[KS] Montesquieu on Relative Bravery of North and South Koreans

David Kosofsky kayaksky at yahoo.com
Fri Jul 12 00:33:22 EDT 2002


I wonder if anyone involved in Korean Studies has ever
noticed what must surely be one of the earliest
mentions, at least in a Western language, of a
regional-character difference between North and South
Koreans: the claim that people "in the south of Korea
have less bravery than those in the north," made by
none other than Baron de Montesquieu, just a tad short
of 200 years before the political division of the
peninsula.
 
I just blundered on it in "The Spirit of the Laws"
 
http://www.constitution.org/cm/sol_17.htm#02
 
(See the 2nd paragraph)
 
And the whole section makes interesting reading if for
no other reason than the glimpse it gives into the
well of misinformation that 18th-century Europeans had
to draw from in their efforts to understand Asia.  Not
that things changed all that much in the next century:
seems to me there are distinct echos of Montesquieu in
what Marx had to say about the "Asiatic Mode of
Production," "Asiatic Despotism," etc.


David Kosofsky
Washington, DC

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