[KS] Portuguese during Hideyoshi invasion?

[gkl1 at columbia.edu]

   Checking out the sillok entry cited by Ernie, it is clear that
P'arang (McC-R) refers to some south Asian people with whom Chinese
generals operating on China's southern borders were in contact. Many
of the Chinese generals who were active in Korea during the Imjin
wars came from that southern military background, and many troops
of southern ethnic (non-Chinese) origin served in units commanded
by those generals. The ethnic troops most prominently mentioned in
the sillok during the Imjin War years were the Miao tribesmen, who
had a very fearsome reputation as soldiers.
   The main entry describing King Sonjo's visit to a Chinese
commander's quarters (not a barrack!) may be translated as follows:
      His Highness graced the quarters of Brigadier
 Peng Xin'gu, who offered him wine. His Highness
 said, "Is your Excellency going to stay here in
 Seoul, or will you be continuing south?"
      "I will be leaving for the south after spending
 a month here," the Brigadier said. Later, he also
 said, "I've brought along with me some strange
 looking but amazing soldiers, and I will have them
 introduced to you (at court)."
      His Highness asked, "Where are they from, and
 what skills and capabilities do they have?" The
 Brigadier responded, "They are people from a country
 called Polang (K. P'arang), which is extremely far
 to the south of the Hu-Guang area (southern and
 southeastern China). They must cross three seas
 before they reach Hu-Guang. They are 150,000 li from
 Korea. They are good at musketry and various other
 military arts."
      His Highness observed, "We are but an isolated
 country beyond the (East) Sea; how would we ever have
 seen such amazing soldiers! That your Excellency
 should present them is only through the grace of the
 emperor, for which we are especially grateful. We can
 point to the day when the murderous outlaws (the
 Japanese) will be crushed and destroyed."
      After another glass of wine they each bowed to
 the other and the king withdrew.

   Thus far the main entry, a very typical one for that period, in
which King Sonjo never stopped lobbying high-ranking Chinese
military officers; hundreds of such entries and conversations are
recorded--see my "Confucianism and War" in <Journal of Korean
Studies> (U. of Washington/USC), vol. 6 (1988-89). In this one, the
sillok editor also inserted a note describing the people of P'arang.
In the usual format such notes are printed in small and quite
compressed characters, and in this case some of them are smudged or
otherwise illegible. Even the legible parts are oddly worded. The
clear parts indicate that these people, also called Haegwi (Ch.
Haigui, sea devils), had curly black hair "like that of black
sheep," all over their bodies, except on top of their heads, which
were completely bald. Their headwear was of coiled yellow cloth,
worn in a manner that seems to suggest a turban.
"They are able to submerge themselves under water and poke holes in
enemy ships. They can also stay at the bottom of the sea for
several days," eating sea creatures (one odd phrasing here that I
suspect is a misprint). "Even in China these people are only rarely
seen."
      That is the text of the entry as nearly as I can determine. In
emphasizing unimaginable distances and the most exotic and fabulous
traits, the piece is a classic example of the Chinese barbarian
discourse. But one can see how some might see the
text as describing Portuguese--the curly body hair, the musket
expertise, the three seas, the incredible distance from Korea. Thus
did a Portuguese, Pedro Moura, interpret things in his
<Portuguese-Korean Historical Studies>, published jointly by the
Instituto Camoens and the Royal Asiatic Society in 2002. I saw this
book briefly and took a note from it, but had completely forgotten
about it until it fell out of my sillok when I started checking out
Ernie's posting. Perhaps others can find it and see what his
arguments are. But I myself do not believe that the P'arang were
Portuguese. I admit that the "three seas gives me pause. But for
people living on or close to the Indian Ocean, as would seem to be
the case here, that might still apply to a trip through the
tropics, the Mallacca straits and up the esstern coast of Asia to
Macao or Canton. It is not unreasonable to think that, while these
people probably aren't Portuguese, they could have been from from
one of their colonies in Africa, India, or southeastern Asia.
   If Chinese had wanted to refer to Portugal, their ordinary term
of the day was "Folangji" (K. pron. Pullanggi), which had been
derived from the Arab name Ferenghi, which itself went back to the
crusades as a rendering of "Frank" and referred to Christian
Europeans in general. In East Asia it can also be found in texts as
a word for their premier sixteenth century weapon, the musket.
Though the term thus applied to almost all Western Europeans, for 
the Chinese in the 1590s, it was overwhelmingly the Portuguese--
then already established in Macao for decades--who fit that
description. Had it been necessary to specify the Portuguese in
particular, there are Chinese transcriptions of "Portugal" attested
in Ming histories and documents that could have been used. One was
Pulidujia (K. P'oryodoga, where the -li- and the Korean -ryo- are
inserted only to reflect the -r-, and the -d- clearly stands for a
-t-; further, in Ming times the syllable /kia/ had still not
palatalized into the modern /jia/. Given those facts, one could
reasonably read the transcription as "Purtuga"). Another
transcription, only a little bit better, was Porduwar (Korean 
P'aidowai-- where the Korean i's utterly fail to catch the -r- and
the -l). However short these transcriptions may fall, it is clear
that Ming Chinese had ways of saying "Portugal" if they needed to,
and equally clear that P'arang is too far off.
      In conclusion, Ernie's date of "May 26, 1597" needs some
comment. First of all, 1597 is an error; the notice in question
(found in <Sonjo sillok>, kwon 100, p. 25a) falls in the 31st year
of King Sonjo, which was 1598, when the war in Korea still had a
few more months to run. And it is a good idea, when citing
traditional East Asian dates, to avoid translating "first month...
twelfth month," etc. as "January... December," etc. No East Asian
nation used the Western calandar in the 1590s, nor did they for
several centuries afterward. Thus Ernie's date should rather be
>Fifthmoon 26<, which in >1598< corresponded to June 29.

Gari Ledyard

Quoting "Ernie ." <recanto at hotmail.com>:

> Hello all. Dear colleagues, I wonder if any of you could confirm
> me the
> supposed participation of Portuguese mercenaries or soldiers
> fighting the
> Japanese at the end of Hideyoshi invasion along with Chinese and
> Korean
> troops. Apparently, the Annals of the Choson Kingdom include an
> entry about
> King Sonjo’s visit to a Chinese barrack on May 26, 1597, where he
> was
> informed of marine operations by warriors from the remote country
> called
> Parang (¿Portugal?). It looks like two days later, the Chinese
> general paid
> a return visit to the king with the “demon soldiers” (the
> Portuguese), who
> showed off their swordmanship during the royal audience.
>
> At least to me, that possibility doesn’t look very convincible
> for two
> reasons: Firstly, because of the strong economic and religious
> interests
> Portuguese had those days in Japan, which for sure would have
> been damaged
> as soon as Hideyoshi would have heard on the Portuguese fighters.
> And
> secondly, because as far as I know there is no record at all on
> that history
> in Portuguese or Spanish sources, nor in any of the detailed
> letters Jesuits
> used to send to their bosses in Rome from Macao or Japan.
>
> Thanks!
>
> E. de Laurentis
>
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