Empire and Righteous Nation
- ISBN-10
- 0674238214
- ISBN-13
- 9780674238213
- Category
- History
- Pages
- 176
- Language
- English
- Published
- 2021-01-12
- Publisher
- Harvard University Press
- Author
- Odd Arne Westad
Description
From an award-winning historian, a concise overview of the deep and longstanding ties between China and the Koreas, providing an essential foundation for understanding East Asian geopolitics today. In a concise, trenchant overview, Odd Arne Westad explores the cultural and political relationship between China and the Koreas over the past 600 years. Koreans long saw China as a mentor. The first form of written Korean employed Chinese characters and remained in administrative use until the twentieth century. Confucianism, especially Neo-Confucian reasoning about the state and its role in promoting a virtuous society, was central to the construction of the Korean government in the fourteenth century. These shared Confucian principles were expressed in fraternal terms, with China the older brother and Korea the younger. During the Ming Dynasty, mentor became protector, as Korea declared itself a vassal of China in hopes of escaping ruin at the hands of the Mongols. But the friendship eventually frayed with the encroachment of Western powers in the nineteenth century. Koreans began to reassess their position, especially as Qing China seemed no longer willing or able to stand up for Korea against either the Western powers or the rising military threat from Meiji Japan. The Sino-Korean relationship underwent further change over the next century as imperialism, nationalism, revolution, and war refashioned states and peoples throughout Asia. Westad describes the disastrous impact of the Korean War on international relations in the region and considers Sino-Korean interactions today, especially the thorny question of the reunification of the Korean peninsula. Illuminating both the ties and the tensions that have characterized the China-Korea relationship, Empire and Righteous Nation provides a valuable foundation for understanding a critical geopolitical dynamic.
Get the book
Other editions
Similar books
-
Empire and Righteous Nation: 600 Years of China-Korea Relations
By Odd Arne WestadIlluminating both the ties and the tensions that have characterized the China-Korea relationship, Empire and Righteous Nation provides a valuable foundation for understanding a critical geopolitical dynamic"--
-
Restless Empire: China and the World Since 1750
By Odd Arne Westad—Ian Johnson, Asia Society's Asia Blog “[Restless Empire] is a richly detailed, elegant meditation on China's search to define its role in the world, and answer that elemental question: What is China? . . . Westad masterfully relates ...
-
Nation Building in South Korea: Koreans, Americans, and the Making of a Democracy
By Gregg A. BrazinskyIn this ambitious and innovative study Gregg Brazinsky examines American nation building in South Korea during the Cold War.
-
Secret Empire: Eisenhower, the CIA, and the Hidden Story of America's Space Espionage
By Philip TaubmanTraces the efforts of Cold War scientists to revolutionize American airplane designs, spying capabilities, and defense technologies, citing how their inventions made possible the systems and processes of current military campaigns.
-
Righteous Republic
By Ananya VajpeyiLess well-known is how India’s own rich knowledge traditions of 2,500 years influenced these men. Vajpeyi furnishes this missing account, showing how five founders turned to classical texts to fashion an original sense of Indian selfhood.
-
The Hijacked War: The Story of Chinese POWs in the Korean War
By David Cheng ChangIn The Hijacked War, David Cheng Chang vividly portrays the experiences of Chinese prisoners in the dark, cold, and damp tents of Koje and Cheju Islands in Korea and how their decisions derailed the high politics being conducted in the ...
-
From the Ruins of Empire: The Revolt Against the West and the Remaking of Asia
By Pankaj MishraPankaj Mishra's fascinating, highly entertaining new book tells the story of a remarkable group of men from across the continent who met the challenge of the West.
-
American Empire: The Rise of a Global Power, the Democratic Revolution at Home, 1945-2000
By Joshua FreemanBefore Pearl Harbor, the committee devoted itself largely to trying to undermine the New Deal by airing charges that communists and their supporters played significant roles in various federal agencies and in labor unions ...
-
The Protestant Voice in American Pluralism
By Martin E. MartyHistorian Page Smith once told some of us about a historian at the University of Wisconsin in Madison who received a full-length dissertation on a subject like "Dairy Farming in Southwest Monroe County, 187 5-1 878.
-
The Daily Show (The Book): An Oral History as Told by Jon Stewart, the Correspondents, Staff and Guests
By Chris SmithPhilip Van Cleave, President, Virginia Citizens Defense League: [The Australian gun ban] stopped one thing! That could also be a statistical anomaly. John Oliver: Yeah—it was just their mass shootings disappeared. Philip Van Cleave: But ...