CKR Book Talk
“The Diary of 1636: The Second Manchu Invasion of Korea”
George Kallander, Syracuse University
Moderated by Jungwon Kim, Columbia University
Monday, February 22
2:00PM – 4:00PM
Registration required.
Abstract
Early in the seventeenth century, Northeast Asian politics hung in a delicate balance among the Chosŏn dynasty in Korea, the Ming in China, and the Manchu. When a Chosŏn faction realigned Korea with the Ming, the Manchu attacked in 1627 and again a decade later, shattering the Chosŏn-Ming alliance and forcing Korea to support the newly founded Qing dynasty. Chronicling the dramatic Korean resistance to the attack, the scholar-official Na Man’gap (1592–1642) recorded the second Manchu assault in his Diary of 1636 (Pyŏngjarok). Partly composed as a narrative of the siege of Namhan Mountain Fortress, where Na sought refuge with the king and other officials, the diary recounts Korean opposition to Manchu and Mongol forces and the political fallout of the eventual surrender. Based on his new book The Diary of 1636: The Second Manchu Invasion of Korea (Columbia University Press, 2020), George Kallander will talk about the Manchu attacks and the relevance of the Diary to Korea then and now.
George Kallander is associate professor of history at the Maxwell School of Citizenship and Public Affairs at Syracuse University, where he is director of the East Asia Program at the Moynihan Institute of Global Affairs. His research focuses on early modern Korea. He is author of two books The Diary of 1636: The Second Manchu Invasion of Korea (Columbia University Press, 2020) and Salvation through Dissent: Tonghak Heterodoxy and Early Modern Korea (University of Hawai’i Press, 2013). He is co-editors of the Cambridge History of Korea project, the Chosŏn Dynasty volume, for which he is also contributing a chapter. He is also completing a new monograph tentatively titled Beastly Rites: Human-Animal Relations and the Hunt in Premodern Korea. Professor Kallander has received fellowships from the Institute for Advanced Study (Princeton), the Academy of Korean Studies, and Columbia University.
Co-sponsored by the Academy of Korean Studies, Seoul, Korea