Organizer and Chair: James Bryant Lewis,
University of Oxford
Discussant: Kyung Moon Hwang, University of Southern California
Since R. Bin Wong (1997) and Kenneth Pomeranz (2000)
relativised Qing China’s
economy and hypothesized that England and the Yangtze River Valley had a similar
standard of living up to about 1800, the attention of economic historians has
turned to examining the economic histories of non-European areas in an attempt
to obtain a general, global view of the pre-modern world economy. U.S. National
Science Foundation support is underwriting an international project to construct
a global database of economic indicators that will provide a basis for the analysis
of world economic history from 1300 to 1900. Choson Korea is one case where
recent compilations of statistical and institutional data are offering up new
models of the pre-modern economy. Korea’s small size and ecological niche,
in combination with an efficient central government, provide a good case study
to consider the question of Eurasian “divergence” and also diversity
within East Asia. Recent quantitative breakthroughs help explain Korea and permit
comparisons with other countries for prices, labour costs, commerce, guild-government
relations, welfare schemes, and climatic shock. The presentations in this panel
sample some of the “new history”. Karlsson discusses the economy
of famine relief and pinpoints the geographical distortions of aid. Kang
examines water control within Choson kingship by discussing rainfall monitoring
and riparian works. Miller looks at late Choson commerce and commercial-government
relations through the silk guild. Lewis and Jun provide serial data for several
sectors (commodity prices, labor, environment, etc.) and present a general model
of the late Choson macro agricultural economy.
Anders Karlsson, University of London
Late Chosôn agriculture was characterized by increased productivity partly
due to the more wide-spread use of wet-field agriculture. While this form of
agriculture increased productivity, it also made agriculture more vulnerable
to weather conditions, resulting in a higher frequency of crop failure and concomitant
famines. This paper is a study of land tax exemptions in late eighteenth-century
Korea given to areas that had been afflicted by such crop failure. It looks
at the situation between 1776 and 1796 and compares how the crop situation was
estimated through the pundung system and how much tax exemptions were given
to each province. It finds that the two central provinces of Kyonggi and Ch’ungch’ong
were favorably treated by the Ministry of Taxation and argues that this unbalanced
pattern was due to socio-economic and political power influencing the allocation
of these exemptions as the central government was keen on maintaining social
order in the Kyonggi province that surrounded the capital and as many influential
families in the capital owned land in the Ch’ungch’ong province.
This situation exacerbated the famine problem in those provinces that were disadvantaged
by the system, especially the two southern provinces of Cholla and Kyongsang,
an area that traditionally was the “rice basket” of Korea and the
main source of tax revenues. Sources used are mainly government chronicles
such as Pibyonsa tungnok, Choson wangjo sillok, and Ilsongnok, and records of
tax collection and relief aid such as T'akchi chonbugo and Hyejong yoram.
Han-Rog Kang, University of Oxford
Climatic misery was commonly seen in pre-modern societies as a sign of punishment
from heaven. Koreans generally believed that a sage king meant being a master
of water management and that Heaven would recognize sagehood with appropriate
rainfall—a barometer to evaluate good and bad kings. Beliefs were related
to the economics of an agricultural society that was vulnerable to climatic
instability marked by too little or too much rainfall. An important state concern
was the monitoring of weather conditions. Choson Koreans have left us some of
the world’s most extensive records on disease, natural disasters, and
rainfall. The ch’ugu-gi rain gauge was invented in 1442, used until 1907,
and we have continuous rainfall data for the capital from 1626 to 1907. Riparian
management was also a serious political issue, because it related directly
to the control of water once it had reached the ground. For example, in 1760,
the king directed a large-scale project to dredge and manage a streambed that
flowed within the capital walls and drained to the Han River, the main river
of the capital. Recently, this streambed has been reconstituted for urban redevelopment
in mid-town Seoul. The paper will review the many historical records on rain
and water control in late pre-modern Korea and outline Neo-Confucian concepts
related to rainfall and water control.
Owen Miller, University of London
In spite of the challenges they had faced since the late eighteenth century,
licensed guilds (sijon) were still at the centre of commerce in the Choson capital
in the late nineteenth century. This was largely due to their close relationship
with the state, at the center of which was the official trade, called chinbae.
Drawing on a quantitative analysis of accounting documents left by the silk
merchants of the Myonjuon guild, this paper will investigate the nature and
scale of this trade during the last quarter of the nineteenth century. In particular,
it will examine the mechanisms through which the economic logics of the market
and state were integrated in order to ensure the stable reproduction of the
guild organization, its merchant members, and the procurement system of the
Choson government, which was closely related to the East Asian tribute trade
system. By the 1880s, a multifaceted crisis in the political economy of Choson
made it increasingly difficult to maintain the stable reproduction of the traditional
commercial system of the capital. This paper will consider the various dimensions
of this crisis, including rampant inflation, the collapse of state finances,
official corruption, and the demise of the traditional East Asian tributary
system. This will show how, within the guild-based commercial system, the economic
logics of market and state were being decisively pulled apart during the last
two decades of the nineteenth century.
James Bryant Lewis, University of Oxford
The debate over Korea's failure to modernize in the nineteenth century has
raged for over a century. Early explanations from Japanese scholars ranged
from outright racism to subtle socio-economic arguments based on Marxist
theory to argue for “stagnation”. Post-war Korean historians have worked
hard to disprove the stagnation thesis with a "sprouts of capitalism" thesis
and have argued that indigenous trajectories of capitalist development were
stymied by Japanese imperialism. Data for the "sprouts" thesis has
often been micro-economic and focused on individual industries or on the
scale and scope of commercialism with a view to examining the development of
so-called capitalist relations that involved investors and wage labor. Only
recently have commodity price data become available that enable the development
of macro-economic models. More refined analysis of rainfall has also allowed
us to develop regional environmental models. These models now allow data-driven
comparisons with Japan, China, and even England. The paper uses commodity price
data, labor cost data, and a consideration of the impact of late nineteenth-century
ENSO events to construct a simple agricultural economic model for Choson Korea.
We argue that Korea achieved an expansive, stable, and balanced economy by the
late eighteenth century, but this economy entered a macro-economic unstable
phase from the mid nineteenth century. Instability was accompanied by significant
declines in government investment in infrastructure (irrigation and storage),
a shift away from a dry—paddy
balance in land use and towards speculation in rice, and these trends were
exacerbated by severe regional environmental shocks.
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