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From National History to Frontier History－A New Perspective for the History of Manchu and Chosŏn Relations－

Seonmin Kim 1

1고려대학교

Accredited

ABSTRACT

This paper reviews various studies on the historical relationship of the Jurchen-cum-Manchus to Chosŏn, especially analyzing the ways in which Mongke Temur and Nurhaci, the ancestors of the Qing imperial court, have been discussed in Korean, Japanese, and the American academic circles, respectively. A critical reading of the conventional narratives of the Chinese and Korean relationship shows that the frontier peoples living in Manchuria between Ming and Chosŏn were largely described within a narrow, limited frame of national history, a perspective that hardly allows us to understand the fluidity and transformability of the Jurchens and Manchus. Conversely, national history projects an image of the frontier peoples as a unified and stable group, occupying their own separate territory and culture, but having an inferior status in the political and social hierarchy dominated by Ming and Chosŏn. As a critique to such traditional accounts of the Chinese and Korean relationship embedded with essentialism, this paper offers frontier perspectives, a new idea that highlights the significance of frontiers and borders where different groups of people had contact, exchanges, and conflicts. The most distinctive feature of the frontier perspective is that it challenges one-directional, territory based, and nation-state centered understandings. It focuses on transnational subjects crossing the boundaries of national history and different ethnic groups, therefore helping us understand the historical process in which the Jurchens were transformed to be the Manchus through their constant contact with Ming Chinese and Chosŏn Koreans. By proposing specific definitions for terms such as frontiers, borderlands, and borders, the frontier perspective can better explain the historical development of the space between Ming-Qing and Chosŏn from frontiers to borderlands and borders. It also explains the changes in the political relationship between the two neighbors.

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* References for papers published after 2023 are currently being built.

This paper was written with support from the National Research Foundation of Korea.
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