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Books > History > Asian / Middle Eastern history
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A Korean Scholar's Rude Awakening in Qing China - Pak Chega's Discourse on Northern Learning (Hardcover)
Loot Price: R2,346
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A Korean Scholar's Rude Awakening in Qing China - Pak Chega's Discourse on Northern Learning (Hardcover)
Series: Korean Classics Library: Historical Materials
Expected to ship within 12 - 19 working days
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Two years after Adam Smith's Wealth of Nations was published in
1776, Pak Chega's (1750-1805) Discourse on Northern Learning
appeared on the opposite corner of the globe. Both books presented
notions of wealth and the economy for critical review: the former
caused a stir across Europe, the latter influenced only a modest
group of Choson (1392-1897) Korea scholars and other intellectuals.
Nevertheless, the ideas of both thinkers closely reflected the
spirit of their times and helped define certain schools of
thought-in the case of Pak, Northern Learning (Pukhak), which
disparaged the Choson Neo-Confucian state ideology as inert and
ineffective. Years of humiliation and resentment against the
conquering Manchus blinded many Korean elites to the scientific and
technological advances made in Qing China (1644-1911). They
despised its rulers as barbarians and begrudged Qing China's status
as their suzerain state. But Pak saw Korea's northern neighbor as a
model of economic and social reform. He and like-minded
progressives discussed and corroborated views about the superiority
of China's civilization. After traveling to Beijing in 1776, Pak
wrote Discourse on Northern Learning, in which he favorably
introduced many aspects of China's economy and culture. By
comparison, he argued, Korea's economy was depressed, the result of
inadequate government policies and the selfishness of a privileged
upper class. He called for drastic reforms in agriculture and
industry and for opening the country to international trade. In a
series of short essays, Pak gives us rare insights into life on the
ground in late eighteenth-century Korea, and in the many details he
supplies on Chinese farming, trade, and other commercial
activities, his work provides a window onto everyday life in Qing
China. Students and specialists of Korean history, particularly
social reform movements, and Choson-Qing relations will welcome
this new translation.
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