The primary sources in this and later chapters cannot be properly understood without a nuanced and precise understanding of the workings of Korean and Western attitudes about the world at large, which YongKoo Kim deftly illuminates in The Five Years’ Crisis, 1866- 1871: Korea in the Maelstrom of Western Imperialism. I would like to begin this section by making a note about his conclusion. He writes that in his work, he attempted to:
…maintain a balanced view on this unfortunate period in history by guarding against chauvinistic interpretations of Korean diplomatic history that impute
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all the mishaps to foreign powers, as well as against so-called colonial
versions which deny the autonomous capabilities of the Korean people. (125) I endeavor to do the same. Each of the texts and other forms of representation with which I deal throughout this dissertation are to be considered in terms of how they reflect conflicting attitudes, ideologies, and discourses, and not for the ways in which they might impugn or excuse the agents responsible for their existence. Again, I would like to repeat that in discussing Orientalizing practices, I neither wish to condone nor engage in them.
Regarding Korean and Western worldviews, YongKoo Kim first explains the Sadae (사대) order, an international system that is generally agreed to have been operational in certain areas of East Asia. He adds that because it was sinocentric, or focused on China, it has also been called the “Chinese World Order” and the “Confucian World Order.” Kim adds that the order was ideologically based on a very broad concept called li, meaning ceremony, and which “basically refers to an individual’s moral standards, the harmony between rulers and the ruled, or the proper conduct between China and her vassals” (7). In a moment, I will describe in greater detail how this concept clashed with Catholicism in Korea, but for now, I will add that the Sadae (사대) order was hierarchical and anti- egalitarian in nature and that China was placed firmly at the top of this hierarchy. Korea (Joseon for much of this time period) was included in this system25.
Although Korea subscribed to the Sadae (사대) order, it does not mean that China was wholly in control of all of Korea’s affairs or that Koreans accepted without question Chinese ideas and laws. In fact, I argue that those French individuals who came into conflict
25 Because the different forms of government that subscribed to the Sadae (사대) order merely include Joseon and are not constrained to the Joseon time period (1392-1897), I will continue to use “Korea” as a term of reference in this section rather than “Joseon,” as it is markedly more comprehensive. Please see my notes in the introduction for a more detailed explanation of this choice in terminology.
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with Korea in 1866 and later often did so under the false pretenses that the country wholly subscribed to and was subservient to China to a much greater degree than can justifiably considered to be true. Don Baker, in “A Different Thread: Orthodoxy, Heterdoxy, and Catholicism in a Confucian World,” attests that Koreans who wanted to distinguish acceptable behaviors from unacceptable behaviors within Korean society “did not limit themselves to pious repetitions of Chinese judgments” and that “they had enough confidence in their own command of Confucian principles to decide for themselves if doctrines that even the Chinese tolerated fit Korean Neo-Confucian criteria of orthodoxy (acceptable behavior) (207).”
Therefore, the version of Korea that most Westerners encountered in the latter half of the 19th century was one in which China had been seen from an East Asian perspective as the center of the civilized world but whose status as such had begun to decline, and whose governmental and ideological power and control over Korea was likely not as potent as they had imagined. What about Western attitudes about the East? YongKoo Kim turns to
European public law to provide a sense of how Westerners viewed themselves vis-à-vis those who lived in the rest of the world. He writes that that European public law was positivist, Eurocentrist, expansionist, and formalist, but what interests us most here is what he writes regarding European public law’s method of dividing the nations of the world into three categories, which are:
1) Full subjects of international law who enjoyed all the rights and duties under that law- a status that applied only to European states; 2) the semi- civilized states with whom European nations concluded unequal treaties that economically and politically exploited European nations concluded unequal treaties that economically and politically exploited the colonies; and 3) the so-called barbarian peoples, who were considered suitable objects for
25 invasion and occupation. (9)
As I will reveal in my primary source analyses, French discourse about Korea surrounding the Byeong-in yangyo (병인양요) demonstrates a lack of uniformity in
determining whether to represent Korea as belonging to the second or the third categories shown above. However, both categories allow for the expression of violent resistance due to behavioral expectations on the part of “semi-civilized” individuals and “barbarians.” Neither of the categories insinuates an expectation of successful resistance, however, which
therefore implies that countries in both categories should be expected to submit to the exertions of other nations against them. It is this impossible juxtaposition that relies on a pure binary opposition, impossible to maintain, that can be seen clearly in the written texts of the time.
A noteworthy parallel should be pointed out: the way in which the Sadae (사대) order placed China at the center of the civilized world from an East Asian perspective was mirrored from a certain Western viewpoint. By 1866, China, due to decades of internal strife, governmental corruption, funds spent to quell peasant uprisings, and having neglected its coastal defenses, was weakened to the point that it was progressively less and less able to push back against foreign attacks on its soil. This led to the Opium Wars (1839-1842; 1856- 1860), waged by European coalitions (including France) against China in order to secure better trade conditions, to seize territory, and to ensure that Western trade in opium could continue. Similar to the way that China’s reputation had diminished amongst Northeast Asian peoples through a process that has been called “decentering the Middle Kingdom,”
the high esteem in which China had been held by Europeans during the eighteenth century faltered irretrievably in the nineteenth. The Opium Wars were both cause and effect of this
26 process26.