[Lecture #1434] Online: Years of Living Dangerously: The Diary of 1636 and the Manchu Invasions of Korea
January 26, 2021 @ 7:30 pm - 9:00 pm KST
| FreeLecturer: George Kallander
Date: Tuesday, January 26, 2021. 7:30PM
We are inviting RAS members and friends to the RAS online lecture via Zoom.
Zoom Link:
https://us02web.zoom.us/j/
Meeting ID: 871 5963 4569
Passcode: 374423
Years of Living Dangerously: The Diary of 1636 and the Manchu Invasions of Korea
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 invasion 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 eventual surrender. Based on his new book The Diary of 1636: The Second Manchu Invasion of Korea (Columbia University Press, 2020), George Kallander will discuss the Korean response to the Manchu attacks and the relevance of the diary to readers in Chosŏn and contemporary times.
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 one of three co-editors of the Cambridge History of Korea project, the Chosŏn Dynasty volume, for which he is also contributing a chapter. Professor Kallander has received fellowships from the Institute for Advanced Study (Princeton), the Academy of Korean Studies, and Columbia University.
