenth century. The primary purpose of this chapter
is to empirically show the following points. First, the founders of Chosŏn Korea sought to define
who they were in terms of its relationship with the Ming China, and serving the great, or sadae,
policy they adopted was their deliberate strategy of identity building. Second, this identity
strategy was inextricably linked to Chosŏn’s status seeking as the model tributary state. Third,
the geopolitical configuration surrounding Chosŏn’s founding partly contributed to Chosŏn’s
identity strategy. Fourth, Korea’s status as the model tributary state became so important for its
sense of self among its core elites that they even risked their own survival when the Ming’s
power was in clear decline.
No ideological commitment based on Neo-Confucian orthodoxy can be found during the
early Chosŏn period as Chosŏn officials did not subscribe exclusively to the Neo-Confucian
vision of politics and generally took an eclectic approach to the issues of the time. As the
prominent historian of this period John Duncan has noted, “ideological consistency was
subordinated to the practical necessities of the Korean political circumstances of the late
fourteenth and early fifteenth centuries.”
107
It was not until well into sixteenth century that
107
John B. Duncan, “Confucianism in the Late Koryŏ and Early Chosŏn,” Korean Studies 18 (1994): 97.
45
Chosŏn elites came to show ideological commitment to Sinocentric international order.
108
On the
other hand, the seed of ideological commitment can be traced back to the thoughts of Chosŏn
founders, and even to those of late Koryŏ scholar officials, who believed in the righteousness of
faithfully serving the Ming China.
109
The Formulation of Sadae in Early Chosŏn
While Korea has often been considered as the model tributary to the Chinese dynasties
throughout its pre-modern history, it was only after the Mongols swept the entire Eurasian
continent with its mighty cavalry that Korea was finally forced to abide by the norms of the
tribute system.
110
But the emergence of sadae can be traced back to the fourth century when three
kingdoms of Korea paid tribute and received investiture from different Chinese dynasties in their
struggle against one another.
111
The kingdom of Silla, in seventh century used its tribute relations
with the Tang China for its purpose of defeating other two Korean kingdoms of Kogurryŏ and
Paekche. Before its submission to the Mongol Yuan, the kingdom of Koryŏ displayed little
attachment to the Sinocentric ideology of the tribute system. Koryŏ, in fact, was able to pursue
independent foreign policies by exploiting triangular geopolitical configuration in which Chinese
108
계승 범, 조선 시 대 해 외 파 병 과 한 중 관 계 ( 서 울: 푸른 역 사, 2009).
109
최연 식, “ 조공 체 제의 변 동 과 조선 시 대 중화- 사대 관념 의 굴절,” 한국 정 치 학 회보 41, no. 1 (2007): 101–21;
배우성, 조선 과 중화 : 조 선 이 꿈 꾸 고 상 상 한 세계 와 문 명 ( 서울: 돌 배 게, 2014).
110
Yun, “Rethinking the Tribute System: Korean States and Northeast Asian Interstate Relations, 600-1600.”
111
전재 성, “’ 사 대’ 의 개 념 사 적 연구,” in 근 대 한국 의 사회 과 학 개념 형 성 사 2, ed. 하 영선 and 손 열 ( 서울:
창비, 2012).
46
and Manchurian states frequently fought over the supremacy.
112
As historians of the medieval
East Asia have pointed out, China was simply one among equals, being constantly threatened by
rival powers.
113
Koryŏ general Yi Sŏng-gye, who posthumously titled King T’aejo, became the first king
of the new Chosŏn dynasty through a coup d’etat that overthrew Koryŏ in 1392. The top priority
of the king was to legitimize his reign by seeking official recognition from the Ming emperor.
The very foundation of Chosŏn, in fact, was based on the Confucian world view that placed
China at the center of the world order.
114
Not only Ming was the most formidable military power
in the neighborhood, but also culturally most advanced. When Yi Sŏng-gye turned his armies
against the Koryŏ king in opposition to military campaign against the Ming, one of the primary
justifications he offered in his “Four Reasons against Fighting Ming” was the Confucian
principle of serving the great—that it was wrong for a small state to challenge a superior one.
115
Behind Yi Sŏng -gye’s embrace of Confucianism was a group of pro-Ming Neo-
Confucian scholar-bureaucrats that began to emerge as an influential political force in late
Koryŏ. They were driven by a strong sense of mis to change Korean society based on Confucian
principles. As historian Martina Deuchler writes, “the intention of the scholar-officials was not
just the building of another dynasty but the creation of a Confucian dynasty.”
116
The
112
윤영 인, “10~12 세기 동 아 시 아 의 다 원 적 국제질 서 와 한 중 관 계,” in 동아시 아 국 제 질 서 속 의 한중 관 계사:
제언과 모 색 ( 동 북아역 사 재 단, 2010).
113
See collection of essays in Morris Rossabi, China Among Equals: The Middle Kingdom and Its Neighbors, 10th-
14th Centuries (University of California Press, 1983).
114
Lien-sheng Yang, “Historical Notes on the Chinese World Order,” in The Chinese World Order: Traditional
China’s Foreign Relations, ed. John King Fairbank (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1968).
115
T’aejo Sillok 1:22a [#84]. For English translation, see Byonghyon Choi, trans., The Annals of King T’aejo:
Founder of Korea’s Chosŏn Dynasty (Cambridge, Massachusetts: Harvard University Press, 2014), 57. Other
reasons for opposing the campaign were more practical.
116
Martina Deuchler, “Neo-Confucianism: The Impulse for Social Action in Early Yi Korea,” The Journal of
Korean Studies 2 (1980): 71.
47
establishment of Chosŏn dynasty, therefore, was a project to transform Korea into a Confucian
society.
117
The new kingdom’s name Chosŏn was originated from Kija Chosŏn, mythical ancient
kingdom in Korea that had its origin in China’s Shang dynasty.
118
The early Chosŏn elites took
pride in their ancient connection with China. Chong Tojon, one of the most influential official of
the early Chosŏn, thus drew an explicit parallel between Kija Chosŏn’s close relationship with
the Zhou dynasty and that of Chosŏn with Ming.
119
For that reason, Chosŏn’s founding fathers
incorporate the idea of serving the great into the national code of the dynasty ( 경 국 대 전,
經國大典).
120
The tribute, therefore, was unquestionable “necessary duty of a vassal state in its
serving of the suzerain.”
121
In this context, it was natural that King T’aejo dispatched an envoy led by Cho Ban to the
Ming court to inform the change in dynasty on the very next day of his enthronement in July
1392.
122
Against his wish, however, Ming’s Hongwu emperor issued an edict in a year after,
reprimanding the Chosŏn king for usurping the throne of the Koryŏ king. The emperor even
117
For an opposing view, see John B. Duncan, The Origins of the Choson Dynasty (University of Washington Press,
2000). He emphasizes, instead, that the establishment of the Chosŏn and subsequent regorms were designed to
resolve contradictory elements in the Koryŏ system.
118
Legendary Shang Dynasty’s Prince Kija was widely credited to bring civilization from China to Korea. 한 영우,
“ 고 려- 조 선 전 기 의 기 자 인식,” 한 국 문화 3 (1982).
119
삼봉 집 제 13 권, 조선 경국 전 상( 朝鮮 經 國 典 上) / 국호( 國號). Also see Weiguo Sun, “An Analysis of the
‘Little China’ Ideology of Chosŏn Korea,” Frontiers of History in China 7, no. 2 (January 1, 2012): 220–39,
https://doi.org/10.3868/s020-001-012-0012-5.
120
강상 규, 조선 정 치 사 의 발 견: 조 선 의 정 치 지 형 과 문 명 전환 의 위 기 ( 창 비, 2013).
121
T’aejo Sillok 4:5a [1393/08/02 #5]. Hereafter, the Veritable Records of the Choson Dyansty will be cited
according to fascicle and page (i.e. 4:5a) followed by the date and entry number in brackets (i.e. [1393/08/02 #5]. Te
date will be in the order of reign year (in Gregorian equivalent), lunar month and date. Leap months will be
indicated with the letter “i” following the number. The entry number reflects the organization of individual daily
records in the Veritable Reccords.
122
T’aejo Sillok 1:39a [1392/07/18 #2].
48
threatened to use military force against Chosŏn.
123
Although furious of receiving such threat,
King T’aejo responded in a restrained manner by dispatching an envoy to the emperor, defending
himself by clarifying the details of his takeover of the Koryŏ. Yet Hongwu emperor responded
by forbidding entry of Chosŏn envoys to Ming territory.
124
Sending the prince Yi Bang-won, who
later became King T’aejong, to the Ming court somewhat mitigated tension, yet imperial
investiture was still not issued.
125
In early 1936, another dispute between Ming and Chosŏn erupted around the
inappropriate expression in Chosŏn’s memorial to the emperor celebrating the new year.
Hongwu emperor demanded apology from King T’aejo and insisted punishment of the Chosŏn
officials responsible for writing the memorial.
126
The Ming court specifically picked Chong
Tojon, the closest aide to the king, to be sent to Beijing for punishment claiming he was
responsible for inappropriate expression in the memorial.
127
The emperor, through a letter issued
by Ming’s Ministry of Rites, explicitly threatened Chosŏn warning that “[Chong Tojon] will
certainly bring disaster upon his kingdom” and that the king should “think deeply and find the
ways to preserve his kingdom.”
128
In fact, the Ming court often threatened Chosŏn by referring to
possible flexing of muscle. Some of the Chosŏn court officials were enraged by Ming’s obvious
coercion. Led by Pyon Chungnyang, these officials submitted memorial to the king in which they
openly criticized Ming for treating its vassal state unfairly:
123
T’aejo Sillok 3:9b [1393/05/25 #2]. The Annals records the king’s anger as he describes the emperor’s threat as
resembling “an intimidation to a little child.”
124
T’aejo Sillok 4:6a [1393/08/15 #1].
125
T’aejo Sillok 8:13a [1395/04/11 #2].
126
T’aejo Sillok 9:4a [1396/03/29 #3].
127
T’aejo Sillok 9:9a [1396/06/11 #1].
128
T’aejo Sillok 11:9b [1397/04/17 #1]..
49
“Since we cannot follow the prevailing opinion slavishly, we have no
choice but to worry your divine intelligence. Your Majesty has never been slack in
serving the great suzerain state ever since you ascended the throne. Nevertheless,
the suzerain state tries to find faults with us, contending that we attempted to mock
or insult them… China has repeatedly made demands on us, and we have never
refused to satisfy even one. They, nevertheless, continue to reproach us, and there -
fore how can we be sure that things such as this will not happen in the days ahead?
“If our country, in spite of having rugged terrain for its defense, keeps on yielding
to their unjust demands and showing weakness of attitude, we cannot help fearing
that there will be demands in the future that we cannot accept, and then how should
we respond?”
129
Chong Tojon, in the meantime, was preparing for a possible military campaign against
the Liaodong region of Ming’s territory, once part of the Korean dynasties. The earliest account
of military preparation can be found in June 1397 when Chong Tojon and other officials
proposed a plan for military campaign to the king.
130
In the following year, during the dispute
over the memorial, Chong Tojon again forcefully recommend military training for the purpose of
attacking the Liaodong.
131
Historian Park Wonho suggests that the motivation behind Chong
Tojon’s military preparation was to reclaim the territory that had once belonged to Korea.
132
The
success of sadae policy, he argues, was not necessarily incompatible with the pursuit of
sovereign autonomy. Other historians dispute this claim by emphasizing the dynamics within
129
T’aejo Sillok 14:5b [1398/05i/3 #1]. 05i of the calendar notes intercalary month.
130
T’aejo Sillok 11:16b [1937/06/14 #1].
131
T’aejo Sillok 14:18a [1398/08/09 #1].
132
박원 호, 明初 朝 鮮 關係 史 硏究 ( 일조 각, 2002), 112.
50
Chosŏn court in which Chong Tojon’s primary goal was to consolidate king’s authority through
abolishing private militaries. By proposing the idea of military campaign against Ming, he
wanted to reign in domestic oppositions to his cherished political reforms.
133
Yet the fact that a military attack against the suzerain was proposed and discussed in the
Chosŏn court is telling. King T’aejo himself indeed was the most important figure behind Chong
Tojon’s plan for military campaign against Ming territory. In order to receive imperial
investiture, however, the king of a new dynasty had no choice but to behave sincerely toward the
Ming emperor. King T’aejo believed the virtue of pragmatic sadae policy because it could serve
the two most crucial purposes of his reign: protecting Chosŏn from possible Ming invasion and
legitimation of his rule over the new dynasty. In the end, however, he never received the
investiture until his abdication in 1398.
134
King T’aejong, the fifth son of T’aejo, came to power through two court coups in 1400.
By the time King T’aejong ascended to the throne, killing many of political rivals and brothers,
Yongle emperor also seized the power through a civil war that lasted for three years. The change
of leadership in China was a turning point for Ming-Chosŏn relations as the new emperor held
more favorable view toward its small neighbor than his predecessor.
135
Yongle emperor
particularly considered Chosŏn as Ming’s closest vassal. King T’aejong sent the embassy to
congratulate Yongle emperor’s enthronement only days after he had received such notification
from Ming embassy.
136
It was a rather extraordinary move because, from normative point of
view, Ming’s new emperor was not a legitimate son of the heaven as he became emperor through
133
박홍 규, “ 정도 전 의 ‘ 공요( 攻 遼)’ 기 도 재검토,” 정 치 사상 연구, 2004, 21–22.
134
The second Chosŏn King Chungjong did not receive the investiture either because of his short tenure. Chungjong
Sillok 5:12b [1400/09/19 #2].
135
Feng Zhang, Chinese Hegemony: Grand Strategy and International Institutions in East Asian History (Stanford
University Press, 2015), 73.
136
T’aejong Sillok 4:16a [1402/10/12 #1]; 4:17a [1402/10/15 #2].
51
rebellion and usurpation. Moreover, king T’aejong had sincerely served Jianwen emperor, the
previous emperor and a nephew of Yongle emperor. The new emperor reciprocated it by
granting investiture to king T’aejong without delay.
137
Yongle emperor’s posture toward Chosŏn
was in part because it was necessary as a usurper to stabilize Ming’s periphery to ensure his
legitimacy. The Annals records an occasion when king T’aejong was delighted to hear that his
son, who was sent to Ming as an envoy, received a warm reception from the emperor.
138
The
emperor also often bestowed generous gifts upon Chosŏn envoys, including gold, silver, and
even Buddhist songs made by the emperor himself.
139
The survival of the dynasty was the unbeatable priority for king T’aejong. Even though
he was the third king of the dynasty, it was less than ten years old when he ascended to throne.
When king T’aejong discussed Ming’s successful military campaign against Vietnam, he
expressed his concern that “if we make an even small mistake and lose favor with the emperor,
he will certainly raise his army and punish us with force.”
140
King T’aejong’s fear was
understandable given the uncertainty surrounding Ming in the early years of Yongle reign. Yet it
is surprising that he was equally worried about Ming’s military punishment, or possible invasion,
more than a decade later when he revealed his anxiety about Chosŏn’s security to his officials:
“I, who cannot claim any virtue, have been sincere in serving the middle kingdom. We have been
in peace for the past years, but it is difficult to know what may come in the future. If we get
accused of making the slightest mistake in the eyes of the emperor, I fear that there will certainly
be big trouble for us.”
141
In fact, Yongle emperor, despite his more favorable view of Chosŏn,
137
Donald N. Clark, “Sino-Korean Tributary Relations under the Ming,” in The Cambridge History of China:
Volume 8: The Ming Dynasty, ed. Denis C. Twitchett and Frederick W. Mote, vol. 8, The Cambridge History of
China (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1998), 278, https://doi.org/10.1017/CHOL9780521243339.007.
138
T’aejong Sillok 15:5b [1408/02/04 #4].
139
T’aejong Sillok 15:16a [1408/04/02 #15].
140
T’aejong Sillok 13:16b [1407/04/08 #1].
141
T’aejong Sillok 24:11a [1417/08/16 #1].
52
was at the same time suspicious of its loyalty. When military expedition against the Mongols
began, the Ming court suspected that Chosŏn might provide military aid to the Tartars.
142
Yongle
emperor was also suspicious of close relationship between Chosŏn and Japan (Muromachi
Bakufu) when he was contemplating a military campaign against Japan who refused to pay
tribute.
143
In part to mitigate Ming’s suspicion, King T’aejong sincerely obeyed request of tributes
from Ming, most typically virgin girls and war horses. The latter was of particular importance to
the Ming at the time due to Yongle emperor’s frequent military expeditions, first against
Vietnam and then the Mongols. After his successful conquest of Vietnam, Yongle emperor, in
his preparation for a military campaign against the Mongols, requested Chosŏn to provide war
horses to support him in 1409.
144
King T’aejong instantly decided to send ten thousand war
horses to Ming before the launch of operation in spring the following year.
145
Yet this decision
sparked strong opposition from Chosŏn’s court officials. The Office of the Censor General
( 사간원, 司諫院), in particular, emphasized the importance of war horses to Chosŏn’s national
security, referring to the past experiences when Korean dynasties were able to defeat China’s
invasions due to their quality war horses.
146
While acknowledging the importance of complying
with Ming’s request, the Office advised that the king should strike balance between sadae and
national security. Yet King T’aejong proceeded with his decision to send ten thousand horses
142
T’aejong Sillok 18:43b [1409/11/18 #2].
143
T’aejong Sillok 33:48a [1417/05i/09 #5].
144
T’aejong Sillok 18:37a [1409/10/21 #1].
145
T’aejong Sillok 18:37a [1409/10/22 #1].
146
T’aejong Sillok 18:41a [1409/11/14 #2].
53
and they were delivered to Ming’s capital between November 1409 and March 1410 through 19
different embassies.
147
As was the case with his father king T’aejo, king T’aejong’s rationale for sincerely
serving the Ming was thus primarily to ensure his rule over the kingdom. Although we can find
some normative elements in his understanding of Chosŏn’s relationship with Ming, he
nevertheless did not shy away from openly expressing his discontents with the Ming within the
Chosŏn court. In this spirit, King T’aejong openly and repeatedly expressed his negative
opinions about the emperor’s personality and sometimes criticized his decisions, which could
have been considered as the notion of Confucian appropriateness. One day, when discussing
policies with his senior court officials, king T’aejong revealed his candid evaluation of Yongle
emperor, who he thought was brutal and merciless.
148
King T’aejong even challenged the
legitimacy of the emperor when he made an explicit reference to the fact that Yongle emperor
took over the throne by force without being designated by his father.
149
On different occasions,
king T’aejong also openly questioned Yongle emperor’s military campaign against Vietnam and
the Mongols. When he discussed defense policies with his court officials, king T’aejong
attributed Ming’s imprudent involvement in Vietnam’s affairs to Yongle emperor’s personal
eagerness for grandeur and glory.
150
Upon hearing the Ming’s plan for military expedition against
the Mongls, King T’aejong also pointed out the emperor’s imprudence of raising army when the
Mongols did not pose any threat to the Ming.
151
147
T’aejong Sillok 19:19a [1410/03/07 #2].
148
T’aejong Sillok 8:10a [1404/09/11 #1]. He made comparison between Yongle emperor and Jianwen emperor.
149
T’aejong Sillok 26:7b [1413/07/26 #1].
150
T’aejong Sillok 13:16b [1407/04/08 #1].
151
T’aejong Sillok 19:13a [1410/02/13 #2].
54
Another point of friction between Ming and Chosŏn was their competition to influence
the Jurchens in Liaodong region.
152
King T’aejong considered Chosŏn’s control over the
Jurchens a matter of national security and was more than willing to sacrifice the notion of sadae
when it conflicted with issues of national security.
153
Chosŏn took it for granted that the Jurchens
remained under its influence and bestowed its leaders nominal appointments of military posts
during the 1390s. Yongle emperor, however, was keen on organizing the Jurchens under its
chain of command system for security purpose. Although king T’aejong obeyed the Ming
emperor with sincerity, he would not compromise on the issue of control over the Jurchens.
Chosŏn’s military expedition against Moryeonwi ( 모련위, 毛憐衛) in 1410 is a case in point.
When a Chosŏn official defending the border was killed by some Jurchens tribes, king T’aejong
decided to punish them with force, despite opposition from few senior officials and the office of
the Censor General.
154
While the Annals fails to provide the details of the debate on the military
campaign among the senior officials, majority of them generally agreed with it.
155
To those who
worried about the implication of military campaign to Chosŏn’s relationship with Ming, the king
justified it by insisting that he was not aware of the fact that the Jurchens had been granted
Ming’s recognition.
156
In sum, the primary purpose of sadae by King T’aejo and king T’aejong was to ensure
Chosŏn’s survival and security. They obeyed the Ming emperor with the utmost sincerity, yet at
the same time prepared for possible military invasion by Ming. When it comes to Chosŏn’s
152
Clark, “Sino-Korean Tributary Relations under the Ming,” 1998, 284–89.
153
이규 철, “ 조선 태 종 대 대 명 의식과 여 진 정벌( 征伐),” 만 주 연 구 17 (2014).
154
T’aejong Sillok 19:13b [1410/02/15 #2].
155
이규 철, “ 조선 태 종 대 대 명 의식과 여 진 정벌( 征伐),” 86.
156
T’aejong Sillok 19:23b [ 1410/03/16 #3].
55
national security issues, moreover, both kings would not compromise their claim in support of
sadae policy. There certainly were differences between the two kings. King T’aejo contemplated
possible military campaign against Ming territory, the plan proposed and supported by many
senior officials within the court. Under king T’aejong, however, it is difficult find such a
hawkish voice against the Ming. Yet the underlying philosophy of both kings’ approach to Ming
was the same: it was to “serve the great with our whole and heart on the one hand, but to fortify
and prepare for war on the other hand.”
157
Chosŏn’s assertion of its own identity is evident in the writings of the most influential
scholar-officials of early Chosŏn. Chong Tojon, one of the most important architects of the
Chosŏn, was far from being reluctant in compromising the foundations of Neo-Confucian
principles when it comes to state policies.
158
The idea of serving the great, to Chong, was
predicated on the principle of reciprocity between China and Korea. Korea’s participation in the
Sinocentric order, therefore, was conditional on China’s guarantee of its autonomy.
159
The
smaller shows deference to the suzerain in exchange for protection and caring from the great; if
the great fails to provide benign leadership, the smaller no longer has obligation for pay
deference.
Evolution of Sadae
157
T’aejong Sillok 13:16b [1413/07/26 #1].
158
Chai-sik Chung, “Chong Tojon: ‘Architect’ of Yi Dyansty Government and Ideology,” in The Rise of Neo-
Confucianism in Korea, ed. William Theodore de Bary and JaHyun Kim Haboush (New York: Columbia University
Press, 1985).
159
Yông-u Han, Wangjo-ǔi sǒlgyeja chǒng to-jǒn [Chong Tojon: Architect of the Dynasty] (Seoul: Jishik Sanupsa,
1999).
56
King T’aejong abdicated his throne to one of his sons Sejong, whose reign is considered
to be one of the most flourishing times of Chosŏn history. King Sejong, an established Confucian
scholar himself, governed his subjects according to the principles of Confucianism. In this vein,
it was natural that he wanted to serve the Ming sincerely because it was a right thing to do based
on Confucian appropriateness. For an instance, when a senior court official advised the king to
refuse offering of falcons as a tribute to Ming, the king replied:
“Sadae must be implemented with sincerity, and we cannot lie because the emperor
knows that there are falcons in Chosŏn. I am well aware of the harms and troubles
that this has incurred to the people of Chosŏn. Speaking of the great cause, however,
the damage to the people is slight and the failure to sincerely serve the great is
significant… Remonstration does not belong to the rights of the vassals.”
160
King Sejong was emphasizing the great cause of sadae at the expense of his people’s well-being.
While his predecessors’ understanding of sadae was predicated on asymmetry of power, king
Sejong laid the foundations for lord and subject relationship.
King Sejong, in fact, always treated Ming’s requests with sincerity, without putting them
under scrutiny. In September 1421, Yongle emperor’s envoy arrived in Chosŏn’s capital
demanding the purchase of 10,000 horses.
161
On the same day the envoy delivered the request
from the emperor, King Sejong ordered to set up a bureau for collecting horses headed by senior
court officials.
162
The King’s order was carried out in a swift manner and completed within less
160
Sejong Sillok 33:19b [1426/09/29 #1].
161
Sejong Sillok 13:16b [1421/09/21 #1].
162
Sejong Sillok 13:17a [1421/09/21 #2].
57
than four months of time.
163
Ming’s request for horses came again two years later in 1423 as
Yongle Emperor was planning for a military campaign against the Tartars.
164
Unlike the earlier
request, it was met by some fierce opposition within the Chosŏn court. Referring to the earlier
demand for 10,000 horses, Hŏ Cho and Cho Mal-saeng, two senior ministers, reminded the king
that horses are the foundations of military capability. “By offering 20,000 horses to Ming,” Heo
Cho maintained, “we will have 20,000 less cavaliers.”
165
He instead proposed to offer half of
requested number of horses. For him, when national interest conflicts with sincere sadae policy,
the latter has to be compromised so as to serve the former. King Sejong, and the majority of his
court officials, nevertheless insisted to fully follow the emperor’s request on the basis of
obligation.
166
The king even personally checked the quality of horses to be sent to Ming.
167
In the
end, Chosŏn sent 10,000 horses as requested by Ming by the spring of the following year.
168
When Emperor Xuande yet again requested 5,000 horses few years later in 1427, king Sejong
adhered to the principle of sadae by immediately ordered the preparation of them.
169
King Sejong, however, was also pragmatic and strategic in his dealing with Ming from
time to time. Court officials surrounding the king showed similar pragmatism by weighing the
costs and benefits of Chosŏn’s policies toward Ming when it comes to important security issues.
The debate over the Tumu Incident of 1449 within the Chosŏn court is a case in point.
170
When
the report of the Oirat Mongols’ invasion of Ming arrived the Chosŏn court in August 1449, it
163
Sejong Sillok 15:2b [1422/01/13 #2].
164
Sejong Sillok 21:7b [1423/08/01 #3].
165
Sejong Sillok 21:7b [1423/08/02 #1].
166
Sejong Sillok 21:7b [1423/08/02 #1].
167
Sejong Sillok 21:12a [1423/08/20 #4].
168
Sejong Sillok 23:33a [1424/03/16 #2].
169
Sejong Sillok 36:5b [1427/04/21 #1]; 37:5a [1427/07/20 #4].
170
Frederick W. Mote, “The T’u-Mu Incident of 1449,” in Chinese Ways in Warfare, ed. Frank A. Kierman and
John King Fairbank (Harvard University Press, 1974).
58
immediately started to discuss possible ways to tighten Chosŏn’s military preparedness.
171
Military personnel were dispatched to the northern border and special conscription was
announced in southern provinces. Yet there were oppositions within the court to the idea of
special conscription as well. Led by Chŏng In-ji and Chŏng Ch'ang-son, they claimed that
sudden conscription would put national economy at risk because it required many farmers to join
military abandoning their fields. More important reason for opposition, however, was concerned
with their strategic understanding of what had happened between Ming and the Oirat Mongols.
Chŏng In-ji and Chŏng Ch'ang-son suggested to the king that the Oirat Mongols was not
interested in invading Chosŏn, given its ambition to conquer the heart of Ming.
172
King Sejong
conquered with their advice and suspended the plan for special conscription.
173
When the imperial edict from Zhengtong Emperor arrived a few weeks later, however,
the debate within the Chosŏn court was revived. The edict revealed the emperor’s plan for a
massive military campaign against the Oirat Mongols and instructed the Chosŏn king to prepare
more than one hundred thousand soldiers to support it.
174
In contrast to his previous practices,
however, King Sejong decided to refuse Ming’s request for sending soldiers on the grounds that
Chosŏn was under constant threat from Japan and the Jurchens. Instead, the king suggested,
Chosŏn would fulfill its duty as a sincere vassal by protecting its own territory.
175
While it is
difficult to appreciate the details of debate within the court due to the lack of records, we can
suppose that the majority of court officials were against the dispatch of soldiers, given the
contents of the response sent to Ming.
176
Chosŏn also refused to fulfill Ming’s yet another request
171
Sejong Sillok 125:9a [1449/08/02 #2].
172
Sejong Sillok 125:12a [1449/08/16 #2].
173
Sejong Sillok 125:12b [1449/08/18 #2].
174
Sejong Sillok 125:21a [1449/09/09 #1].
175
Sejong Sillok 125:22b [1449/09/18 #2].
176
계승 범, 조선 시 대 해 외 파 병 과 한 중 관 계: 조선 지 배 층의 중국 인식 ( 푸 른 역 사, 2009), 95.
59
for 20,000 to 30,000 horses to support its military campaign in the following year.
177
Referring to
its own demand for horses for the purpose of securing borders, King Sejong, with suggestions
from his court officials, decided to send 5,000 horses, far less than the amount instructed by the
imperial edict.
178
During this time of crisis in Ming, Chosŏn’s foremost concern was the
possibility of direct clash with the Oirat Mongols. The best strategy, therefore, was to fortify its
defense forces against possible invasion by the Oirat Mongols, not to be deeply involved in the
conflict between the two great powers.
King Sejo usurped the throne in 1455, deposing his young nephew King Tanjong. Under
Sejo’s regin, Yang Sŏng-ji was one of the closest and trusted advisors to the king.
179
Immediately
after King Sejo took power, Yang offered a lengthy letter to the king putting forward his policy
suggestions on a variety of issues, which is recorded in Sillok in detail.
180
Yang first
acknowledged that sincere sadae should serve as the foundation of Chosŏn’s foreign policy. It is
natural, according to Yang, that the small should serve the great with genuine deference. Yet he
also made it clear that Chosŏn should not compromise its political autonomy and the well-being
of its people. First, Yang suggested that the king should take reference from Chosŏn’s own
experience and achievements of his predecessors, and should not seek lessons from “far away,”
in other words China. Second, he proposed that Chosŏn should not try to emulate every rules and
etiquettes of Ming. Preserving local way of things, Yang reasoned, was critical for the national
identity and ultimately national survival. When it comes to dressing code, therefore, Yang
suggested that Chosŏn had no reason to emulate Ming’s way except official court
177
Sejong Sillok 127:1a [1450/01/05 #1].
178
Sejong Sillok 127:12b [1450/01/21 #1].
179
한영 우, 조선 수 성 기 제 갈 량 양 성지 ( 지식 산 업 사, 2008).
180
Sejo Sillok 1:28a [1455/07/05].
60
dressing( 朝服). Third, Yang believed that the well-being of Chosŏn’s people should not be
compromised for the cause of serving the great.
Chosŏn’s relationship with Ming under King Sejo’s reign was predicated on such
pragmatism that Yang Sŏng-ji championed. In other writings, Yang was even more explicit
about his pragmatic view on sadae:
Now it is proper for a smaller state to serve a larger state. It has always
been so in the past. Our country is located far from China… even the great power
of the Sui and Tang dynasties could not compel us to submit… Koryŏ was
pacified only after several decades of Mongol military attacks… When Chu
Yuan-chang came to the throne, he wanted to take military action against us.
However, China had just been unified, and Chu could not launch a military
expedition to display his power. That is why he detained our envoys and increased
the tribute amounts to make trouble… Nowadays, we do not have to be so
concerned about earlier precedents… We need only to express our sincerity… we
should simply offer memorials. We should not dispatch so many envoys to emend
the lives of the people of Pyongan province.
181
Here, Yang cautions against sending too many embassies and proposed that the frequency of
embassies by one third to save state budget. He also proposed that the Korean court reduce
tribute amounts and refuse the Ming’s excessive demands of rare items. Yang believed that
181
Yang Songji, Nulchaejip. 3:3. English translation is from Yun, “Confucian Ideology and the Tribute System in
Choson-Ming Relations,” 75.
61
Korea’s own history and culture set it apart from other tributaries.
182
While it was a tributary
state, Korea still enjoyed political autonomy unlike others under the direct rule of China. Yang
stressed proud history of Korea and particularly its military victories against the Chinese
dynasties before Ming.
183
On the question of ritual at the Chosŏn court, Yang asserted that
Korean kings are eligible to perform direct worship to Heaven.
184
Chosŏn’s relationship with the Jurchens during King Sejo shows the prevalence of such
pragmatism with regards to its relationship with Ming. It was during the reign of King Sejong
when Chosŏn began issuing nominal appointments of its military positions to Jurchen leaders.
185
Yet King Sejo was the most proactive in attempting to influence the Jurchens, even competing
with Ming.
186
From the beginning of his reign, King Sejo encouraged Jurchen leaders’ mission to
the Chosŏn court. When the Ming court sent an envoy to Chosŏn accusing it for having
unauthorized relationships with the Jurchens by letting its leaders to come to the Chosŏn court,
King Sejo did not shy away from inviting Jurchen leaders to the Chosŏn court and treating them
as subjects of the Chosŏn king.
187
In his discussion with court officials, the king even expressed
his hope that by treating the Jurchen leaders with generosity, they may become harboring a
grudge against Ming, while being deeply obliged to Chosŏn.
188
By doing so, King Sejo implicitly
expected that it may drive a wedge between the Jurchens and Ming.
182
배우 성, 조선 과 중화: 조 선 이 꿈꾸 고 상 상 한 세 계 와 문 명 ( 돌베 개, 2014), 129.
183
Nulchaejip, Vol.3, No.3.
184
Nulchaejip, Vol.2, No.16.
185
Kenneth R. Robinson, “Organizing Japanese and Jurchens in Tribute Systems in Early Chosòn Korea,” Journal
of East Asian Studies 13, no. 2 (August 2013): 337–60.
186
이규 철, “ 세조 대 건 주위 정 벌 과 명의 출 병 요청,” 역 사 와 현실 89 (2013); 이 규 철, “ 세조 대 모 련 위 정 벌 의
의미와 대 명 인 식,” 한 국 사연 구 158 (2012).
187
Sejo Sillok 15:21b [1459/03/13 #2].
188
Sejo Sillok 15:22b [1459/03/14 #4].
62
In order to expand its influence over the Jurchens, King sejo did not refrain from even
employing military forces. Chosŏn’s military expedition against Moryeonwi ( 毛 憐 衛) is a case
in point. The Jurchen communities had already been incorporated into Chinese military system
under the reign of Yongle emperor as guards ( 衛). Sending military forces to the region,
therefore, had a potential to become a source of serious conflict between Chosŏn and Ming. Yet
when some of the chieftains of Jurchen tribes rejected Chosŏn’s control over the region, King
Sejo promptly decided to flex his muscle by sending military expedition to the north. While it
was justified as the inevitable response to a raid by the Jurchens, there are signs that the king had
already been in preparation for possible use of military forces. In fact, the report of the raid
indicated no significant casualty or damage.
189
King Sejo dispatched Sin Suk-chu, one of his
most trusted court officials, to the north to embark on military expedition and within a several
week’s time, five thousand troops were assembled for military expedition against the Jurchens.
190
In the meantime, Ming issued an imperial edict accusing Chosŏn of making trouble in the region
and ordered it to reconcile with the Jurchens.
191
Sin Suk-chu nonetheless insisted that the plan for
military expedition be implemented and the king concurred.
192
At the end, the military expedition
against Moryeonwi was executed as planned several months later.
As its influence over the Jurchens waned over time, Ming wanted to reaffirm its control
the region by launching a military campaign against the Jianzhou Jurchens. Ming sent an envoy
to Chosŏn to request for support its military campaign by sending Chosŏn soldiers. Although he
was still recovering from the impact of a recent rebellion in northern region of Chosŏn, King
189
Sejo Sillok 19:43b [1460/03/22 #2].
190
Sejo Sillok 20:5b [1460/04/10 #2].
191
Sejo Sillok 20:16a [1460/04/25 #1].
192
Sejo Sillok 20:17b [1460/04/26 #3].
63
Sejo decided to send ten thousand soldiers to support Ming without any opposition from his
court officials.
193
While Chosŏn’s military operation was supposed to have limited aim of
supporting the Ming campaign, it in fact had its own rationale for sending the troops to fight
against the Jurchens. Upon sending off the commander for the campaign, the king offered him a
detailed instruction as follows:
If the Ming commander requested the merge of the troops of Ming and
Chosŏn, refuse it by saying, “we use different languages and our king ordered us
to assist the Ming force after striking the enemy first. How can I disobey my
king’s order?” If they ask for more troops, refuse it by saying, “an army of ten
thousand is more than enough to defeat the Jianzhou Jurchens.” If the Ming forces
are not capable to overwhelm the enemy, we should hold back our forces and
avoid engaging the Jurchens. When the Ming forces are likely to overpower the
enemy, then attack the Jurchen bases and destroy them.
194
King Sejo indeed had his own plan aside from supporting Ming’s military campaign in the
region. For Chosŏn, it was a good opportunity to eliminate some of the Jurchen leaders who had
been hostile to the Chosŏn court. After all, King Sejo was a deeply pragmatic person and he
surrounded him with equally pragmatic court officials such as Yang Sŏng-ji and Sin Suk-chu.
While they fundamentally believed in the value of sadae as an appropriate way of Chosŏn’s
193
계승 범, 조선 시 대 해외 파 병 과 한중 관 계, 101–3.
194
Sejo Sillok 43:45a [1467/08/27 #1].
64
foreign relations, they also believed that its national interest would not be sacrificed for the cause
of serving the great.
Confucianization and Sadae
Some historians of early Chosŏn period have argued that it was under King Sŏngjong’s
reign (1469 – 1494) that Chosŏn’s ideological conviction of in sadae policy gained ground.
195
Others, however, have claimed that pragmatism was still prevalent within the Chosŏn court
under King Sŏngjong, as had been under his predecessors.
196
In fact, King Seonjong often faced
the acute dilemma of making choice between serving the great with utmost sincerity and
achieving Chosŏn’s national interest. The court was divided into officials embracing sadae as the
single most importance goal of Chosŏn’s foreign policy and others who adopted more pragmatic
strategy in its relations with Ming.
The debate over whether to follow Ming’s request for military support for its campaign
against the Jurchens displays the division within the Chosŏn court. When the Chosŏn court
received the news that Ming was preparing for a military campaign against the Jurchens, and it
may request military support from Chosŏn, the court immediately began discussing the issue.
197
Court officials who supported the dispatch of troops based their claim on the notion of serving
the great with genuine sincerity. Others who opposed to the idea of sending the troops presented
various reasons why Chosŏn needed to refuse Ming’s request. First, the northern province that
195
안정 희, “ 조선 초 기의 사 대 론,” 역사교 육 64 (1997).
196
계승 범, 조선 시 대 해외 파 병 과 한중 관 계.
197
Sŏngjong Sillok 95:16b [1478/08/23 #3].
65
bordered the Jurchens was suffering from sever famine and thus could not afford to mobilize
soldiers. In other words, the well-being of Chosŏn people was more important than serving the
great. Second, regardless of the results of military campaign, Chosŏn had nothing to gain. If
Ming achieved victory against the Jurchens, it will enjoy the fruits of victory alone. If Ming
failed to punish the Jurchens, Chosŏn had to bear the costs with Ming. The Jurchens would
certainly pursue revenge against Chosŏn.
198
The court debate over dispatch of troops continued a year later. Supporters of the
dispatch of troops, led by the head of court officials Chŏng Ch'ang-son, again referred to the
principle of sincere sadae.
199
From their point of view, sincere sadae would not depend on
circumstances. The oppositions, led by Yi Kŭk-pae, advised the king to refuse the dispatch of
troops based on consideration of the well-being of people. They also reminded the king of the
precedent set by his predecessor King Sejong who had refused to follow Ming’s request for the
dispatch of troops.
200
Upon the pressure by some of his most senior officials, however, the king
decided to send an army of ten thousand to support Ming’s military campaign. He could not find
any good excuse for not obeying Ming’s request.
The decision, however, was overturned a week later with a memorial from a junior court
official. The memorial repeated many of the objections that had already been raised and was
based on the idea that sadae was worth pursuing only if it did not conflict with Chosŏn’s national
interest.
201
Ming’s military campaign against the Jurchens, according proponents of this view,
was no more than a quarrel between the neighbors. The best strategy for Chosŏn, therefore,
would be to stay out of the fight. This time the majority of court officials sided with pragmatic
198
Sŏngjong Sillok 95:16b [1478/08/23 #3].
199
Sŏngjong Sillok 109:16b [1479/10/29 #2].
200
Sŏngjong Sillok 109:16b [1479/10/29 #2].
201
Sŏngjong Sillok 110:5a [1479/10/10i #6].
66
strategy of postponing the dispatch of troops. The turnaround by many court officials implies
that they indeed were not as deeply committed to the dispatch of troops to begin with. The fact
they often used the term inevitability in their defense signifies they too believed that the dispatch
of troops would undermine Chosŏn’s national interests.
202
The court finally decided to dispatch
the troops but with an important caveat: it would not send the troops soon enough to meet the
deadline set by Ming.
203
When Chenghua Emperor’s envoy arrived in Chosŏn court with imperial edict requesting
military support for its campaign against the Jurchens, King Sŏngjong avoided providing firm
answer as to when Chosŏn would dispatch the troops. While insisting that Chosŏn will fulfill its
duty as a loyal vassal by sending the troops, the king circumvented the issue of when to do so by
blaming the winter weather.
204
The fact that Chosŏn soon dispatched its troops to the northern
region shows the king did not have any intention to completely reject the emperor’s edict.
General Ŏ Yu-so was appointed as the commander of one thousand soldiers to be dispatched to
the northern border. Yet the primary concern for King Sŏngjong was preservation of the
dispatched Chosŏn forces. The king even made an explicit instruction to the general Ŏ that he
should not march forward recklessly and retreat whenever it was necessary.
205
Chosŏn’s primary
aim in this military campaign was to show that it was a loyal vassal while minimizing casualties
and damages.
The fierce debate over whether to follow Ming’s order for military support for its
campaign against the Jurchens vindicates that pragmatism still had much purchase among the
202
Sŏngjong Sillok 109:16b [1479/10/29 #2].
203
Sŏngjong Sillok 110:7b [1479/10/8i #5].
204
Sŏngjong Sillok 110:10a [1479/10/11i #1].
205
Sŏngjong Sillok 110:21a [1479/10/21i #2].
67
court officials and the king.
206
They wished to avoid the dispatch of troops if they could. To
majority of court officials, it was not always necessary to follow the Ming’s request even if it
took the form of imperial edict. Yet the fact that Chosŏn, in the end, decided to send the troops
indeed signifies that Confucian propriety had increasingly been taking precedence over
consideration of national interests.
207
This tendency became even more evident under the long reign of King Chungjong (1506
– 1544). Chosŏn under King Chungjong, in fact, was characterized by the rise of sarim ( 士 林), a
group of Neo-Confucian literati, and the rapid confucianization of government and society. In its
relationship with Ming, Chosŏn under King Chungjong began to consider the Ming emperor as
the ritual father must be always obeyed accordingly. Although Sadae had been the foundation of
Chosŏn’s foreign policy since the beginning, it was frequently compromised when Chosŏn’s
national interests were at stake. Under Chungjong’s reign, neo-Confucian ideals rapidly
developed into the orthodoxy and sadae came to be accepted as self-evident.
One of the ways this trend manifested itself was the sheer increase in the number of
Chosŏn’s voluntary missions to Ming. The frequency of voluntary missions indeed reflects the
intensity of affection that Chosŏn had for Ming. Chinhasa ( 進賀 使), a special congratulatory
envoy that were not obligatory, is the most typical of such voluntary missions. According to the
table 1, which is the collection of the accounts of the word Chinha ( 進 賀) for each king’s reign
in Chosŏn Wangjo Sillok, King Chungjong represents a dramatic departure from his
predecessors.
206
계승 범, 조선 시 대 해외 파 병 과 한중 관 계.
207
이규 철, “ 조선 성 종 대 명( 明) 의 출병 요 청과 대 명의 식 변화,” 한국사 연 구, 2015, 105–31.
68
Table 1.
Source: Author’s modification based on table 1 in Seung B. Kye, Huddling under the Imperial
Umbrella: A Korean Approach to Ming China in the Early 1500s, Journal of Korean Studies 15:1
(2010), p. 44.
King Chungjong’s practice of sincere sadae through sending voluntary mission became
more prominent with the rise of Ming’s Jiajing Emperor in 1521. The debate soon began in the
Chosŏn court over whether to send a voluntary mission for the celebration of the imperial
birthday. Chosŏn had yet to received an official notice from Ming about the date of the imperial
birthday, and court officials had to rely on informal sources that the new emperor’s birthday was
either in April or August.
208
Although many officials had reservations about sending a voluntary
mission without proper information about the imperial birthday, King Chungjong eventually
decided to send one to congratulate the new emperor. Upon ascending to the throne, the Jiajing
Emperor caused a series of ritual controversies by elevating his parents to the statuses of emperor
208
Chungjong Sillok 42:51b [1521/07/22 #1].
Kings (Reign Years) Accounts of Chinha related to
Ming ceremonials
Average/y
T’aejong (19y) 17 0.9
Sejong (32y) 76 2.4
Sejo (15y) 13 0.9
Sŏngjong (25y) 25 1
Chungjong (39y) 162 4.1
69
and empress dowager. In 1524, the court was again divided to those who support sending a
voluntary mission and others who oppose it based on pragmatic rationale.
209
Yet the king decided
to send the mission to congratulate the emperor’s parents for being bestowed posthumous titles
of emperor and empress dowager. Throughout Chungjong’s reign, the Chosŏn court endlessly
debated over whether to send voluntary missions to congratulate Ming ceremonials or not. In
many cases, King Chungjong, with the support of senior officials who prioritized sadae, was able
to win over the oppositions and to send special missions to Beijing.
King Chungjong, in fact, took every opportunity to send voluntary missions to Ming. In
1536, when Jiajing Emperor completed the construction of the Nine Temples, in which the
enshrined the spirit tablets of his nine predecessors, and conferred new titles of honor to his two
empress dowagers, the king proposed the dispatch of a special congratulatory mission.
210
The
opposition, led by the Censorate, pointed out that there was no precedent for a vassal to offer
congratulations on enshrinement in China. The enshrinement itself, they claimed, was against
propriety.
211
Yet the king insisted on the dispatch of a special mission with the support of some
senior officials. Their rationale was that “when a small state serves a bigger state, the former
does not need to discriminate between right and wrong, nor should it, with respect to the
ritualistic propriety of the latter.”
212
The debate persisted for more than a month and final
decision was made to combine a special mission with the regular tribute embassy.
King Chungjong had domestic political reasons to attach himself to the Ming emperor
through endless special as well as regular embassy missions to Beijing. Being installed as a
209
Chungjong Sillok 51:8b [1524/06/22 #3]; 51:11a [1524/06/26 #2].
210
Chungjong Sillok 83:27a [1537/01/03 #1].
211
Chungjong Sillok 83:40 [1537/01/23 #2].
212
Seung B. Kye, “Huddling under the Imperial Umbrella: A Korean Approach to Ming China in the Early 1500s,”
Journal of Korean Studies 15, no. 1 (January 20, 2010): 49.
70
nominal king by the coup leaders, he desperately needed political capital to gain authority over
powerful court officials. Incessant exchange of embassies with Ming repeatedly assured that
King Chungjong was the legitimate king of Chosŏn, which, from the beginning, was a vassal of
Ming the suzerain. But the political environment that enabled the king to strategically use
voluntary missions needs to be highlighted as well. Such a dramatic increase of special missions
were possible only because of a new atmosphere among the elites who increasingly considered
Chosŏn’s relationship with Ming as that of father and son based on Confucian propriety.
Conclusion
Chosŏn Korea’s adoption of Confucianism led to the acceptance of Sinocentric world
order in which Korea took subservient position to the central kingdom. The Sinocentric order,
often referred to as the tribute system, was formalized in two key institutional practices:
recognition from China through investiture and the sending of embassy envoys to the Chinese
imperial court.
213
Investiture involved explicit acceptance of superiority of China and had both
symbolic and real importance for the Korean rulers. From Confucian world view, only the
Chinese emperor, as the Son of Heaven, enjoyed a special status as the unequivocal mediator
between the Heaven and the civilized world. Thus, the Korean king referred himself as a subject
(sin) in his communications to the Chinese emperor. Korea willingly took this position as
inferior to China by adopting the Ming criminal codes and court dress, which they did
213
Yu Keun-ho Chosŏncho taeoesasangŭi hŭrŭm [Flow of Foreign Diplomatic Ideology during the Chosŏn Period]
(Seoul: Sungshin Women’s University Press, 2004).
71
voluntarily, along with the use of the Ming reign year.
214
While identical to with the Ming court
dress, Chosŏn Korea’s court dress were two ranks lower to represent its subservient status to the
Ming.
215
Korea’s eagerness to conform to the norms of civilization notwithstanding, early Chosŏn
officials took a pragmatic approach to China and did not subscribe exclusively to the Neo-
Confucian vision of Sinocentric world order. Early Chosŏn kings such as T’aejo and T’aejong
frequently performed Taoist rituals to Heaven in order to demonstrate their legitimacy as
possessor of the mandate of heaven.
216
It was an outright violation of Confucian norms in which
Chinese emperor has exclusive right as a communicator between humankind and the divinity. By
privately performing rituals to Heaven, Korea was essentially asserting its sovereignty and
independence from the central kingdom.
While Korea voluntarily accepted Sinocentric world order in which it took subordinate
position to China, early Chosŏn shows no sign of ideological commitment to the Ming as center
of the world. It should be acknowledged that Korea’s tributary status was to a certain extent
structurally determined—Chosŏn, unlike its predecessors, had to deal with Ming directly across
its northern border due to the absence of a separate Manchurian power that used to form the
triangular interstate relations.
217
Korean elites, however, still made choice to become an
exemplary vassal to Chinese suzerain. That Korea prepared a military expedition to Chinese
214
JaHyun Kim Haboush, The Confucian Kingship in Korea: Yôngjo and the Politics of Sagacity (New York:
Columbia University Press, 1988), 21–22.
215
Korean historian Geri Ledyard quoted in Kang, China Rising, 46.
216
Seon Hye Choi, “Chosŏn chogi taejo taejongdae chojeui shihaengkwa wangkwon kangwha [Taoist Rituals
during the Reigns of Kings Taejo and Taejong and Strengthening of the Royal Power in the Chosun Dynasty],” The
Study of Korean History of Thought 17 (2001).
217
Yun, “Rethinking the Tribute System: Korean States and Northeast Asian Interstate Relations, 600-1600”; Gari
Ledyard, “Ying and Yang in the China-Manchuria-Korea Triangle,” in China among Equals, ed. Morris Rossabi
(Berkeley and Los Angeles, CA: University of California Press, 1983).
72
territory despite power asymmetry attests the notion of serving the great was as much voluntary
choice as structurally determined.
Then how does one compromise Korea’s voluntary adoption of Neo-Confucian idea of
Sinocentric world order and emulation of things Chinese on the one hand, and its assertion of
independent identity? Korea did not simply capitulate and accept its subordinate position within
Confucian world order. Nor was it a passive recipient of advanced Chinese culture such as
examination system and bureaucracy.
218
Rather, Korea’s sadae policy was a deliberate identity
strategy to secure Korea’s place in the hierarchy of Sinocentric world order. In this normative
conception of world order, status is defined by cultural identity. In the Confucian word view, as
JaHyun Kim Haboush writes, “only China was civilized, relegating all other countries to varying
degrees of barbarism. As a way to transcend this, Koreans regarded Confucian norms as
universal standards by which a society was adjudged to be either civilized or barbarous… Korea
was to become a member of the civilized world, even better than China, through excelling by this
standard.”
219
The Song of the Dragons Flying to Heaven, a eulogy for the founders of Chosŏn Korea,
clearly shows Korean aspiration to excel by the universal Confucian standard.
220
Written by some
of the most prominent literati at the time under royal commission during king Sejong’s reign in
the fifteenth century, it praises the founding of the new dynasty, describing the accomplishments
of Chosŏn founder king T’aejo and his son king T’aejong, as well as their ancestors’ virtues. The
song also justifies the founding of Chosŏn through direct reference to the mandate of heaven.
218
Amitav Acharya has argued that less powerful states can be active borrowers and modifiers, not just passive
recipient of hegemonic norms. See Amitav Acharya, “How Ideas Spread: Whose Norms Matter? Norm Localization
and Institutional Change in Asian Regionalism,” International Organization 58, no. 2 (April 1, 2004): 239–75.
219
Haboush, The Confucian Kingship in Korea: Yôngjo and the Politics of Sagacity, 22.
220
Song of the Dragons Flying to Heaven
73
What is most noteworthy, however, is that Chosŏn’s royal house is depicted as more virtuous
and trustworthy in terms of Confucian principles than its Chinese counterparts. Eulogizing the
Chosŏn royal house according to Confucian tenets while implying Korea’s superiority over
China on that universal standard indicates Korean eagerness to become integral part in the
hierarchy of the Confucian world order as a model tributary of the central kingdom.
74
Chapter 4 Korea’s Identity Strategy under Qing Hegemony
Introduction
This chapter analyzes Korea’s identity strategy under the new Qing hegemony. The
demise of the Ming dynasty in 1644 was truly a traumatic event for Korea. It was not so much
simply a replacement of leadership in the central kingdom as the disintegration of the Confucian
world order in which Korea had a firm place as the most civilized tributary state, if not on par
with China. When the barbaric Manchus conquered the Ming, therefore, Korean elites’ sense of
anxiety became acute as it undermines very foundation of Korean identity. Even before the
collapse of the Ming dynasty, however, Korea was not able to adjust itself to the new
geopolitical reality of the Qing as the new suzerain. In fact, Korea had long considered The
Manchu as culturally inferior and pacified its northern border by issuing nominal appointments
as subjects of Korean court.
221
The idea of “Northern Expedition” is just one of the examples
that represents the degree of identity crisis the Korean elites had to deal with.
This chapter shows that we cannot simply attribute Korea’s failure to cope with the rise
of the Manchus during the early seventeenth century to its inability to objectively perceive the
geopolitical realities. Having enjoyed a privileged status as the model tributary state under Ming
hegemony, appeasing the barbarian Manchus, let alone subordination, was tantamount to
221
Kenneth R. Robinson, “Centering the King of Chosŏn: Aspects of Korean Maritime Diplomacy, 1392-1592,” The
Journal of Asian Studies 59, no. 1 (2000): 109–25; Kenneth R. Robinson, “Organizing Japanese and Jurchens in
Tribute Systems in Early Chosŏn Korea,” Journal of East Asian Studies 13, no. 2 (2013).
75
compromising the very essence of Korean identity. It was far more important for the Korean
elites to preserve their security as being, or ontological security, as the most civilized vassal in
the hierarchy of Sinocentric world order than to prolong their mere physical security by
compromising their core identity.
Between the Ming and the Manchus
The Japanese invasion of Korea from 1592 to 1598 had not only devastating impact on
Chosŏn society but, more fundamentally, changed the way Chosŏn elites understand Ming-
Chosŏn relations. While Chosŏn’s ideological attachment to Ming had its roots in the early
1600s under King Chungjong’s reign, it came to be the predominant spirit during and after the
Imjin War.
222
The idea of “paying off the debt of saving the country ( 再 造 之 恩)” was based on
the belief that Chosŏn could have been wiped off from the map unless Ming came for its rescue.
In fact, King Sŏnjo (1567 – 1608) fled to the northern city of Ŭiju that bordered Ming no more
than three weeks past the Japanese invasion and was able to recover Chosŏn territory only after
Ming entered the war. This was the context in which King Kwanghae (1608 – 1623) succeeded
his father King Sŏnjo. Having had led a separate court by himself during the war when his father
fled to north, King Kwanghae was a man of pragmatism.
223
He not only had a first-hand
222
한명 기, “‘ 재 조지 은( 再造之 恩)’ 과 조 선 후기 정치사 - 임 진 왜란~ 정 조 대 시 기 를 중심 으 로,” 대 동문 화 연 구
59, no. 0 (2007): 191–230.
223
한명 기, 광해 군: 탁월 한 외 교 정책을 펼 친 군주 ( 역 사 비평 사, 2000).
76
experience of the battlefield, but King Kwanghae also witnessed atrocities by the Ming army.
224
King Kwanghae, therefore, did not harbor ideological affection for Ming as some of his
predecessors had done.
Under King Kwanghae’s reign, Korea was caught between two great powers in today’s
Northeast Asia—the waning hegemon Ming and the rising Jurchens. In 1608, the year King
Kwanghae ascended to the throne, the Jurchens, unified under the leadership of Nurhaci, sent a
tribute mission to Beijing for the last time. Nurhaci, the grandfather of the first ruler of the Qing
dynasty, completely severed the tie with Ming in 1616 and established his own dynasty named
Later Jin.
225
It was clear by then that they had more ambition than to be a younger brother the
Ming. As the Later Jin began to invade Liaodong, a major conflict between the two great powers
was inevitable. Given Chosŏn’s geographical position that could be a threat from the back to
both Ming and the Later Jin, it was necessary for both Ming and the Later Jin to make sure
Chosŏn was on their side. The Chosŏn court during King Kwanghae’s reign, therefore, was
characterized by incessant debate over its foreign policy choices. Being well aware of the
delicate nature of Chosŏn’s geopolitical environment, King Kwanghae sought to implement
neutral foreign policy by appeasing to the Manchus.
226
Yet that he was often challenged
internally by Ming loyalist within the court and externally by the Ming suspicion.
224
한명 기, 임진 왜 란 과 한 중 관 계 ( 역 사 비평 사, 1999); Nam-lin Hur, “The Celestial Warriors: Ming Military Aid
and Abuse during the Korean War,” in The East Asian War, 1592-1598: International Relations, Violence and
Memory, ed. James B. Lewis (Routledge, 2014).
225
Morris Rossabi, “The Ming and Inner Asia,” in The Cambridge History of China: Volume 8: The Ming Dynasty,
ed. Denis C. Twitchett and Frederick W. Mote, vol. 8, The Cambridge History of China (Cambridge: Cambridge
University Press, 1998), 272–300, https://doi.org/10.1017/CHOL9780521243339.007.
226
It was in 1936, Hong Taiji, the successor to Nurhaci, relabeled the Jurchens as the Manchus and replaced the
Later Jin with the Qing. Hereafter, the Manchus will also be used to represent the Later Jin because it is a common
practice in English literature. Pamela Kyle Crossley, The Manchus (Wiley, 1997).
77
The court debate over Chosŏn’s foreign policy choices began in the summer of 1618,
when the Ming demanded military support from Chosŏn. When the court received letters
demanding Chosŏn troops from Ming generals in Laiodong, it was split into two opinions: The
absolute majority of court officials, led by the Border Defense Command ( 비 변 사) favored an
immediate dispatch of troops, while the king, supported by only few, opposed.
227
Most of the
court officials took it for granted that Chosŏn, as a vassal of the Ming, could not question a
policy decision made by the suzerain. What it needed to do is to comply with the command.
228
King Kwanghae, however, vehemently opposed the idea based on his judgement that the Ming
military expedition would be likely to be defeated by the increasingly powerful Manchus. He
even told the court officials to persuade the Ming emperor to reconsider his reckless plan to
punish the Manchus.
229
The king also explained difficulties of complying with the Ming’s
demand. First, it would be difficult to mobilize extra soldiers from off-duty peasants for the
purpose of expedition. They were not professional soldiers without proper training, and may not
be of help to the Ming forces. Second, the king was concerned with the breakdown of national
defense system by sending large number of military forces to Liaodong. It may provide good
opportunity for the Manchus or the Japanese to plunder Chosŏn.
230
Third, he also rest his
opposition on the idea that a vassal could not send its military forces to the territory of the
suzerain without an imperial letter.
231
The loyalists led by the Border Defense Command represented the majority of the court
officials. Their argument was based on a simple notion of “paying off the debt of saving the
227
Kwanghaegun Ilgi 45:25a [1618/04i/12 #3].
228
Kwanghaegun Ilgi 45:33b [1618/04/16 #9].
229
Kwanghaegun Ilgi 45:30b [1618/04i/15 #6].
230
Kwanghaegun Ilgi 45:48a [1618/04i/20 #7].
231
Kwanghaegun Ilgi 45:52b [1618/04i/22 #10].
78
country” during the Japanese invasion in the 1590s. Fulfilling moral obligations to the Ming, for
them, was much more important than practical considerations associated with troops
mobilization and dispatch. Yet they also had a practical reason not to embarrass the Ming. The
failure to comply with the Ming’s demand may cause the loss of Ming’s military support in the
future when Chosŏn again finds itself being invaded by either the Manchus or the Japanese. The
loyalists, therefore, advised that the king prepared the troops on the border with Liaodong so that
they could cross it as soon as the imperial letter arrives.
232
King Kwanghae had his way in the
end over the court officials’ strong objections. The court sent a rejection letter to the military
commissioners of the Ming forces in Liaodong.
Yet the controversy over the dispatch of troops did not end there. When Chosŏn envoys
were not allowed to pass Liaodong on their way to Beijing, the loyalists began to criticize the
king’s decision more forcefully. With deportation of the Chosŏn enovys, Yang Hao, the military
commissioner of the Ming expedition, sent the letter to King Kwanghae chastising his
incompliance with the Ming’s demand. He also asked the king to mobilize then thousand soldiers
and get them prepared on the border for further order.
233
Now the loyalist were gathering
momentum in their efforts to fight back the king’s decision not to send the troops. They
criticized King Kwanghae for forsaking Chosŏn’s moral obligations as a sincere vassal to the
Ming and breaking away from sadae principle that had been sincerely upheld by all of his
predecessors. They even threatened the king by expressing their willingness to disobey him if
that was the only way to comply with sadae.
234
232
Kwanghaegun Ilgi 45:57a [1618/04i/24 #9].
233
Kwanghaegun Ilgi 46:46a [1618/06/19 #7].
234
Kwanghaegun Ilgi 46:54b [1618/06/20 #6].
79
Ming’s Wanli Meperor’s edict finally arrived several months later in February 1619,
demanding the dispatch of one thousand troops to support Ming’s expedition against the
Manchus.
235
Now King Kwanghae had no choice but to follow the imperial order. The Censorate
immediately impeached the court officials who sided with the king in opposition to the dispatch
of troops. There was no one left within the Chosŏn court who supported King Kwanghae. The
Korean court finally decided to dispatch a division of 13,000 men in support of Ming’s military
campaign against the Manchus at the battle of Sarhu. Before their departure, however, the king
made it clear to general Kang Hong-nip, the commander of the Chosŏn forces, that the priority in
their mission was to minimize any casualties. The king told the general Kang that he did not have
to follow ever order from the Ming commanders on the battlefield.
236
King Kwanghae also
ordered the general Kang to surrender if the tide is against the Ming, and to explain to the
Manchus that Chosŏn’s participation was of political necessity only.
237
The battle of Sarhu turned
out to be a disaster to Ming. The Ming expeditionary forces of one hundred thousand advanced
into the territory of the Manchus but was easily defeated by a series of ambushes and the mighty
cavalry. General Kang, following the order from King Kwanghae, capitulated to Nurhaci with
about 3,000 survivors.
The Chosŏn court was bitterly divided again when the news of the Ming’s defeat arrived.
While King Kwanghae was became more convinced that Chosŏn should not make trouble with
the Manchus, the loyalists continued to advocate pro-Ming posture. When Nurhaci sent a less
than hostile letter to Chosŏn asking for an allegiance to the Manchus, King Kwanghae issued an
ordinance to prepare an immediate reply to appease the Manchus. Yet the court officials made
235
Kwanghaegun Ilgi 49:49a [1619/02/13 #1].
236
Kwanghaegun Ilgi 49:37a [1619/02/03 #2]. 한 명기, 광해군, 202.
237
Clark, “Sino-Korean Tributary Relations under the Ming,” 1998, 299.
80
the punishment of general Kang and his deputy commanders a priority. In fact, Nurhaci’s letter
implied that the surrender of Chosŏn troops was pre-arranged and that they intentionally avoided
direct engagement with the Manchu forces.
238
Now the King directly challenged his court
officials:
The Ming expedition was a lost cause from the start. If we did not send
troops, we would not have needed to worry about the Manchu retaliation even
though the Ming force was now crushed. Chosŏn should have not sent troops as I
contended. Our soldiers were killed or taken prisoner because of pigheadedness of
the Border Defense Command. The Manchu retaliatory invasion is near at hand,
but we cannot block their advance into our territory. It is thus urgent to avoid the
invasion by communicating with Nurhaci. The Border Defense Command is
nevertheless delaying writing a reply letter and rather insisting everyday on the
punishment of the repatriates and their families. A lofty argument not based in
reality is not helpful to statecraft.
239
King Kwanghae saw an opportunity for diplomatic engagement with the Manchus by sending a
friendly letter in reply. Given strong opposition from the court officials, however, the reply letter
ended up being vague and equivocal. It was apparent that the letter would enrage both the
Manchus and the Ming.
238
Seung B. Kye, “In the Shadow of the Father: Court Opposition and the Reign of King Kwanghae in Early
Seventeenth-Century Chosŏn Korea” (University of Washington, 2006), 180–81, ProQuest Dissertations & Theses
Full Text (304967474).
239
Kwanghaegun Ilgi 49:107a [1619/04/08 #1]. English translation is from Kye, 181–82.
81
The Chosŏn court was yet again caught into a fight when a Ming envoy requested more
military support.
240
The Ming’s demand this time was more desperate as it referred to the special
relationship between the two countries and to the Ming aid during the Japanese invasions of
1590s. King Kwanghae, of course, was not willing to comply with Ming’s demand for more
troops. He first pointed out that the request was not explicitly written in the imperial edict.
Instead, the king saw it as nothing more than a personal request from a Ming commander in
Liaodong. He also reminded the court officials that Chosŏn had already lost thousands of skillful
musketeers and archers and not many were left to defend its own territory.
241
The majority of
court officials, on the hand, supported the dispatch based on the belief that a vassal needed to
follow the request from the suzerain. They argued, furthermore, that Chosŏn must help the Ming
to defend Liaodong from the Manchus because Liaodong is geopolitically important to
Chosŏn.
242
This claim indeed was predicated on the notion that Ming and Chosŏn are simply in
the same boat. This time the court officials did not refrain from directly challenging the king.
Some senior officials even promised the Ming envoy the dispatch of more troops without
approval from the king and later urged him to keep the promise.
243
In the meantime, a report from Beijing revealed that the discussion about the Ming
superintendence of Chosŏn was developing within the Ming court. The proposal, if implemented,
would set an unprecedented practice by which the Ming could directly interfere with
international affairs of Chosŏn. King Kwanghae and the court officials were divided over how to
respond. The court officials, led by the Border Defense Command, took it as an opportunity to
get Chosŏn’s foreign policy straight. In their view, Chosŏn needed to remove all causes of doubt
240
Kwanghaegun Ilgi 50:105a [1619/08/09 #4].
241
Kwanghaegun Ilgi 50:113a [1619/08/14 #3].
242
Kwanghaegun Ilgi 51:18b [1619/09/14 #7].
243
Kwanghaegun Ilgi 50:125a [1619/08/23 #2].
82
by firmly committing to the Ming. The court officials even presented misleading information to
the king in the hope that he abandons his ambiguous attitude toward the Ming.
244
In fact, the
proposal for the Ming superintendency of Chosŏn could never be implemented due to Ming’s
complex court politics.
245
Yet the court officials used exaggeration and even flat lies to threaten
the king. They would rather accept the Ming superintendence than do anything to appease the
Manchus.
By late 1619, King Kwanghae became convinced that Ming’s hegemony may not last
long as it was facing both internal and external challenges that seemed insurmountable.
246
In fact,
Ming had a difficult time coping with domestic unrest caused primarily by frequent peasant
revolts and dealing with years of war against the Manchus that was ruining its finance.
Especially after the fall of Liaodong, which resulted in the disconnection of overland route
between Chosŏn and Ming, King Kwanghaed became even more confident about the Ming’s
collapse and possible invasion from the Manchus.
247
His decision to openly refuse to follow the
imperial edict asking for more military support in the summer of 1621 should be understood in
this context.
248
Yet his court officials did not change their views even after the fall of Liaodong.
They now began to openly challenge the king’s authority:
If [the king] says that he will follow the imperial edict, the world will
praise our king’s loyalty and fidelity. If [the king] does not follow the imperial
edict with excuses, our efforts to serve the great with utmost sincerity will be
244
Kye, “In the Shadow of the Father: Court Opposition and the Reign of King Kwanghae in Early Seventeenth-
Century Chosŏn Korea,” 201–7.
245
계승 범, 조선 시 대 해외 파 병 과 한중 관 계, 186–88.
246
Kwanghaegun Ilgi 51:135a [1619/12/22 #3-4].
247
Kwanghaegun Ilgi 56:68a [1621/06/06 #4].
248
Kwanghaegun Ilgi 60:57a [1622/04/18]; 60:78a [1622/04/25].
83
brought to naught. Even though the outside of Shanhai Pass have been taken over
by the enemy, a vassal should serve the great without considering
circumstances.
249
The court official’s judgement was apparently based on their understanding of Ming’s military
capacity. Yet their understanding of Ming’s capacity was affected by their views of Ming as the
center of the world.
King Kwanghae and its court officials repeatedly collided over Korea’s foreign policy
toward the Ming and the Manchus. The king’s initiative for pragmatic foreign policy aimed at
appeasing the Manchus was seen by officials as tantamount to the betrayal of Confucian
principles in which Korea must serve the Ming with heart and mind. Some of the senior officials
were bold enough to declare before King Kwanghae that they rather commit a crime against the
king than against the Ming emperor. While they were all well aware of the possibility that the
Manchus may invade Korea, being loyal to the Ming was more important than their security. In
the seventeenth century Korea, it was not allowed to steer away from complete allegiance to the
Ming, even it was for the sake of survival.
250
King Kwanghae’s less than complete allegiance to
the Ming, in the end, costed him the throne. He was primarily accused of betraying the Ming and
forgetting gratitude of saving Korea from collapse during the Japanese invasions. Korea’s status
as the country of righteousness and propriety, critics claimed, was reduced to barbarism due to
Kwanghae’s pragmatic foreign policy.
251
The succeeding regime of King Injo thus ignored all
Manchu overtures for peaceful negotiation. The fervent pro-Ming group within the Korean court
249
Kwanghaegun Ilgi 61:16a [1622/05/03 #1].
250
In fact, King Kwanghae himself was not free from the predominant view that regarded the Manchus as
barbarians. See, for example, Kwanghaegun Ilgi 49:114a [1619/04/11 #1].
251
Haboush, The Confucian Kingship in Korea: Yôngjo and the Politics of Sagacity, 24.
84
who carried out the palace coup did not have any room for maneuver. Korea, as a result, suffered
from two Manchu invasions and was forced to become a tributary of the barbarian Qing.
The Coup and the Manchu Invasions
The day after he led a successful coup, King Injo (1623 – 1649) issued a message in the
name of the queen dowager to justify his coup.
252
The primary purpose of the message was to
enumerate King Kwanghae’s misdeeds so as to provide justification of the coup. King
Kwanghae’s misdeeds states in the message were divided into two categories. In domestic front,
he was charged with the persecution of some royal family members and the purges of senior
officials. His misdeeds in foreign relations, on the other hand, was primarily concerned with his
betrayal of the Ming, the suzerain and father. In fact, King Kwanghae’s failure to practice sincere
sadae was the single most important justification coup leaders. The fact that the coup leaders
chose it as the primary cause of the coup represent the general atmosphere among the Korean
elites—the failure to practice sincere sadae for the elites was considered as the most serious
crime of all.
253
From this context, it is not difficult to understand King Injo and his court officials firm
commitment to Chosŏn’s pro-Ming and anti-Manchu policy. From the outset, the king declared
that he would genuinely serve the Ming with utmost sincerity and that Chosŏn would fully
support the Ming’s military campaign against the Manchus without any hesitation. Upon
252
Kwanghaegun Ilgi 64:64a [1623/03/14 #1].
253
Kye, “In the Shadow of the Father: Court Opposition and the Reign of King Kwanghae in Early Seventeenth-
Century Chosŏn Korea,” 272.
85
receiving Ming’s military commander Mao Welong’s deputy, King Injo apologized for King
Kwanghae’s failure to provide adequate military support to the Ming’s military.
254
When a Ming
envoy arrived, the king again apologized for past wrongdoings and expressed his willingness to
provide whatever Ming demands.
255
King Injo’s submissive attitude was also caused in part by
the Ming court’s initial reluctance to offer him an investiture. Even though King Kwanghae had
garnered suspicion from the Ming due to his ambiguity over multiple demands for the dispatch
of troops, the Ming was no more favorable to the newly enthroned King Injo. Many of Ming’s
court officials indeed viewed King Injo as an usurper.
256
King Injo was recognized as a legitimate
ruler of Chosŏn two years after the coup in 1625.
In January 1627, a Manchu cavalry detachment of 30,000 crossed the frozen Yalu river
and initiated a surprise attack on Chosŏn. They advanced southward at a rapid pace and took
Pyongyang in less than two weeks. Shocked at the incompetence of Chosŏn defense, King Injo
decided to take refuge on Kanghwa Island, strategically located in the Yellow Sea off Korea’s
west coast and separated from the mainland by a narrow channel.
257
When the Manchus sent a
messenger to Kanghwa Island to deliver their terms for peace, the Chosŏn court began to debate
whether to accept it or not.
258
The precondition for peace was that Chosŏn should sever its ties
with the Ming and become a younger brother of the Manchus. If Ming was enraged, the letter
wrote, the Manchus would protect its younger brother Chosŏn. Many senior court officials, those
who assumed leading roles during the coup, claimed that Chosŏn had no other choice than to
accept the terms proposed by the Manchus.
259
Survival should be considered as the priority, they
254
Injo Sillok 1:24a [1623/03/22 #10].
255
Injo Sillok 1:43b [1623/04/08 #2].
256
한명 기, 임진 왜 란 과 한 중 관 계, 326–30.
257
Injo Sillok 15:21a [1627/02/01 #1].
258
Injo Sillok 15:22b [1627/02/02 #5].
259
Injo Sillok 15:14a [1627/01/22 #2].
86
argued. Others opposed the very notion negotiating peace with the barbarians.
260
For the
loyalists, betraying the Ming was unthinkable because Chosŏn had a moral obligation as a
trustworthy vassal of the Ming.
261
They criticized those who advocated peace negotiation with
the Manchus for having committed the crime of treason and urged the king to show his
determination to fight by executing the Manchu messenger.
262
Despite his earlier promise to faithfully serve the great, King Injo sided with senior
officials who wanted to make peace with the Manchus. He believed that Chosŏn could guarantee
its survival only by making peace on Manchu’s terms—regardless of how humiliating that would
be. It nonetheless was a disgracing peace to Chosŏn. The Manchus requested tribute of gold and
other precious materials every year. King Injo also had to send his brother to the Manchus as a
hostage. Most importantly, Chosŏn used the era name of the Manchus instead of that of the Ming
in its correspondence with the Manchu.
263
It did not take long until the Manchus withdrew from
Chosŏn because they also preferred peace over occupation. After all, their primary concern was
the conquest of the Ming, not Chosŏn.
Those who advocated peace with the Manchus, however, faced sever criticism in the
aftermath of the invasion. Yun Hwang, an official at the Censorate, was at the forefront of this
opposition, even fingerpointing at the king that he “remains calm and does not feel ashamed at
all” of being submissive to the barbarians.
264
The legitimacy of King Injo was indeed at risk
because he, who deposed King Kwanghae for betraying the Ming, now had to forsake his moral
obligation for survival. Therefore, King Injo and senior officials who advocated peace
260
Injo Sillok 15:24a [1627/02/03 #11].
261
Injo Sillok 15:34a [1627/02/10 #9].
262
Injo Sillok 15:29b [1627/02/08 #2].
263
Injo Sillok 15:37b [1627/02/15 #4].
264
Injo Sillok 15:38a [1627/05/02 #11].
87
emphasized that the peace settlement was an emergency measure to push the Manchu army out
of Chosŏn.
265
King Injo also sent a lengthy memorial to the Ming emperor in an endeavor to
explain in detail about the Manchu invasion. In that memorial, King Injo expressed his deep
remorse for Chosŏn’s failure to resist the Manchu invasion and begged for the emperor’s
understanding and forgiveness. It is worth noting that he invoked the idea of father-son
relationship:
I [the king] believe the way a subject serves the emperor is like the way a
son serves father. When the son commits a fault, he should not seek to conceal for
fear of father’s rebuke; otherwise, it is a violation of filial piety and all the past
efforts were to be brought to naught. Here I humbly wait for your rebuke. I plead
for forgiveness of the emperor, who is like my parents.
266
Ten years that separates Manchu’s first invasion and the second invasion was an unstable
peace. On the one hand, the loyalists were gaining power within the Chosŏn court and King Injo
inevitably sided with them for his political legitimacy. The Manchus, on the other hand, became
ever more powerful and even put Beijing under siege in 1629.
267
In the meantime, they began to
demand more tribute from Chosŏn year after year. The peace between Chosŏn and the Manchus
was simply not possible to last long given conflicting interests and identities. In the Chosŏn
court, the growing demand from the loyalists to resist the Manchus pushed the king into a corner.
Kim Sang-hŏn, a prominent anti-Manchu proponent, wrote a letter to King Injo to criticize his
265
Injo Sillok 15:30b [1627/02/09 #2].
266
Injo Sillok 16:1b [1627/04/01 #6].
267
한명 기, 정묘, 병 자 호란 과 동아 시 아 ( 푸 른 역사, 2009), 113–26.
88
excessive generosity towards the Manchu envoys.
268
In the letter, Kim used unusually harsh
words to blame the king for allowing a Manchu envoy to sit on a chair when he had a royal
audience. The peace treaty, Kim reminded the king, was signed as an emergency measure to
avoid more catastrophe, not as a permanent settlement of Chosŏn-Manchu relations. After all,
Kim claimed, the Manchus were barbarians with whom Chosŏn could not establish stable
relationship. Increasing Manchu demands for tribute, therefore, should be rejected. Another
loyalist Yi Chun also advised the king to firmly resist the Manchu demand for more tribute.
269
Yi
believed that the perceived strength of the Manchu army was exaggerated. If Chosŏn, he argued,
had the resolution to fight against the Manchus, they would not dare to invade Chosŏn territory
again.
King Injo was clearly tilting towards anti-Manchu policy. When the Border Defense
Command asked the king to reject the excessive demand by the barbaric Manchus, he
immediately issued an edict making his preference clear enough:
Upon suffering misfortune, we made a peace with the powerful
barbarians… And now the enemy, with its insatiable greed, is threatening us for
more and more tribute, refusing to receive the tribute we sent before… The
beastlike barbarians have no understanding of the righteousness and it would not
be possible to avoid conflict with them… If we unite, based on loyalty and
faithfulness, and fight against the enemy, we have no reason to fear them given
our territory.
270
268
Injo Sillok 21:20b [1629/08/23 #1]
269
Injo Sillok 27:31b [1632/11/13 #4].
270
Injo Sillok 28:4a [1633/01/29 #2].
89
Although no specific policy was implemented to prepare for a fight against the Manchus, the
Chosŏn elites became increasingly uncomfortable with the ever growing gap between their ideals
and reality during the inter-war period. As long as they identify Chosŏn as the son of Ming the
father, the peace was not going to last long.
271
For most court officials and the king, Chosŏn’s
identity as an active participant of the Chinese civilization could not be compromised.
In early 1936, Hong Taiji sent an emissary to Chosŏn informing the opening of the new
Qing dynasty along with elevation of Hong’s title from Great Kahn to Emperor.
272
Upon hearing
the arrival of the Manchu emissary at the border, the Chosŏn court was in deep disturbance. It
was, in fact, an unforgivable violation of basic principles of morality. To Chosŏn elites, there
was only one emperor in Beijing, who was supposed to rule everything under the heaven. A
court official named Hong Ik-han addressed a memorial to the king in which he proposed the
execution of the Manchu emissary.
273
To Hong, it was unimaginable for Chosŏn to become a
subject of a barbaric emperor who has no understanding of righteous way and propriety. He
correctly read that the purpose of Manchu mission was to make Chosŏn the first among the
vassals of Ming to recognize Manchu suzerainty. Chosŏn indeed occupied a special status as the
“Little China” within the Ming-centered world order.
274
Outside of the court, 138 Confucian
scholars of the National Academy ( 成 均館, 성균 관) demanded the king to execute the Manchu
emissary and burn Hong Taiji’s letter to manifest Chosŏn’s allegiance to the Ming.
275
Ch'oe
271
한명 기, 정묘, 병 자 호란 과 동아 시 아, 64–70.
272
Injo Sillok 32:8b [1636/02/16 #1].
273
Injo Sillok 32:8b [1636/02/21 #1].
274
Yuanchong Wang, “Claiming Centrality in the Chinese World: Manchu–Chosŏn Relations and the Making of the
Qing’s ‘Zhongguo’ Identity, 1616–43,” The Chinese Historical Review 22, no. 2 (November 1, 2015): 107.
275
Injo Sillok 32:10b [1636/02/25].
90
Myŏng-gil was one of the few court officials who were concerned with the consequence of
dismissing the Manchu emissary. Although King injo did not adopt their extreme proposal for
execution, he nonetheless praised their commitment to the righteousness and decided not to
receive the Manchu emissary in person.
276
In the end, the Manchu envoy left Chosŏn’s capital
without addressing the king, feeling threatened by the anti-Manchu sentiments both within and
outside the Chosŏn court.
277
Despite the strong rhetoric, however, the Chosŏn court continued the debate over how to
respond to the shift in balance of power. It was clear by then the waning Ming would not have a
chance to survive the encroachment of the rising Qing. The best strategy for Chosŏn, from this
perspective, was to appease the Qing—not recognizing it as the new center of the international
order, yet neither infuriate it by accommodating some of its requests. King Injo was also more
pragmatic than many of the loyalists and was willing to avoid direct confrontation with the Qing.
Hence when pro-Ming court officials strongly opposed to recognizing “Qing” as a new name of
the Manchu dynasty, King Injo adopted Ch'oe Myŏng-gil’s suggestion to address the Manchus as
“Qing” in official communications.
278
Yet the fact that even Ch'oe did not imagine that Chosŏn
could recognize Hong Taiji as the “Emperor” represent the limitation of such accommodation.
During the ten years between the first and the second Manchu invasions, the Chosŏn elites
indeed wanted to maintain the status quo despite the heated rhetoric that they used internally.
279
276
Injo Sillok 32:10a [1636/02/24 #1].
277
Injo Sillok 32:10b [1636/02/26 #2].
278
Injo Sillok 33:23b [1636/09/19 #2]; 33:26b [1636/09/27 #1].
279
Myung-gi Han, “‘The Inestimable Benevolence of Saving a Country on the Brink of Ruin’: Chosŏn-Ming and
Chosŏn-Later Jin Relations in the Seventeenth Century,” in The East Asian War, 1592-1598: International
Relations, Violence and Memory, ed. James B. Lewis (Routledge, 2014); 박현모, “10 년 간의 위 기: 정 묘-
병자호란 기 의 공 론 정 치 비 판,” 한 국정치 학 회 보 37 (2003): 27–46.
91
The Qing took a serious step forward in reordering the political map of Northeast Asia by
launching the second invasion in the last month of 1636. King Injo, surprised at the rapid pace of
Qing army’s southward advance, decided to take refuge on Kanghwa Island as he had done
during the first invasion.
280
Yet upon hearing the report that the Qing’s vanguard had already
arrived near Chosŏn’s capital and that they had cut off road to the island, the king had no choice
but to retreat to Namhan Mountain Fortress, a stronghold adjacent to the capital.
281
In the
fortress, the court officials addressed the king in tears.
282
Yet they continued the debate over how
to respond to the Qing even under siege. Ch'oe Myŏng-gil, who had been the leading voice of
pragmatism during the interwar years, was again at the forefront in supporting peace negotiation
with the Qing.
283
He persuaded the king to surrender and plan for the future. Survival, those who
advocated peace claimed, was the precondition for everything else. They also arranged the terms
of Chosŏn’s surrender in consultation with the Qing. They even prepared the letter of surrender
that was written in as humiliating language as possible to satisfy Hong Taiji.
284
Those who still believed that negotiating peace with the Qing was impossible, however,
urged King Injo never to consider surrender.
285
They insisted on preparing for a fight against the
Qing, no matter how powerful they may be.
286
Led by Kim Sang-hŏn, the loyalists also proposed
the execution of the court officials who advocated peace negotiation on the basis that they had
demoralized the military.
287
In a letter addressed to the king, a senior court official even claimed
that he would rather die for the cause of righteousness rather than surrender:
280
Injo Sillok 33:41a [1636/12/14 #3].
281
Injo Sillok 33:42a [1636/12/15 #4].
282
Injo Sillok 33:43a [1636/12/17 #3].
283
주화 파
284
Injo Sillok 34:5b [1637/01/09 #1].
285
Injo Sillok 33:43b [1636/12/17 #4].
286
Injo Sillok 34:3b [1637/01/04 #2].
287
Injo Sillok 33:44a [1636/12/18 #4]; 33:45b [1636/12/22 #3]
92
Alas, our relationship with the Ming is not similar to Koryŏ’s relationships
with the Jin or and Yuan. How can we forget the debt we owe to our father and
how can betray our loyalty to the suzerain? Although there can be no two suns in
heaven, Ch'oe Myŏng-gil wants to have two suns; there can be no two kings for
the people, yet Ch'oe Myŏng-gil seeks to have two kings. I would not be surprised
to see him doing more horrendous deeds. I cannot strike him hard enough with
my stick because I am a weak old man, but I do not want to sit down with him.
Please reject his words and punish him for selling out the country.
288
In the meantime, the storage of food in the fortress was rapidly running out. The severe cold also
made the situation in the fortress worse. Some Chosŏn soldiers died from cold and hunger. It was
obvious that there was no chance for Chosŏn to lift the siege without support from outside, yet
there was no hope that it was coming.
Upon receiving the report that Kanghwa Island had been captured by the Qing forces,
everyone in the fortress, including the king, recognized the fact that there was no hope left.
289
The court began to discuss the terms of surrender.
290
The Qing demanded that the most vocal
critiques of the surrender be executed and that the king himself should perform the surrender
ceremony.
291
On the thirtieth day of the first month of 1637 at Sam Chŏn-do, King Injo
acknowledged his complete submission to Hong Taiji by kowtowing three times. During each
288
Injo Sillok 34:10a [1637/01/19 #3].
289
Injo Sillok 34:19a [1637/01/26 #2].
290
Injo Sillok 34:8a [1637/01/16 #2]. Even when they began to discuss the terms of surrender, the king ordered the
discussion not be recorded in the Sillok.
291
Injo Sillok 34:11a [1637/01/20 #3]; 34:12b [1637/01/21 #3].
93
kowtow, the king touched the ground with his forehead three times ( 三 拜 九 叩 頭 禮).
292
It was an
unprecedented humiliating performance of submission to the king personally and to the court
officials as well. The negotiated terms of surrender were also extremely disgracing for Chosŏn.
They, in fact, reflected most of the demands that Qing had previously. According to the
settlement, Chosŏn now recognized the Qing as its only suzerain and sever its relationship with
the Ming immediately. Chosŏn was obligated to pay tributes to the Qing and the Ming calendar
year was not going to be used in official Chosŏn documents any more. King Injo’s two sons were
also to be sent to the Qing as hostages. Chosŏn was even barred from either mending the
damages of its fortresses or building new walls.
293
The fifteen years leading to Chosŏn’s submission to the Qing were full of tumultuous
events—the coup that toppled King Kwanghae and the two invasions by the Qing armies. While
it is not difficult find some dissenting voices from within, the Chosŏn under King Injo’s reign
was dominated by the pro-Ming loyalists who could not imagine serving the barbaric Qing as the
suzerain. The experience of defeat from the first invasion did not make them less loyal to their
cause of Confucian propriety. In fact, even when they were besieged by the Qing army during
the second invasion, the pro-Ming loyalists embraced their dichotomous notion of civilization
and barbarism. To preserve their identity as the son to the suzerain-father Ming, they would
rather fight against the barbarians till death than live through disgracing submission to the Qing.
The Last Bastion of Civilization
292
Injo Sillok 34:23a [1637/01/30 #2].
293
Injo Sillok 34:20a [1637/01/28 #4].
94
When the Beijing fell to the peasant rebels in 1644 and the Chongzen Emperor
committed suicide, the Qing finally completed its conquest of China. Even after the collapse of
the Ming dynasty, however, Chosŏn was not able to adjust itself to the new geopolitical reality of
the Qing as the new suzerain. If the Ming-Chosŏn relationship was only understood in terms of a
suzerain-vassal obligation, the Chosŏn elites would not have found much difficulty in shifting
their allegiance from Ming to Qing. As historian Seung B. Kye illustrates, however, at the
foundation of the Ming-Chosŏn relationship was a normative principle of filial piety to the
parents.
294
Under the Confucian principle of filial piety, unlike suzerain-vassal relations, a father-
son obligation could not be compromised under any circumstances. Then Chosŏn’s response to
the rise of the Qing was not simply about responding to an objective power shift. The fact that
barbarians came to occupy the center of the world challenged Chosŏn elites’ epistemological
foundation, generating an sense of identity crisis that “the world they knew it had come to an
end.”
295
In this sense, the Chosŏn capitulation to the Qing meant nothing less than a serious
violation of the foundational Confucian value of filial piety. Because filial piety was not a
contractual obligation, “such a violation could not be justified as an unavoidable
circumstance.”
296
King Hyojong (1649 - 1659), who was the first Chosŏn king to reign after the change of
dynasties in China, embodied Chosŏn’s determination for revenge and its longing for the
restoration of the Confucian world order with the Ming at the center. It was partly due to his
294
Seung B. Kye, “The Altar of Great Gratitude: A Korean Memory of Ming China under Manchu Dominance,
1704–1894,” Journal of Korean Religions 5, no. 2 (2014): 71–88, https://doi.org/10.1353/jkr.2014.0012.
295
JaHyun Kim Haboush and Martina Deuchler, “Introduction,” in Culture and the State in Late Chosŏn Korea, ed.
JaHyun Kim Haboush and Martina Deuchler (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1999), 5.
296
Kye, “The Altar of Great Gratitude,” 75.
95
experience of spending eight years in captivity in the Qing capital of Mukden, during which he
partook in a number of Qing’s military campaign.
297
Along with anti-Qing court officials, King
Hyojong initiated preparations of what was openly called a “Northern Expedition ( 북 벌, 北 伐)”
immediately after he rose to the throne.
The barbarians certainly have conditions for failure… all you officials
suggest I no deal with military matters, but I will persevere because there is no
telling when heaven sent opportunities might present themselves. Therefore, I will
raise 100,000 elite gunners, and cherish and care for them as if they were my
children.
In this way, they will all be fearless before death. Afterwards, if we wait
until breach in their defenses, catch them off guard by advancing swiftly to the
Shanhai Pass. How could there not be any loyalists and heroes in the central
plains who will respond to this? Advancing until the Shanhai Pass is not too
difficult, for the barbarians are left unguarded, lacking experienced mounted
archers, and it would be as if entering an uninhabited region.
298
With this ambitious plan to reclaim the Manchuria from the barbaric Qing, King Hyojong
took extensive measures to reform and reorganize the Chosŏn military to strengthen its fighting
297
Hyojong Sillok 1:1a. Also see Sun-Hee Yoon, “Repertoires of Power: Early Qing-Chosŏn Relations (1636-
1644),” Chinese Historical Review 21, no. 2 (November 2014): 97–120.
298
Song Si-yŏl, Songja Taechŏn, 116:138 quoted in Hyeok Hweon Kang, “Big Heads and Buddhist Demons: The
Korean Musketry Revolution and the Northern Expeditions of 1654 and 1658,” Journal of Chinese Military History
2, no. 2 (February 6, 2014): 156.
96
capability.
299
He also buttressed Chosŏn’s defense by secretly rebuilding fortresses along the
northern region bordering the Qing.
300
Historians are divided on whether King Hyojong had a
genuine intention to implement his plan of northern expedition.
301
Although the campaign was
certainly used to consolidate his political power, King Hyojong, at the same time, saw the real
opportunity of avenge as the Qing was yet to cement its occupation of southern China. He also
speculated that tens of thousands of Koreans who were forcefully taken away during Qing
invasion would rise up against the Qing if Chosŏn marches north. King Hyojong, moreover, was
keen on military affairs and had a good understanding of the Qing military apparatus.
302
On the
other hand, of course, it was almost impossible for Chosŏn to train one hundred thousand
musketeers according to his plan. Yet, however unrealistic the idea of “Northern Expedition”
sounds given the insurmountable power asymmetry between the Qing and Korea, it represented
the degree of identity crisis that Korean elites had to deal with.
In this context, the Chosŏn elites began to develop the idea that Chosŏn was the only
rightful heir of Confucian civilization. Song Si-yŏl, one of the most prominent Confucian
scholars of late Chosŏn, was at the forefront this intellectual movement. He offered philosophical
foundations for the pro-Ming and anti-Qing movement that came to dominate Chosŏn’s
understanding of its foreign relations until the end of the dynasty.
303
For Song and his followers,
Chosŏn, with the collapse of the Ming who had been the center of the known world, now became
the last bearer of Confucian civilization. Before Ming’s collapse, the distinction between
299
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, ed. JaHyun Kim Haboush and Martina
Deuchler (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1999), 71–72.
300
Hyojong Sillok 14:1a [1655/01/03 #2].
301
Citation needed.
302
송양 섭, “ 효종 의 북 벌구 상 과 군비 증 강 책,” 한 국 인 물사 연구, 2007, 169–92.
303
유근 호, 조선 조 대외사 상 의 흐 름 ( 서 울: 성 신 여자 대학교 출 판 부, 2004), 92–104.
97
civilization and barbarian had rested partly on geography and ethnicity. With barbarian
occupation of China, however, the extent to which one follows the Confucian ethics and
propriety became a new standard for determining civilization.
304
King Hyojong’s plan for attacking the Qing had never realized as his brief reign ended
with his sudden death in 1659.
305
In China, in the meantime, the Qing rapidly consolidated its
rule with successful suppression of Ming loyalists’ revolts. Contrary to the expectation of the
Chosŏn elites who still revered the deceased Ming, China under the Qing dominance not only
achieved political stability but also brought about economic and cultural prosperity, especially
under the reign of the Kangxi Emperor.
306
Even after the hope of the restoration had disappeared,
however, the Chosŏn elites continued to champion the lost cause of the Ming. While it
performed every duty as a vassal including regular tribute missions and receiving investiture
from the Qing emperors, the Chosŏn elites came to harbor even greater zeal for the restoration of
the Confucian order. Yet it was not through military expeditions against the barbaric Qing, but
by becoming the “only bastion of Confucian civilization” and the “sole carrier of the civilized
tradition which was lost in China.”
307
This notion of “Little China,” or “Small Central
Efflorescence” ( 小中 華), and the memory of the past in which Korea enjoyed status as second-to-
China served as the ideological underpinning for the Korean state until the end of the nineteenth
century.
308
Chosŏn’s cultural pride as an inheritor of Confucian civilization was manifested by
304
최연 식, “ 조공 체 제의 변 동 과 조선 시 대 중화- 사대 관념 의 굴절: 변 화 속의 지 속,” 한 국 정치학 회 보 41, no. 1
(2007): 111–12.
305
Hyojong Sillok 21:43a [1659/0504 #1].
306
After the demise of the Ming, many among the Chosŏn elites had expected that the Qing dynasty would not last
long due to its lack of legitimacy. See 배우 성, 조선 과 중 화..
307
Haboush, The Confucian Kingship in Korea: Yôngjo and the Politics of Sagacity, 24.
308
Weiguo Sun, “An Analysis of the ‘Little China’ Ideology of Chosŏn Korea,” Frontiers of History in China 7, no.
2 (2012): 220–39; 정옥자, 조 선후 기 조 선 중화 사상 연 구 ( 서 울: 일지 사, 1998). For the demise of this ideology,
see Key-Hiuk Kim, The Last Phase of the East Asian World Order: Korea, Japan, and the Chinese Empire, 1860-
1882 (University of California Press, 1980).
98
the blossoming of state-sponsored and private projects to compile histographies on Song and
Ming dynasties during the eighteenth century.
309
They exemplified Chosŏn elites’ identity as the
last remaining outpost of Confucian legitimacy and the only rightful chronicler of Chinese
civilization.
The establishment of the Mandong Shrine ( 萬東 廟) and the Alter of Great Gratitude
( 大報壇) in the early eighteenth century was also part of Chosŏn’s attempt to preserve its
identity as the heir of Confucian civilization.
310
The Mandong shrine was a private shrine
dedicated to the two Ming emperors Wanli, who had provided military assistance during the
Japanese invasion, and Chongzhen, who was the last emperor of the Ming.
311
The establishment
of the shrine in 1703 was according to the will of Song Si-yŏl, one of the most staunch
Confucian scholars who had left a long-lasting legacy as a proponent of pro-Ming and anti-Qing
ideology.
312
Although this private shrine was supported by the court, King Sukchong decided to
set up one in the backyard of royal palace. Hence he ordered the establishment of the Alter of
Great Gratitude in his palace to pay tribute to the memory of Wanli Emperor.
313
This was in part
the king’s strategy to strengthen the royal power vis-à-vis the court officials as the supervisor of
the rituals to the fallen Ming emperor.
314
More importantly, however, the alter was designed to
309
허태 용, “ 영( 英), 정조 대( 正 祖 代) 중화 계 승 의 식( 中 華 繼 承 意識) 의 강 화 와 송( 宋), 명( 明) 역사 서 의 편 찬,”
조선시대 사 학보 42 (2007): 237–69.
310
The Mandong Shrine can roughly translated as the All-Streams-Flow-East Shrine, which refers to a passage in
Xunzi which implied a inseparable relationship of a loyal official with his monarch. Adam Bohnet, “From
Liaodongese Refugee to Ming Loyalist: The Historiography of the Sanggok Ma, a Ming Migrant Descent Group in
Late Chosŏn Korea,” Review of Korean Studies 15, no. 1 (2012): 114.
311
Chongzhen Emperor also sent Ming military forces to help Chosŏn during the Manchu invasion, yet they never
reached the Korean Peninsula. Kye, “The Altar of Great Gratitude,” 75.
312
Kyŏngchong Sillok 2:17a [1721/09/02 #1].
313
Sukchong Sillok 40:50b [1704/12/21 #3].
314
Bohnet, “From Liaodongese Refugee to Ming Loyalist: The Historiography of the Sanggok Ma, a Ming Migrant
Descent Group in Late Chosŏn Korea,” 114.
99
fulfill Chosŏn’s righteous obligation the Ming and to strengthen its claim of inheritance of the
Confucian legitimacy.
315
Until the end of the dynasty, the post-Ming Chosŏn kings performed
sacrifices for three Ming emperors (Wanli, Hongwu and Chongzhen) on the anniversaries of
their deaths almost every year. Through this performance, Chosŏn expressed unswerving loyalty
to the deceased Ming and asserted, at the same time, that it was the new center of the civilized
world.
316
It is, of course, not to say that Chosŏn’s perception of the Qing remained the same for
more than two centuries. In fact, the Northern Learning School ( 北 學 派), or the Practical
Learning School ( 實 學派), of the eighteenth century represents an intellectual movement that
embraced pragmatic approach to the Qing. Led by notable officials such as Pak Chi-wŏn and Pak
Che-ga, both of whom had a first-hand experience of the Qing as Chosŏn’s envoys, this school of
thought criticized blind following of Confucian teachings and supported practical learning even
from the barbarians. The Qing indeed had already become the most powerful Chinese dynasty of
all time during the period called High Qing.
317
The Chosŏn elites, especially those who were
frequent visitors to the Qing, could not simply turn a blind eye to its economic prosperity and
military prowess.
318
At the same time, the Qing loosened its tight grip on Chosŏn and began to
treat it with more generosity. Even those who proposed practical learning from the Qing,
however, were not completely free from the rigid Confucian world view based on the dichotomy
315
계승 범, 정지 된 시간: 조 선 의 대보 단 과 근대의 문턱 ( 서강 대 학 교 출판 부, 2011).
316
우경 섭, 조선 중 화 주의 의 성 립 과 동아 시 아 ( 유니 스 토 리, 2013); 김영민, “ 조 선 중화 주 의 의 재검 토,”
한국사연 구 162 (2013): 211–52.
317
William T. Rowe, China’s Last Empire: The Great Qing (Harvard University Press, 2010), Chapter 3.
318
For the westward expansion during the High Qing, see Peter C. Perdue, China Marches West: The Qing
Conquest of Central Eurasia (Harvard University Press, 2009).
100
of civilization and barbarism. The scholars of the Northern Learning School still embraced the
pro-Ming and anti-Qing ideology and revered the fallen Ming as the suzerain who had saved
Chosŏn from the brink of collapse.
319
The ultimate purpose of learning from the Qing was to
fight against them through better knowledge of them.
Conclusion
We cannot simply attribute Chosŏn’s failure to cope with the rise of the Manchus during
the early seventeenth century to its inability to objectively perceive the geopolitical realities.
King Kwanghae, as discussed earlier, sought to implement a pragmatic foreign policy to
accommodate rapidly rising power of the Manchus. Yet, for the majority of Confucian elites in
Korea, his less than complete allegiance to the Ming itself constituted greater threat to Korean
identity than the physical threat from the Manchus. Having enjoyed a privileged status as the
most loyal tributary state under the Ming hegemony, accommodating the barbaric Manchus, let
alone subordination, was tantamount to compromising the very essence of Korean identity. It
was far more important for the Chosŏn elites to preserve their security as being, or ontological
security, the most civilized vassal in the hierarchy of Sinocentric world order than to prolong
their mere physical security. Korea’s search for new identity as the only legitimate heir of the
Ming after its collapse can also be understood in a similar way.
319
최연 식, “ 조공 체 제의 변 동 과 조선 시 대 중화- 사대 관념 의 굴절: 변 화 속의 지 속,” 112–13; 권선홍,
“ 유 교 문 명 권 의 국 제 관계,” 한국정치 외 교 사 논 총 31 (2010): 155.
101
Although the idea of Chosŏn as the “Little China” had existed from the beginning of the
dynasty, it was after the change of dynasty in China that the notion came to claim more
prominence among the Chosŏn elites.
320
After its humiliating capitulation to the Qing, the
Chosŏn elites faced a serious identity crisis because through their submission to the barbarians,
they violate two most important Confucian values—loyalty to the monarch and filial piety to the
father. The plan for northern campaign of King Hyojong was a forceful measure to offset such
violation. And the establishment of the Mandong Shrine and the Alter of Great Gratitude was
designed to demonstrate Chosŏn’s fulfillment of its moral obligations to the deceased Ming.
Chosŏn was seeking protect its identity as the last bastion of Confucian civilization.
320
Sun, “An Analysis of the ‘Little China’ Ideology of Chosŏn Korea,” 2012.
102
Chapter 5 Vietnam’s Quest for Identity in Southeast Asia
Introduction
In this chapter, I examine Vietnam’s relationship with China during Ming and Qing
dynasties with a focus on the question of what made Vietnam to claim distinctive identity despite
its sincere appreciation of Confucian culture. While Korean elites pursued complete
internalization of Chinese norms as their identity strategy, Vietnamese rulers were never fully
convinced that China was to be regarded as the only legitimate suzerain. This chapter turns to the
case of Vietnam and argues that it was situated in distinctive geopolitical context that affected its
choice of identity strategy. Vietnam was a frontier state in a way Korea was not. Vietnam’s
political identity, as a result, was repeatedly jostled and contested by the non-Confucian political
entities that shared its extended frontiers. While Vietnam vied for recognition and protection
from China, seeking status through socialization under Chinese hierarchy was not an imperative
choice to be made in its competition vis-à-vis its non-Confucian neighbors.
At the same time, Vietnam was generally much more concerned with its internal stability
than its relationship with China, and indeed showed significantly less military attention to the
most powerful state in its neighborhood. Its relationship with China was mostly conducted
through diplomatic means based on institutions and principles of the tribute system since the end
of Ming occupation in 1427. Vietnamese leaders were without any doubt more concerned with
chronic domestic instability and its relations with neighboring kingdoms to their south and west.
Especially with the demise of the Le Dynasty in early 1500s and the advent of what historian
103
Keith Taylor calls the “ear of warfare among Vietnamese speakers,” Vietnam experienced
constant struggle between different factions among its elite families.
321
From 1530s to 1590s, the
internal struggle was between the Mac family who reigned from the Red River plain in north and
the alliance of Trinh and Nguyen families in the southern province of Thanh Hoa. From 1600s,
with the demise of the Mac dynasty, the struggle was between the Trinh lords and the Nguyen
lords, which culminated in the Fifty Years of War from 1620s.
322
According to the dataset recently complied by Kang and his collaborators, Vietnam
experienced interstate war in only 27 years, or seven percent of the time between 1389 and
1789.
323
By examining a key nineteenth century Vietnamese primary source, “The Imperially
Ordered Annotated Text Completely Reflecting the History of Viet ( 欽 定 越 史 通 鑑 綱 目)”, they
find that overwhelming attention was given to internal contestations, such as internal revolts,
challenges to the existing ruler, or competition among intra-elite factions within Vietnam. In
other words, despite China being the by far the most powerful actor in Vietnam’s neighborhood,
it did not figure prominently in Vietnamese security concerns. A recent study by Tuong Vu
reports a similar finding that “every Vietnamese dynasty spend more time attacking or coping
with raids from further south and sometimes west, than dealing with the northern empire
[China].”
324
Without the exception of Ming emperor Yongle’s occupation of Vietnam for twenty
years (1406-1428), the Chinese empire generally served as a benevolent big brother who was
instrumental in Vietnam’s quest for expand power along its frontiers. Vietnam’s successful
321
K. W. Taylor, A History of the Vietnamese (Cambridge University Press, 2013), 224.
322
Taylor, 258–318.
323
David C. Kang et al., “Vietnamese Wars in Early Modern East Asia, 1389-1789: Introducing New Data”
(University of Southern California, 2017).
324
Tuong Vu, “State Formation on China’s Southern Frontier: Vietnam as a Shadow Empire and Hegemon,”
HumaNetten 37 (2016): 51–52.
104
conquests and annexations of neighboring polities were made possible by the tribute system that
preserved peace and stability on Vietnam’s northern border.
Independence, Occupation, and Independence
For a thousand of years until its independence in the tenth century, much of Vietnam had
been ruled by various Chinese dynasties. Northern Vietnam in the form of the Chinese province
of Jiaozhi ( 交趾) had indeed long served as the interface between China and Southeast Asia. Yet
even under the imperial rule, Vietnam defied outright domination by China. As one of the
foremost expert on Vietnams’ history Keith Taylor writes:
“ It is clear that Giao [Jiaozhi] possessed a political momentum of its own,
independent of the empire. In fact, it was when the empire was in the deepest
trouble that the south prospered most. Whenever the imperial court was strong
enough to dominate the region, as under Han and Wu, rebellion and political
instability ensued. When the court was weak, local forces arose, and stability
followed. The became an enduring pattern of Sino-Vietnamese relations; a strong
united China has traditionally posed a political problem to the Vietnamese.
325
These local forces would eventually become sufficiently strong to gain Vietnam its
independence from China in the tenth century when the collapse of the Tang dynasty provided an
325
Keith Weller Taylor, The Birth of Vietnam (University of California Press, 1991), 113.
105
opportunity for the independent-minded Sino-Vietnamese elite in Jiaozhi to break free of
imperial control. During the years of political turmoil that marked the early tenth century, Jiaozhi
became an autonomous province. Finally in 966, six years after the founding of the Song dynasty
in China, Vietnamese leader Dinh Bo Linh ( 丁部 領) proclaimed his independence. The Song
court, exhausted by years of warfare and was aware that Dinh Bo Linh commanded loyal and
powerful forces, accepted the de facto independence of Vietnam. Dinh declared himself emperor
of Dai Co Viet ( 大 瞿 越) The new leader of the Dai Viet was clever enough to request conferral
of Chinese title by following diplomatic protocol of the Chinese tributary system. His son, in
whose name official communications with the Song court were conducted, was confirmed as
“Peaceful Sea Military Governor” with the additional title of “Annam [Peaceful South] Protector
General.” Dinh was granted the title “King of Jiaozhi Prefecture ( 交 趾 郡 王).”
326
These claims and titles tell us much about relations between China and Vietnam, and the
worldview both shared. By proclaiming himself emperor, Dinh was asserting independence from
China, but not thereby equality with the Son of Heaven. He was well aware of the that claiming
equality would be quite unacceptable to the Chinese, and that Vietnam could not escape being
part of the Chinese world order. This was made evident in the edict conferring his title, where
Dinh’s relationship to the Song emperor was described as that of an obedient son to a benevolent
father.
327
By describing him as King of Jiaozhi Prefecture, the Song court was on the one hand
accepting his status as on a par with other rulers of independent kingdoms, while on the other
326
Taylor, 280.
327
Taylor, 286.
106
hand reminding him that his territory remained, in some sense, part of the empire. In other
words, it left open the possibility (or threat) of returning Jiaozhi to imperial administration.
The titles conferred on Bo Linh’s son defined the role a Vietnamese ruler was expected to
perform within the Chinese world order. He was to accept Chinese suzerainty and keep the peace
on the empire’s frontiers. Subsequently, the title conferred on the Vietnamese rulers became
King of Annam, although they were addressed as an emperor of Dai Viet to their own people.
For the Chinese the ruler of Vietnam was a king, like any other ruler of kingdoms that
presented tribute to the Son of Heaven. For the Vietnamese, in their dealings with China, this
was an acceptable practice. The emperor of Vietnam designated himself ‘king’ in his official
correspondence with the Chinese court. But because the Vietnamese shared the Chinese
worldview, the ruler of Vietnam laid claim to the same cosmic relationship with Heaven and
Earth as did the Chinese emperor, and the same relationship of hierarchical superiority to its
surrounding political entities considered less civilized. In his official dealings with the Khmer
and Cham and Lao, therefore, the Vietnamese ruler designated himself as an emperor.
328
Only by
such a device could Vietnam establish an acceptable bilateral relationship with China, while at
the same time expressing its own international relations culture in its dealings with its Southeast
Asian neighbors.
In 1368 the Ming replaced the Yuan dynasty, thereby returning China to Han Chinese
rule. The first Ming emperor, Hongwu, dispatched envoys to all tributary states informing them
of the change of dynasty and summoning their rulers to acknowledge the new Son of Heaven.
The Tran dynasty of Vietnam was the first of them to offer its official congratulations to the
newly established Ming. As soon as the Hongwu emperor notified Vietnam of his enthronement,
328
Alexander Woodside, Vietnam and the Chinese Model: A Comparative Study of Vietnamese and Chinese
Government in the First Half of the Nineteenth Century (Harvard Univ Asia Center, 1971), 234–40.
107
Dai Viet sent a diplomatic mission that arrived in the Ming’s capital of Nanjing on July 23,
1369.
329
The Koryo dynasty of Korea, unlike the Tran, did not initially recognize the Ming and
continued to maintain close relations with the Yuan, who still had military presence near Korea’s
northern border.
330
The Tran ruler was confirmed as the “King of Annam ( 安 南 國 王)” by the
Ming embassy and was formally recognized as a tributary of the Ming. Even to the end of the
Ming, its official often referenced this early recognition by Dai Viet and expressed their
gratitude.
331
Despite its early move to subordinate itself to the Ming, Dai Viet expressed its
willingness to keep its identity by prohibiting Ming’s dress customs within Vietnam.
Sino-Viet relations became strained toward the end of the Hongwu reign as the Ming
started to demand excessive amount of rice and other tributes. In 1395, for example, Ming
demanded fifty thousand troops and fifty elephants to aid the Ming army fighting against the
rebel groups along its southern border.
332
Ho Quy Ly, then the most powerful man in all of
Vietnam, oftentimes refused to acquiesce to Ming demands but the Ming founder kept his
commitment not to intervene. In fact, Hongwu emperor, in his August Ming Ancestral
Injunctions, had pledged that Vietnam would never be attacked without provocation. The list of
countries not to be attacked included all the countries of Southeast Asia.
This all changed with the rise of the Yongle Emperor who climbed to the throne after
three years of civil war and killing his nephew. Partly because of this reason, he was determined
to use military force to secure his own status as an emperor by expanding the influence and
territory of the Ming. Emperor Yongle’s first priority was to project Chinese power south.
329
Kathlene Baldanza, Ming China and Vietnam: Negotiating Borders in Early Modern Asia (Cambridge University
Press, 2016), 55–56.
330
이익주, 동아 시 아 국제 질 서 속의 한중 관 계 사: 제언과 모 색 ( 동 북아 역 사재 단, 2010).
331
Kathlene Baldanza, Ming China and Vietnam (Cambridge University Press, 2016), 56.
332
Baldanza, Ming China and Vietnam, 2016, 57.
108
Meanwhile in Vietnam, a powerful official Ho Quy Ly took advantage of the political turmoil in
China to replace the child emperor of Vietnam, last of the Tran dynasty, with his own son and to
proclaim a new dynasty in 1400.
333
Once the Yongle Emperor’s victory was assured, tribute was
sent to the new Son of Heaven, who graciously recognized the new Vietnamese regime named
Ho dynasty ( 胡朝). However, in response to appeals by supplicants claiming to be members of
the Tran royal family, Yongle Emperor saw an opportunity to reassert Chinese control over
Vietnam, and seized it.
334
The pretext was the ongoing border dispute between the Ming and
Vietnam over Siming Prefecture in Guangxi. Embassies from Champa reported continued
aggression from Dai Viet despite the Ming order that they cease fire. In particular, Dai Viet’s
seizure of gifts awarded to the king of Champa by the Ming emperor challenged Ming’s position
as the regional hegemon. Tran Thien Binh, a claimant to the Tran throne, arrived in Nanjing in
the fall of 1404 and asked for Ming’s military support for his campaign against the Ho.
In 1406, the Ming announced twenty crimes of Ho Quy Ly, the most serious of which
were that the Vietnamese had murdered the legitimate Tran ruler and his family, and assassinated
the Chinese backed Tran pretender; that they had deceived the Chinese about the Ho usurpation;
that they had insulted China by sending a criminal as an envoy; that they had encroached on
Chinese territory; and that they had attacked Champa, a vassal of China, and annexed some of its
territory. In other words, Ho Quy Ly had disrupted the peace and order that China desired to
maintain on its southern frontier. All Yongle intended in invading Vietnam, so he claimed, was
to restore the legitimate Tran dynasty and so restore harmony and well-being to the country and
333
Taylor, A History of the Vietnamese, 170.
334
Gungwu Wang, “Ming Foreign Relations: Southeast Asia,” in The Cambridge History of China: Volume 8: The
Ming Dynasty, ed. Denis C. Twitchett and Frederick W. Mote, vol. 8, The Cambridge History of China (Cambridge:
Cambridge University Press, 1998), 315–16.
109
the region. The Yongle emperor mobilized a massive army and navy, 800,000 soldiers according
to the Veritable Records of the Ming.
335
By June 1407, Ming troops captured Ho Quy Ly along
with his sons Ho Nguyen Trung and Ho Han Thuong. Dai Viet was annexed as a prefecture of
Ming, now under the old name of Jiaozhi. Zhang Fu, one of the generals who led the invasion,
and who was also one of the emperor’s most close advisors, viewed Dai Viet as not a foreign
country (fan), but a lost territory, a historical part of China.
336
The annexation of Vietnam
therefore was to reclaim a lost territory and to restore the borders of the Han and Tang empires.
Ming occupation of Vietnam lasted for mere twenty years from 1407 to 1427.
Vietnamese resistance continued as soon as the Ming occupation began and substantial Chinese
reinforcements had to be dispatched. The most effective resistance centered on the mountains
west of Thanh Hoa, where a member of the local landed gentry named Le Loi ( 黎 利) led a
rebellion. With the death of Yongle emperor, Le Loi’s campaign to drive out the Chinese gained
momentum. By the end of 1426, much of the Red River delta was in the hands of the Vietnamese
rebel forces led by Le Loi. Massive Chinese reinforcements were not enough to stop the
Vietnamese advance, and in early 1428 a face-saving peace was concluded.
337
Le Loi found the
Le dynasty which was grudgingly recognized by the Ming court in 1431 after tributary
submission by Vietnam.
While the founder of Le dynasty rejected Ming colonization, Le Loi affirmed Vietnam’s
inheritance of classical culture. When Le Loi established the Le dynasty, he maintained the Ming
schools and established the first law code in Vietnam based on Chinese law codes, and instituted
335
Taylor, A History of the Vietnamese, 174.
336
John K. Whitmore, Vietnam, Hồ Quý Ly, and the Ming (1371-1421) (Yale Center for International and Area
Studies, 1985).
337
Brantly Womack, China Among Unequals: Asymmetric Foreign Relationships in Asia (World Scientific, 2010),
203–4.
110
a bureaucratic government.
338
To the discomfort of the Ming court, however, Le Loi called
himself emperor and chose as his reign name as “Thuan-thien ( 順 天),” literally meaning “in
accord with Heaven.”
339
Upon ascending the throne, he issued Grand Pronouncements in the
style of the Hongwu who founded the Ming. Ngyuen Trai’s Binh Ngo Dai Cao in 1428
proclaimed victory of the Le Loi’s Vietnamese army over the forces of the Ming. Although the
classical Chinese text was written in the first person as if authored by Le Loi himself, it was
composed by his principle secretary and advisor Nguyen Trai, who was the leading intellectual
and one of the most talented scholars in Vietnam.
340
The opening lines of the Grand
Pronouncements were a direct challenge to Ming claims of exclusivity and sovereignty over Dai
Viet:
“To promote kindness and justice, the people must be at peace. But in
withdrawing or advancing an army, neither side will first discard violence. Only
our country of Dai Viet is truly a domain of manifest civility (wenming zhi bang).
The mountains and rivers within our borders are distinctive, and the customs of
the North and South are different. Since Zhao, Dinh, Ly, and Tran established our
country, along with Han, Tang, Song, Yuan, each emperor [North and South] has
had his place.”
341
338
Jayne Werner, John K. Whitmore, and George Dutton, Sources of Vietnamese Tradition (Columbia University
Press, 2012), 89.
339
Baldanza, Ming China and Vietnam, 2016, 83.
340
Stephen O’Harrow, “Nguyen Trai’s Binh Ngo Dai Cao of 1428: The Development of a Vietnamese National
Identity,” Journal of Southeast Asian Studies 10, no. 1 (March 1979): 168.
341
Baldanza, Ming China and Vietnam, 2016, 80.
111
In this proclamation, Vietnam was praised as a “van hien chi bang ( 文 献 之 邦),” a
civilized country on an equal level with China.
342
Thus Nguyen Trai was rejecting outright the
Chinese claim that the Vietnamese be classified as one of the Southern Barbarians. Another
important phrase is the one where Nguyen Trai made reference to the Heaven in stressing the
independence of Vietnam from China:
“Heaven fixed the frontiers of South and North thus with areas of high
mountains and great rivers.”
343
The obvious implication here is that as the natural barriers separate Vietnam from China, the
Southern way is different from that of the North. There are other passages that stress Vietnam’s
independence from China since the beginning of the polity:
“Since the formation of our nation by the Trieu, Dinh, Ly and Tran, our
rulers have governed their empire exactly in the manner in which the Han, Tang,
Sung, and Yuan did theirs.”
344
Referring to the natural and historical precedents for the independent Vietnamese state, Nguyen
Trai claimed that “history and nature conjoined have anointed a Vietnamese nation whose
342
Liam Kelley, “Vietnam as a ‘Domain of Manifest Civility,’” Journal of Southeast Asian Studies 34, no. 1 (February
2003): 63–76.
343
Stephen O’Harrow, “Nguyen Trai’s Binh Ngo Dai Cao of 1428: The Development of a Vietnamese National
Identity,” Journal of Southeast Asian Studies 10, no. 1 (March 1979): 159–74.
344
O’Harrow.
112
institutions derive from the same source as China’s but whose fate is separate from China.”
345
For him and Vietnamese elites, the mountains and rivers were intended by nature to establish the
boundaries of “North” and “South,” and thus China and Dai Viet. The implication was that the
difference between China and Vietnam was destined from the beginning of time by the Heaven.
From this perspective, Dai Viet, by insisting its own traditions and customs over those of
Chinese, was complying with the rule of the Heaven.
Despite the recent war and mutual suspicion, diplomatic relations between the Ming and
the new Le did not cease. In the first thirty years of the Le, Vietnam dispatched on average one
embassy mission per year to the Ming capital.
346
And during one hundred years between 1428
and 1527, the Le sent total of 114 embassies to the Ming, of which 29 were regular missions and
85 were ad hoc.
347
In short, Le Loi was astute enough to place itself in Chinese world order while
claiming equality with his northern neighbor.
Ming-Mac Crisis and Le Restoration
The Le dynasty’s golden age was rather brief. During Le Tu Thanh’s almost forty years
reign, the Dai Viet achieved prosperity in almost all measures. Le Tu Thanh, a grandson of Le
Loi, instituted far-reaching neo-Confucian reforms by closely copying Chinese six-ministries
structure of government.
348
He also promoted Confucian civil service examination that produced
345
Stephen O’Harrow, “Nguyen Trai’s ‘Binh Ngo Dai Cao’ of 1428: The Development of a Vietnamese National
Identity,” Journal of Southeast Asian Studies 10, no. 1 (1979): 170.
346
Baldanza, Ming China and Vietnam, 2016, 83.
347
유인선, “ 전 근대 베트남 의 對 中國 認 識,” 동북아역 사 논 총, 2009, 403.
348
Werner, Whitmore, and Dutton, Sources of Vietnamese Tradition, 90.
113
far more supply of Confucian literati than the government demanded. In fact, Le Thanh Tons’
project of Confucian transformation was made possible by Vietnam’s firm independence from
China. If China were still an active threat, his primary task would have been one of
differentiation from China rather than Confucianization.
349
After the death of this revolutionary
ruler, however, the Le was never able to reclaim its success.
Mac Dang Dung ( 莫 登 庸), a prominent military official, secured full control over the Le
and claimed throne himself in 1527. In the Ming court, the debate erupted between
interventionists and anti-imperialists over the response to Mac Dang Dung’s usurpation. On
November 26, 1536, Ming’s Ministries of War and Rites jointly advocated a war against Dai
Viet and the new ruler Mac Dang Dung.
350
Until the late 1540 when Mac Dang Dung personally
surrendered to the Ming, however, the Ming court was at odds over how, and whether, to
intervene in Vietnamese affairs. Interventionists relied on a discourse of ethics to make a case for
Chinese involvement in Vietnam. The central kingdom had a moral obligation to protect its loyal
tributary state. Anti-imperialists articulated a discourse of cultural difference that posited
Vietnam as politically and culturally other, and therefore outside of Chinese jurisdiction and
claim of authority.
By September of 1537, Mac Dang Dung was aware of the Ming’s war preparations, and
sent spied to the border to gather intelligence. There spies were captured by Ming troops. On
their persons were found a seal as well as a copy of a text called the Great Pronouncements
issued by Mac nearly a decade previously. It was modeled after the Great Pronouncements of the
Ming founder Hongwu emperor. The document was an evidence that Mac was acting without
349
Womack, China and Vietnam: The Politics of Asymmetry, 133.
350
Baldanza, Ming China and Vietnam, 2016, 92.
114
license and threatening the Ming’s sole authority to use certain symbols of power. Moreover,
Mac used the imperial “I” (Zhen) and spoke of inheriting Heaven’s Mandate, practices that were
reserved for the Chinese ruler alone.
351
For Mac Dang Dung, this was merely following in the footsteps of Le Loi’s Grand
Pronouncements. The Mac’s use of imperial rhetoric threatened the Ming’s ideological
coherence by defying the emperor’s symbolic dominance. The Jiajiang Emperor was enraged at
Vietnam’s claim for equality. As historian Kathlene Baldanza writes, both China and Vietnam
“knew the rules and used literary Sinitic as the language of diplomacy. Paradoxically, however,
this very commensurability caused problems. Both sides may have agreed to the rules and the
forms of diplomacy, but their understanding of their country’s place in the world differed.”
352
The conceptual dissonance between the Ming and Dai Viet regarding their positions indeed had
significant consequences. In normal times, this conceptual dissonance was effectively obscured
by their mutual acceptance of the tributary relations. The Ming court was well aware of the fact
that many of its tributary states sometime relied on grandiose rhetoric in their internal documents
that challenged Ming claims of centrality. In time of political crisis such as Mac Dang Dung’s
usurpation, however, it had a potential to cause serious problems.
Mac’s surrendered to the Ming in November of 1540, terrified by the Ming military
preparations. By mid-1540, an army of over 110,000 soldiers assembled on the border between
Ming and Vietnam.
353
Mac crossed the border into China with a large retinue of royal family
members and court officials, wearing ropes around their neck and barefoot to symbolize their
willingness to receive punishment. During the surrender ceremony, Mac and his followers bowed
351
Baldanza, Ming China and Vietnam, 2016, 99.
352
Baldanza, 100.
353
Kathlene Baldanza, “The Ambiguous Border: Early Modern Sino-Viet Relations” (University of Pennsylvania,
2010), 83–84.
115
before an altar bearing an edict of the Ming emperor and presented a letter promising allegiance
to the Ming throne along with maps and census information. Mac also ceded a territory along the
Sino-Viet coast, called the four dong. Ming classified Dai Viet under Mac Dang Dung as the
Mac Pacification Commission of Annam. The anachronistic use of the Tang period term
“Annam,” or the Pacified South, reveals heavy-handed manner with which the Ming court laid
claim to the Mac territory. Yet, Mac Dang Dung had already abdicated his position of authority
to his son in 1530, instead taking the title “Thai thuong hoang (Ruler Emeritus).”
354
The move
was designed to avoid
The following years were marked by internal strife between the Mac and the Le-
sponsored Trinh lords. Exiled Le leaders found support from Nguyen Kim and his son-in-law
Trinh Kiem, members of powerful Thanh Hoa clans that hope to take all of Vietnam from the
Mac. In 1540, the Le rulers moved to Thanh Hoa and began to actively resist Mac claims to
national control. Le finally ousted the Mac from Dong Kinh in 1592. In 1597, Ming recognized
Le Duy Dam as Pacification Command just as it did to Mac Dang Dung decades earlier.
Recognizing both the Mac and the Le ensured a divided and thus weaker Dai Viet, less
threatening to Ming’s southern border.
Ming denied Le request of restoring the title to the King of Annam until the end. After
the fall of Ming, both Le and Mac threw their support behind the Southern Ming. Zhu Youlang,
the last emperor of the Southern Ming, finally granted Dai Viet the title of the King of Annan.
When the Qing conquerors took control of the southern province of Fujian in 1645, two Le
ambassadors sent to the Nanjing court of the Southern Ming were captured. The Qing sent them
back to Dai Viet with the message that the Qing had conquered Ming, yet the Le court was
354
James A. Anderson, “Distinguishing Between China and Vietnam: Three Relational Equilibriums in Sino-
Vietnamese Relations,” Journal of East Asian Studies 13, no. 2 (2013): 267.
116
hesitant to recognize the Qing. By 1659, Qing secured almost complete control of the Southern
provinces and Zhu Youlang had to flee into Burma with his small court. Only after Qing secured
its hold of China, Le sent official mission to Beijing and a year after in 1660, it entered into
official tributary relations with the Qing. The title of “King of Annan” was bestowed by the Qing
emperor in the first communication between Qing and Vietnam. (Cao Bang Mac was also named
as the protector of Annan, a lower rank than that of the Le ruler, king of Annan.) The Complete
Chronicles of Dai Viet continued to mark the Ming reign date through 1667, which is a sign of
Vietnam’s continuing skepticism about the legitimacy of the Qing dynasty.
355
The Le took
advantage of the Revolt of the Three Feudatories to eliminate the Cao Bang Mac. When the Le
was asked to provide support in putting down the rebellion in 1677, it seized the opportunity to
win Qing support against the Mac by suggesting that the Mac had colluded with the rebels.
Since Dinh Bo Linh’s time, the official title for the ruler of Vietnam has always been the
emperor. The Vietnamese emperors claimed a status as the son of heaven, just as the Chinese
emperors did. The Dai Viet also used its independent calendar year, unlike China’s other
tributary states such as Korea. Since Dinh Bo Linh used Thai Binh ( 太 平) as his calendar year,
there has been no single Vietnamese ruler who did not use his own calendar year for internal
purpose, except during the Ming occupation.
Claiming Equality with China
355
Baldanza, Ming China and Vietnam, 2016, 206.
117
The concept of "Vietnam's equality with China" and the related "spirit of resistance"
against the Chinese dynasties can be traced back to Dinh Bo Linh's time. Thereafter, all the
Vietnamese rulers of successive dynasties used the title "emperor" and a reign title. A further
indication of this idea of equality with China can be seen in the way Vietnamese writers called
China the "northern country" while referring to Viet Nam as the "southern country." Chinese
were called the "men of the Tang" or the "northern people," while Vietnamese referred to
themselves as the hoa dan (civilized people), or the "southern people." The idea of "Viet Nam's
equality with China" and the "spirit of resistance" against foreign intervention have continued
unaltered up to the twentieth century.
356
Since the tenth century the Sino-Vietnamese relationship has contained a number of
subtle nuances and creative tensions—at least for the Vietnamese. There has been love as well as
hate, dependence and independence, inferiority and pride. Tremendously impressed by China
and Chinese culture, Vietnamese nonetheless were determined to exercise discretion, to retain
some distance and perspective. Despite the well known “march to the south,” which brought
them to the Mekong delta by the 17th century, the Vietnamese could never boast controlling
more people or resources than a single Chinese province. This reality, together with sincere
cultural admiration, led Vietnam's rulers to accept the tributary system. Providing that China did
not meddle in Vietnam's internal affairs, and providing Vietnam was not inhibited from carrying
on its own foreign relations to the south and west, Vietnamese monarchs were quite willing to
declare themselves vassals of the Celestial Emperor. Vietnamese rulers clearly realized that they
had to acknowledge China’s suzerainty and become tributaries in order to avoid intervention by
China in their internal affairs. The subtlety of this relationship was evident from the way in
356
Yu, “Lê Văn Hưu and Ngô Sĩ Liên: A Comparison of Their Perception of Vietnamese History,” 67.
118
which Vietnamese monarchs styled themselves 'king (vuong, in Chinese, wang) when
communicating with China's rulers, but 'emperor (hoang de; huangdi) when addressing their own
subjects or sending messages to other Southeast Asian rulers.
357
In a similar vein, the Vietnamese strategy toward China was a combination of military
resistance and diplomatic deference. Military resistance and “inside as emperor” reflected the
Vietnamese view of the world that emphasized its separation from and parity with China. Yet
diplomatic deference and “outside as king” reflected the Chinese view that stressed China’s
superiority. Traditional Sino-Vietnamese relations embodied the encounter and interplay of the
two countries’ conflicting worldviews, and reflected the actual balance of power between them.
As Alexander Vuving argues, whether Vietnam asserted its own view of world order or it
accepted the Chinese one was not so much a matter of domestic versus international, of ideal
versus pragmatic, or of military versus diplomacy, but a matter of circumstances, of relative
capabilities, and of expediency.
358
Le Loi asserted that "Dai Viet alone is a "domain of manifest civility." Le Loi even
decentered the Chinese world order by excluding the Ming from the world of manifest civility. In
Le Loi's words, it was Dai Viet that was actualized as a true domain of manifest civility."
Moreover, Le Loi stressed the fact that Dai Viet and China had different natural environments
and customs. He linked Dai Viet back to Zhao Tuo, the founder of the Nan Yue kingdom, as well
as to the independent Vietnamese dynasties that preceded the Le: Dinh, Ly, and Tran. Each of
these dynasties had to coexist with, respectively, the northern dynasties Han, Tang, Song, and
357
David G. Marr, “Sino-Vietnamese Relations,” The Australian Journal of Chinese Affairs, no. 6 (July 1, 1981):
48–49.
358
Alexander L. Vuving, “Operated by World Views and Interfaced by World Orders: Traditional and Modern Sino-
Vietnamese Relations,” in Negotiating Asymmetry: China’s Place in Asia, ed. Anthony Reid and Zheng Yangwen, 1
edition (Honolulu: University of Hawaii Press, 2009).
119
Yuan. But each emperor, North and South, has his own domain. The southern emperor ruled the
southern land.
359
The Ming observed Le Loi warily as he called himself emperor (as the History
of the Ming records), and as he chose his reign name Thuan-thien, literally "in accord with
Heaven." Northern observers must have been galled by the choice of a man they deemed an anti-
Ming criminal to choose this name.
360
The rise of Mac Dang Dung and ensuing Ming-Mac crisis also revealed subtle tension in
how Vietnamese elites identified themselves vis-à-vis their northern counterparts. In his Great
Pronouncements, Mac Dang Dung "used the imperial "I" (Zhen/tram) and spoke of inheriting
Heaven's Mandate, terms that, from a Chinese point of view, were reserved for the Ming ruler
alone.
361
On November 26, 1536, Ming's Ministries of War and Rites jointly advocated with war
with Dai Viet, against Mac Dang Dung. At stake was the very concept of the Chinese state: an
expansive empire as envisioned by the Yongle emperor, or the Hongwu emperor's bounded and
self-contained Central Country. The central question was whether Dai Viet was an intrinsic part
of a Ming empire, or a barbarian state outside of the concerns of a bounded Central Country.
Although the Ming army was ostensibly mobilized to punish the Mac and restore the Le,
by the time of surrender, the Le had virtually been forgotten. Instead, the Mac surrendered in
1540 as tough they had been at war with Ming, rather than their foes Le. In effect, the surrender
merely normalized the relations between the Ming and the Mac court, an outcome the Mac had
been working toward for more than a decade. In the exchange, the Mac received more than just
breathing room: they also gained the recognition and support of the Ming. This relationship
carried over to the Qing and allowed the Mac to continue to dispute Le and later Le-Trinh claims
359
Baldanza, Ming China and Vietnam, 2016, 80–81.
360
Baldanza, 83.
361
Baldanza, 99.
120
to power, even after the Mac were expelled from Dong Kinh in 1592 and fled to Ming protection
in the North.
Historical scholarship tends to emphasize the Vietnamese state's need to be pragmatic in
the face of Chinese pressure, to compromise or acquiesce to the conditions of the so-called
tributary system in order to avoid conflict. But this view overlooks the Chinese state's need to
exercise caution in its relations with Dai Viet in order to prevent costly and destructive wars. The
surrender was a compromise. The resolution marked by the surrender was not so much an
exercise of China's hegemonic power, but rather acceptance of a more limited role for the Ming
in the region.
In sum, Vietnamese elites were well aware of the insurmountable asymmetry between
their power and that of Chinese empire. Both sides knew the rules and used literary Sinitic as the
language of diplomacy. Paradoxically, however, this very commensurability caused problems.
Both sides may have agreed to the rules and the forms of diplomacy, but their understanding of
their country's place in the world differed. The most common autonym in Vietnamese text was
"South" (Nam). For Vietnamese, Dai Viet was the Southern country (Nam Quoc) ruled by the
southern emperor. It was also frequently called the "Heavenly South," the "Great South," or our
"South." China was the explicit northern half of this binary. In Vietnamese texts, China is
referred to as the Northern Country, ruled by the northern emperor and populated by
northerners... There were two suns in the sky."
362
Although it seems as though the Ming state
would be pleased that a neighbor adopted classical culture, in the case of Dai Viet, the
transformation went too far. The Ming civilizing mission, as fas there was one, aimed only for
362
Baldanza, 101.
121
white teeth and long hair. It did not reckon on spawning a sovereign southern emperor who
challenged the Ming's exclusive cosmological control of All-under-Heaven.
When compared with the Korean case, Vietnam’s claim for equality with China is even
more prominent. Choson Korea, without any hesitance, conceded to Chinese notion of symbolic
superiority—Chinese emperor being a sole possessor of the mandate of Heaven and ruler of the
all-under-heaven. When Choson official Choe Pu visited Beijing in the 1480s and was asked by a
Chinese official whether the king of Choson was called emperor, he replied “In Heaven there are
not two suns; how under the same Heaven can there be two emperors? My king’s purpose is to
serve your country devotedly.”
363
Southeast Asia: Anarchy within Hierarchy
Then why did Vietnam claim equality with China internally and towards its neighbors
while strategically submissive to China? One of the key reasons for this behavior is Vietnam’s
peculiar geopolitical setting throughout pre-colonial history. Indeed, most Southeast Asian
polities chose to comply with the Chinese centered tributary order and followed associated
norms and practices.
364
Yet distinctive subregional dynamics of competition for survival and
domination among rival polities persisted throughout the pre-colonial period.
365
Vietnam and
Champa fought for centuries for domination, and so did Burman and Ayutthaya (Siam). This
363
Baldanza, 100.
364
Anthony Reid, Southeast Asia in the Early Modern Era: Trade, Power, and Belief (Cornell University Press,
1993).
365
Victor Lieberman, “Local Integration and Eurasian Analogies: Structuring Southeast Asian History, c. 1350-c.
1830,” Modern Asian Studies 27, no. 3 (1993): 475–572, https://doi.org/10.2307/312961.
122
subregional anarchy was a consequence of the peculiar political structure that characterized
many pre-modern Southeast Asian states. The mandalas refer to the political structure of
concentric circles of power that a central authority claims over its territory, where the influences
of the authority wane as it moves away from the center.
366
As the basic form of premodern
polities, the mandalas dominated the political scene of Southeast Asia until they were finally
displaced by the Western powers in the nineteenth century.
There is an inherent tension within the political structure of the mandalas. In rhetoric, the
king of each mandala claimed universal authority of the local rulers as if they were obedient
vassals. In practice, however, the mandalas represented an unstable political order in a vaguely
defined geographical area without fixed boundaries and where smaller centers and their local
rulers had to defend themselves for survival.
367
In pre-modern Southeast Asia, the fluid and often
overlapping claims of the mandalas generated intensified security problems from both within and
outside. As Min Shu concludes, “behind the China-dominated regional hierarchy, one may
identify fairly independent dynamics of international relations at the sub-regional level of
Southeast Asia. As a result of the political configuration of the mandalas, Southeast Asian
countries faced more intensified security threats from either sub-regional neighbors than from
China.”
368
In short, even as China’s superiority was formally accepted as the norm, the sub-
regional order in Southeast Asia constituted de facto anarchy, characterized by struggle for
security and domination.
Vietnam was perhaps the most centralized and Confucianized states of the Southeast
Asian region. Yet it had to face non-Confucian polities along its southern and western borders.
366
O. W. Wolters, History, Culture, and Region in Southeast Asian Perspectives (SEAP Publications, 1999).
367
Wolters, 27–28.
368
Shu, “Balancing in a Hierarchical System: Pre-Colonial Southeast Asia and the Tribute System,” 241.
123
Therefore, Vietnam was much more concerned with international stability than its relationship
with China, and indeed reveal almost no military attention to the latter. Its relationship with
China were mostly conducted through diplomatic means based on institutions and principles of
the tribute system since the end of Ming occupation in 1427. Vietnamese leaders were without
any doubt more concerned with chronic domestic instability and the relations with neighboring
kingdoms to their south and west. Especially with the demise of the Le Dynasty in early 1500s
and the advent of what historian Keith Taylor calls the “ear of warfare among Vietnamese
speakers,” Vietnam experienced constant struggle between different factions among its elite
families.
369
From 1530s to 1590s, the internal struggle was between the Mac family who reigned
from the Red River plain in north and the alliance of Trinh and Nguyen families in the southern
province of Thanh Hoa. From 1600s with the demise of the Mac dynasty, the struggle was
between the Trinh lords and the Nguyen lords, which culminated in the Fifty Years of War from
1620s.
According to the dataset recently complied by Kang and his collaborators, Vietnam
experienced interstate war in only 27 years, or seven percent of the time between 1389 and
1789.
370
They find that overwhelming attention was given to internal contestation, such as
internal revolts, challenges to the existing ruler, or competition among intra-elite factions within
Vietnam. In other words, despite China being the by far the most powerful actor in Vietnam’s
neighborhoods, it did not figure prominently in Vietnamese security concerns. A recent study by
Tuong Vu reports a similar finding that “every Vietnamese dynasty spend more time attacking or
coping with raids from further south and sometimes west, than dealing with the northern empire
369
Taylor, A History of the Vietnamese.
370
Kang et al., “Vietnamese Wars in Early Modern East Asia, 1389-1789: Introducing New Data.”
124
[China].”
371
Without the exception of Ming emperor Yongle’s occupation of Vietnam for twenty
years (1406-1428), the Chinese empire generally served as a benevolent big brother who was
instrumental in Vietnam’s quest for expand power along its frontiers. Vietnam’s successful
conquests and annexations of neighboring polities were made possible by the tribute system that
preserved peace and stability on Vietnam’s northern border.
As Alexander Woodside points out, Vietnam, along with China, had “long open land
frontiers and had to invent and reinvent themselves within highly mutable frontiers… their
conceptions of political identity were thus repeatedly jostled and contested by the entirely non-
Confucian peoples who shared their extended frontiers. And the attempted absorption of such
peoples by the Chinese and Vietnamese cores created a crisis in the construction of political
order.”
372
The premodern Vietnamese polity was forged in the fourteenth and fifteenth centuries
in a series of wars with the Cham kingdom of what is now central Vietnam. The Chams were a
Malayo-Polynesian people with an Indict script, a Brahminist religion, and a most non-
Confucian polyandrous national tutelary deity (Po Nagar).
373
The Nguyen dynasty, established in
Hue in 1802, was the unified Vietnamese government in history to rule current Vietnam’s
national territory. This was almost eight centuries after the Korean polity had essentially closed
the modern Korean national border. Among the Sinicized states, Vietnam had arguably the least
control over its frontier.
Vietnamese rulers proclaimed themselves "emperor," while seeking investiture as "king"
from the Chinese ruler. Also, the Vietnamese strategy toward China was a combination of
military resistance and diplomatic deference. "Military resistance and “inside as emperor”
371
Vu, “State Formation on China’s Southern Frontier: Vietnam as a Shadow Empire and Hegemon,” 51–52.
372
Woodside, “Territorial Order and Collective-Identity Tensions in Confucian Asia,” 200, 202.
373
Woodside, 203.
125
reflected the Vietnamese view of the world that emphasized Vietnam’s separation from and
parity with China. But diplomatic deference and “outside as king” reflected the Chinese view
that stressed China’s superiority. Traditional Sino-Vietnamese relations embodied the encounter
and interplay of the two countries’ conflicting worldviews, and reflected the actual balance of
power between them.
374
As Alexander Vuving writes, whether Vietnam asserted its own view of
world order or it accepted the Chinese one was not so much a matter of domestic vs.
international, of ideal vs. pragmatic, or of military vs. diplomacy, but a matter of circumstances,
of relative capabilities, and of expediency."
375
Conclusion
Since Dinh Bo Linh’s time, the official title for the ruler of Vietnam has always been the
emperor. The Vietnamese emperors claimed a status as the son of heaven, just as the Chinese
emperors did. The Dai Viet also used its independent calendar year, unlike China’s other
tributary states such as Korea. A further indication of this idea of equality with China can be seen
in the way Vietnamese writers called China the "northern country" while referring to Viet Nam
as the "southern country." Chinese were called the "men of the Tang" or the "northern people,"
while Vietnamese referred to themselves as the hoa dan (civilized people), or the "southern
people." The idea of "Viet Nam's equality with China" and the "spirit of resistance" against
foreign intervention have continued unaltered up to the twentieth century.
374
Anderson, “Distinguishing Between China and Vietnam: Three Relational Equilibriums in Sino-Vietnamese
Relations.”
375
Vuving, “Operated by World Views and Interfaced by World Orders: Traditional and Modern Sino-Vietnamese
Relations,” 83.
126
Why did Vietnam claim equality with China internally and towards its neighbors while
strategically submissive to China? One of the key reasons for this behavior is Vietnam’s peculiar
geopolitical setting throughout pre-colonial history. While most countries in Southeast Asia
complied with the Chinese centered tributary order, the region was also characterized by fierce
competition for survival and domination among rival polities. Vietnam was the most
Confucianized state among its neighbors, and it had to compete with non-Confucian polities
along its southern and western borders. Vietnamese elites’ attention, therefore, was primarily on
internal rivalry or competition with its non-Confucian rivals in its immediate neighborhood.
127
Chapter 6 Conclusion
Summary
The primary goal of this dissertation is to examine the causes of varying status seeking
strategies of China’s tributary states in early modern Asia. Why do some secondary states
actively seek its place in hierarchy while others do not? Under what conditions do secondary
states choose different types of status seeking strategies? To answer these questions, I have
conducted comparative case studies of Korea and Vietnam and their understanding of their
respective places in China-centered hierarchy during the Ming and the Qing periods. This
comparison was justified on the foundations that they both were formal tributaries of China and
wanted to maintain close ties through diplomatic connections. Their relationships with China
were relatively durable for centuries until the arrival of the Western powers. Yet while Korean
elites actively pursued status as a loyal tributary state, Vietnamese elites were never fully
convinced that China was to be regarded as the only suzerain. Vietnamese rulers, in fact, claimed
equality with China by addressing themselves as emperors internally, while calling themselves
kings only in correspondence with China. Korea, on the other hand, actively adopted and
internalized Chinese culture to secure its firm place in China-centered hierarchy.
I have argued that their differing status seeking strategies can be explained by the
interplay between geopolitical structure and agentic choice. To develop this account
theoretically, I turn to two related conceptual frameworks. While social identity theory helps us
128
explain why secondary states may pursue identity strategy of socialization and seek status as a
loyal follower, the notion of ontological security provides firm ground on which to build an
explanation of persistent identity. I do not claim, however, that identity can explain it all. ,
secondary states’ identity strategy is influenced by particular geopolitical configuration and their
place within it. Under certain geopolitical condition, in which threat from the predominant state
is more imperative, the elites of secondary states are more likely to pursue status as loyal
follower.
Through careful analysis of historical events, I showed that the choice founders of
Choson Korea made at the end of the fourteenth century to become a loyal tributary state of the
Ming constituted a deliberate identity strategy. As social identity theory suggests, states
consciously seek self-definition and self-esteem, and thus choose certain strategies to obtain and
secure their identities. The Korean elites who laid the foundation of Choson actively pursued the
strategy of sadae, or serving the great policy, by adopting a Confucian identity. Yet, the
hegemonic discourse within Korea in early Choson period reveals little evidence of ideological
embrace of Confucianism. The Choson elites, in fact, showed sense of pragmatism in their
understanding of Choson’s relationship with China until well into the sixteenth century. In this
sense, Korea’s status seeking through sadae policy depended as much on the elites’ perception of
geopolitical power configuration as on deliberate identity strategy. Chosŏn Korea, in other
words, was in part forced to become a loyal tributary state.
The demise of the Ming dynasty in 1644 was truly a traumatic event for Korea. It was not
so much simply a replacement of leadership in the central kingdom as the disintegration of the
Confucian world order in which Korea had a firm place as the most civilized tributary state, if
not on par with China. When the barbaric Manchus conquered the Ming, therefore, Korean
129
elites’ sense of anxiety became acute as it undermines very foundation of Korean identity. Even
before the collapse of the Ming dynasty, however, Korea was not able to adjust itself to the new
geopolitical reality of the Qing as the new suzerain. In fact, Korea had long considered The
Manchu as culturally inferior and pacified its northern border by issuing nominal appointments
as subjects of Korean court. The idea of “Northern Expedition” is just one of the examples that
represents the degree of identity crisis the Korean elites had to deal with. Although the idea of
Chosŏn as the “Little China” had existed from the beginning of the dynasty, it was after the
change of dynasty in China that the notion came to claim more prominence among the Chosŏn
elites. After its humiliating capitulation to the Qing, the Chosŏn elites faced a serious identity
crisis because through their submission to the barbarians, they violate two most important
Confucian values—loyalty to the monarch and filial piety to the father. The establishment of the
Mandong Shrine and the Alter of Great Gratitude was designed to demonstrate Chosŏn’s
fulfillment of its moral obligations to the deceased Ming. Chosŏn was seeking protect its identity
as the last bastion of Confucian civilization.
As pervious analysis has made it clear, Vietnam was situated in a different geopolitical
setting to Korea throughout its pre-colonial history. Although Vietnam became a target of
Chinese military interventions from time to time, it was in general much more concerned with
internal rivalry or competition with its non-Confucian rivals in today’s mainland Southeast Asian
region. While most countries in Southeast Asia complied with the Chinese centered tributary
order, the region was also characterized by fierce competition for survival and domination
among rival polities. Vietnam was a frontier state in a way Korea was not. While Vietnam vied
for recognition and protection from China, seeking status through socialization under Chinese
hierarchy was not an imperative choice to be made in its competition vis-à-vis its non-Confucian
130
neighbors. Under this geopolitical condition, Vietnamese rulers pursued Vietnam’s equality with
China. That the Vietnamese rulers addressed themselves as emperors internally was designed to
secure its positive identity.
131
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Abstract (if available)
Abstract
This dissertation is about secondary states’ status seeking strategies under Chinese hegemony in early modern East Asia. The primary goal of the dissertation is to examine the causes of varying status seeking strategies of China’s tributary states, and how that in turn shaped the nature of international hierarchy during the Ming and the Qing. More specifically, I ask the following questions in the dissertation: Why do some secondary states actively seek their place in hierarchy while others do not? Under what conditions do secondary states choose different types of status seeking strategies? ❧ To answer these theoretical questions, I compare Korea and Vietnam and their relationship vis-à-vis the Ming and the Qing China. Both Korea and Vietnam were considered as the most loyal and culturally similar tributaries. They both rarely questioned Chinese suzerainty and accepted their kingdoms’ vassal status. They also actively sought recognition from Chinese emperors for their right to survival. Their relationships with Chinese states were relatively durable for centuries. Yet while Korean elites actively pursued status as a model tributary state, Vietnamese elites were never fully convinced that China was to be regarded as the only suzerain. Vietnamese rulers, in fact, proclaimed themselves as “emperor” internally, while calling themselves as “king” only when communicating with China. Korea’s status seeking strategy secured it a firm place under the Chinese hegemony and even “co-constructed” the Chinese empire. ❧ Then why Korea and Vietnam, despite their formal commitment to tributary obligations, chose different strategies of status seeking? I hypothesize that the interplay between material and ideational factors can explain varying status seeking strategies of secondary states in hierarchy. To be specific, status seeking strategies reflect both agentic choice of ruling elites and geopolitical structure in which they make such choice. In this way, I emphasize the interplay between material and ideational factors in analyzing secondary states’ status seeking behavior. Using evidence from comparative case studies, this dissertation shows that Korea and Vietnam were situated in distinctive geopolitical context that affected their choice of how to define and secure their identities vis-à-vis China. Vietnam was a frontier state in a way Korea was not. Unlike Korea, therefore, Vietnam was repeatedly contested by the non-Confucian polities who shared its frontiers. While Vietnam vied for imperial recognition and protection from China, its elites chose to seek status through competition against its non-Confucian neighbors. Korea’s stable territoriality, in contrast, allowed it to actively pursue status through transforming itself to the most Sinicized tributary. ❧ The contribution of this dissertation is twofold. First, it adds nuance of the dynamics of secondary states response to Chinese hegemony to the growing body of literature on Asian IR history by showing that response to Chinese hegemony was not uniform even among the most loyal tributary states, Korea and Vietnam. While I join the recent trend in the literature that puts analytical weight on the role of secondary states under Chinese hegemony, this dissertation represents a departure from it by highlighting the interplay between material and ideational factors. The dissertation also moves beyond the Korea/Japan dyad as cases for comparison by analyzing Korea and Vietnam. Second, this dissertation speaks to the literature on hierarchy and status seeking. It seeks to correct the great power-centered view by showing that secondary states also pursue status and that it has important implications for the dynamics of international hierarchy.
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Min, In Young
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Status seeking in hierarchy: Korea and Vietnam under Chinese hegemony in early modern Asia
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College of Letters, Arts and Sciences
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Doctor of Philosophy
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Political Science and International Relations
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08/15/2019
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