[KS] Publication announcement: The Routledge Handbook of Early Modern Korea

[Korean Studies]

Dear colleagues,

I am pleased to make a new book announcement:

      Park, Eugene Y., ed. The Routledge Handbook of Early Modern Korea<https://www.routledge.com/The-Routledge-Handbook-of-Early-Modern-Korea/Park/p/book/9781032200620>. Routledge, 2025. 384 pp. $52.19 eBook, $300.00 hardback. ISBN: 9781032200620

      [cid:a1781298-313a-4484-8aec-739f6c11ad85]
                         
According to the publisher, the initial hardback edition is aimed at the library market before a more affordable paperback edition follows about 18 months later.

The table of contents and the blurb are as follows:

     Introduction
      Eugene Y. Park

Part I: Chosŏn in Time and Space

Chapter 1 / Korea and Early Modernity
      Sixiang Wang
Chapter 2 / Foreign Relations
      Kirk W. Larsen
Chapter 3 / Korea as “Little China” (So Chungwa)
      Nataliya A. Chesnokova
Chapter 4 / Korea in Japan
      Rebekah Clements

Part II / The State, Power, and Resource

Chapter 5 / Politics
      Christopher Lovins
Chapter 6 / The Military
      Felix Siegmund
Chapter 7 / Discontent
      Andrew David Jackson
Chapter 8 / Economy
      Young-Jun Cho

Part III: Society and Identity

Chapter 9 / Status and Class
      Eugene Y. Park
Chapter 10 / Foreigners and the Descendants
      Adam Bohnet
Chapter 11 / Gender
      Marion Eggert

Part IV: Philosophy and Religion

Chapter 12 / Confucianism
      Isabelle Sancho
Chapter 13 / Buddhism
      Juhn Y. Ahn
Chapter 14 / Popular Religion
      Boudewijn Walraven
Chapter 15 / Catholicism
      Franklin D. Rausch

Part V: Language, Learning, and Knowledge

Chapter 16 / Language
      Ross King
Chapter 17 / Education
      Diana Yuksel
Chapter 18 / Science and Technology
      Don Baker

Part VI: Creative Genres

Chapter 19 / Literature
      Gregory N. Evon
Chapter 20 / Visual Arts
      Yoonjung Seo
Chapter 21 / Performing Arts
      CedarBough T. Saeji

Epilogue: Korea since 1873
      Mark E. Caprio

Index

Korea is a historical region of prominence in the global political economy. Still, a comprehensive overview of its early modern era has yet to receive a book-length treatment in English. Comprising topical chapters written by 22 experts from 11 countries, The Routledge Handbook of Early Modern Korea presents an interdisciplinary survey of Korea’s politics, society, economy, and culture from the founding of the Chosŏn state (1392–1897) to 1873 when its political leadership began preparing for treaty relations with Imperial Japan, the United States, and other Western nations. Chosŏn mirrors shared historical patterns among literate sedentary societies of early modern Afro-Eurasia. Various long-term developments that shaped early modern Korea include the completion of centralized bureaucratic governance as codified in the State Administrative Code (Kyŏngguk taejŏn); the appearance of regular rural marketplaces facilitating transactions in an increasingly liberalized economy; continuity of an aristocracy (yangban) from the medieval period (Koryŏ: 918–1392); a decreasing correspondence between ascriptive status and socioeconomic class; and the state and the elite’s growing interest in encyclopedic knowledge and its dissemination while their monopoly on knowledge production weakened. This handbook provides historical context for readers wishing to know more than just the “Korea” that evokes K-pop or North Korea’s nuclear weapons, while Hyundai, Samsung, and other South Korean brands have gained visibility in everyday life. Interested English-speaking scholars, educators, students, and the general public without access to the large body of Korean-language works on Chosŏn will find this book a valuable critical introduction to early modern Korea.

Yours,

Gene
---
Eugene Y. Park  朴英鎭
Professor of History
University of Nevada, Reno
https://www.unr.edu/history/faculty-staff/eugene-park
https://www.amazon.com/author/eugeneypark
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