Accounts of Korea published in Europe in
the 18th and early 19th centuries
Early in the 18th century the Jesuits working in China produced rather fuller
accounts and better maps of Korea
A much fuller description of Korea was published in French by
Fr. Jean Baptiste du Halde on the basis of an account
composed by Fr.
Jean-Baptiste Regis, in
Volume 4 (from p.529) of his great Description
géographique, historique, chronologique, politique, et
physique de l'empire de la Chine et de la Tartarie chinoise,
enrichie des cartes générales et particulieres de ces pays,
de la carte générale et des cartes particulieres du Thibet,
& de la Corée; & ornée d'un grand nombre de figures
& de vignettes gravées en tailledouce (1736)
which is followed by an abbreviated
history of Korea (from page 538) translated from Chinese
sources. This was translated into English as: The
general history of China. Containing a geographical,
historical, chronological, political and physical
description of the empire of China, Chinese-Tartary, Corea,
and Thibet. Including an exact and particular account of
their customs, manners, ceremonies, religion, arts and
sciences .. Done from the French of P. Du Halde. Volume
4, second edition corrected. London: John Watts. 1739.
The
account of Korea is divided between a general
description and a brief history from Chinese sources. Click here for a page
devoted toFatherJean-Baptiste Régis which
includes a link to a PDF text
file of the account of Korea (based on his records)
found in du Halde's work.
Then the available information became encyclopedic
Next appeared in France : Histoire moderne des Chinois,
des Japonais, des Indiens, etc. Paris, 1754-1778, 30
vol. in-12, the 12 first volumes by Francois
Marie de Marsy the rest by Adrien
Richer. The early volumes were soon published in English : The
History of China, Upon the plan of Mr. Rollin's Antient
history translated from the French Printed for J. and
P. Knapton in Ludgate-Street. 1755. This volume contains
(beginning on page 349 as Chapter 3 of its Sixth Part) an
extensive account of Korea in which some initial pages
derive from Du Halde but most is taken from Hamel.
At about the same time, the French
dramatist Jean-François
de La Harpe composed a multi-volume encyclopedia Abrégé
de l'histoire générale des voyages which was
re-edited and in part re-written in the 19th century. In the
original 1780 edition, the account of Korea
begins on page 343. In
the 1820 edition, the account of Korea begins
on page 76. This work was made by condensing and combining a
variety of previously published accounts, unifying the
style. The account of
Korea (the same in both editions, in French)
includes a few details quoted from Regis but is essentially
a summary of Hamel's account.
The age of the great scientific
explorers that began late in the 18th century brought
new discoveries.
On May 22-23, 1787, the remarkable French
naval officer and explorer, Jean
François de Galaup, comte de Lapérouse (1741-1788),
sailed past Jeju Island without landing on it, the first
westerner to see it since the time of Hamel. This was during
his journey from Manila, via Taiwan and Japan, to eastern
Russia. From there he sailed to Australia and it was
after leaving there that his ships disappeared. The site of
the shipwreck etc has been identified as reefs off the island
of Vanikoro, which is part of the Santa Cruz group of islands.
He sent back to France reports, logs, records from
Petropavlovsk on the Russian Kamchatka peninsula and
from Australia, allowing an account of his journeys to be
published in France some 10 years later: Voyage de La
Pérouse autour du Monde. Rédigé par M. L. A.
Milet-Mureau, Général de Brigade dans le Corps du Génie,
Directeur des Fortifications, Ex -Constituant, Membre de
plusieurs Sociétés littéraires de Paris. Paris, Imprimerie de
la République. An 5 (1797). This was in four volumes plus an
atlas: Volume
1; Volume
2 which contains the account of their journey past
Quelpaert and Korea starting
on p384 of Volume 2 continued in the opening chapter of
Volume
3; (PDF file of an abbreviated French
text here)Volume
4; Atlas
with plates, charts etc. Translations were soon made into Dutch, German,
Italian and English. The first English edition was published
in 1798, a second (corrected?) edition in 1799: here the
account of Korea is found in Volume 2:A voyage round the world in the years 1785,
1786, 1787 and 1788, by J. F. G. de la Pérouse published
conformably to the Decree of the National Assembly on the 22d
April 1791, and edited by M. L. A. Milet-Mureau, Brigadier
General in the Corps of Engineers, Director of Fortifications,
Ex-Constitutent, and member of several literary societies at
Paris. In Three Volumes. Translated from the French.
London : Printed for J. Johnson, St. Paul's Church Yard. Volume
1 of 1st edition; Vol
2 of the Second Edition; Volume
3 of 1st edition; Volume
3 of 2nd edition. The English edition also included an
Atlas: Charts
And Plates To La Perouse's Voyage. His journey between Korea and Japan etc can be traced
in great detail on a map published in the atlas. The account by Lapérouse of
his journey past Korea from page 351 of Volume 2
is a delightful one. He was responsible for naming Ulleung-do
island 'Dagelet' after an astronomer on his ship who
first spotted it.
Quelpart was surveyed in greater detail in 1797by William
Robert Broughton (a
voyage published in 1804 asA
Voyage of Discovery to the North Pacific Ocean
London: T. Cadell and Ms. Daviss. 1804). HIs laconic account is
mainly a summary of the ship's log, with little vivid detail
about Korea. The account of the few days his ship spent in
Busan harbor in Chapter 7 leads him to conclude: "It will be
observed how little opportunity we had to make any remarks
upon the customs and manners of these people, from their
avoiding as much as possible any intercourse with us." What he
did not realize was that a report of his visit was sent to
Seoul, telling the other side of the story. Henny Savenije has
a page
summarizing Broughton's career and including links to the
original entry in the Joseon Annals as well as a
translation of the text, which echoes the frustration
felt by Broughton on not being able to communicate.
In February 1816, Lord
Amherst set off from London for China on an embassy. There
were 2 ships, H.M.S. Alceste commanded by Captain
Maxwell and H.M. Brig Lyra commanded by Captain Basil
Hall. Lord Amherst hoped to meet the Emperor of China to
complain about problems the East India Company was having in
Canton. Since he was determined not to perform any "Kowtow" he
never saw the Emperor and gave up the plan. Instead, from the
end of August 1816, Amherst traveled extensively throughout
China and did not depart until January of 1817. He dispatched
H.M.S. Alceste and H.M Brig Lyra on surveying
expeditions commanded by Captain Maxwell to Korea and Okinawa
(Loochoo) in late August of 1816. This done, they returned to
China and set off on the return journey to England early in
1817 but the Alceste struck a rock and sank near Java.
Nobody died in the wreck, and they all returned to England in
August 1817, after paying a visit to Napoleon on Saint Helena
on the way (they travelled by way of the Strait of Magellan).
This embassy produced no less than 4 books (click here for more details
and a list of the books).
The longest description of their exploration of the southern
islands of mainland Korea is that found in Chapter Two of a revised
edition of the book by Basil Hall (1788-1844), Voyage to
Loo-Choo, and other places in the eastern seas (1826).
It is very vivid and often highly entertaining. (Click here to read the account
as originally published in 1818.) The officers struggled
in vain to communicate with the local officials in the absence
of any interpreter, while the ordinary sailors and the
ordinary Koreans easily understood each other without having a
common language. The British had with them a Chinese man who
could speak his own dialect of Chinese but had not learned to
read or write the characters! The most important result of
this expedition was a corrected chart of the west coast of
Korea, and the discovery that maps based on that provided by
Father Régis were not at all accurate. They then sailed on to
Loo-Choo, the form by which the Ryukyu Islands were then known
in the West (Okinawa, the name of the largest island, now
being commonly but wrongly used for the whole chain). There
they received an extremely warm welcome which stood in stark
contrast to that found in Corea. They spent some 6 weeks
studying the islands, and one member of the expedition even
learned elements of the language (Published as an appendix to
Basil Hall's volume) while their survey of the Corean coastal
islands lasted only a week.
From 1823 until 1830, the remarkable German physician,
ethnologist and natural historian Philipp
Franz Balthasar von Siebold (1796 – 1866) lived in
Japan, in the Dutch enclave at Nagasaki. During this time he
was able to meet and interview shipwrecked Koreans and
developed an interest in their language and culture. After
returning to Germany in 1830, he began to publish his
observations as Nippon: Archiv zur Beschreibung von Japan
und dessen Neben- und Schutzländern Jezo mit den südlichenKurilen, Sachalin, Korea und den Liu-Kiu-Inseln.
This publication took many years, from 1832 until 1882, with a
new edition prepared by his sons appearing in 1897, and
although the observations about Korea are found in the final
part VII, it
seems that they date from much earlier. No online text
of the original editions seems to exist, but the 2-volume
edition prepared by his sons can be viewed online: Volume
One; Volume
Two. The texts about Korea begin on
page 305 of Volume Two. An English
translation and commentary of important parts of these
by Frits Vos and Boudewijn Walraven provides easy access to the texts and includes
many of the plates from the original edition with drawings of
Korean people, boats and objects. Moreover, Siebold (almost at
the same time as Julius
Heinrich Klaproth (1783–1835)) compiled one of the
earliest Korean
word lists, as well as a chart of the Hangul alphabet.
The Protestant missionary usually known as Charles
Gutzlaff was born in Pomerania (Germany) as Karl Friedrich August Gützlaff (1803 – 1851).
Arriving in Java in 1826, he learned Chinese then worked for a
time as a missionary in Siam before moving on to Macao and
Hong Kong, where he later (1840s) prepared a Chinese
translation of the Bible. His method of evangelization relied
much on the distribution of pamphlets and tracts written in
Chinese which had been prepared by another missionary to
China, Robert
Morrison. In 1831, during a slow journey from Siam to
China, he visited many ports, where he attracted visits by
many people by his medical skills, and to them he tried to
communicate also the Christian gospel. In 1832 he was invited
to be part of an expedition on the Lord Amherst, a
ship of the British East India Company, that was eager to find
a place ot establish a 'counter' where they could conduct
trading relations with Corea, Japan, the Loo-Choo Islands
(Okinawa). He was to serve as interpreter and surgeon. They
spent a few days among poverty-stricken islands off the Corean
coast, where he and his companions distributed tracts and
copies of Morrison's translation of the Bible, and planted
what might have been Korea's first potatoes. On his return to
China he wrote an account of these two journeys, which was
published in New York as Journal
of Two Voyages Along the Coast of China, In
1831 and 1832 : with Notices of Siam, Corea and the
Loo-Choo Islands. New York: John P. Haven. 1833. His
third voyage, during the fall of 1832 and spring of 1833, was
along the northern Chinese coast aboard the Sylph, an
opium smuggling ship. After this he published a revised
version of the book, including the material from this third
voyage: Journal
of Three Voyages Along the Coast of China, In 1831,
1832 and 1833 : with Notices of Siam, Corea and the
Loo-Choo Islands. London: Frederick Westley and A.
H. Davis, Stationers' Hall Court. 1834. A
second edition of the book appeared the same year (also
available in Google
Books). The description
of their visit to some islands on the Corean coast
forms Chapter 6 of the Second Voyage in all editions. They
were fortunate in having an interpreter, but it made no
difference to the Korean refusal to welcome them. Yet Gutzlaff
sensed that many of the people they met really wanted to
communicate with themand dared look forward to a day
when Korea would be evangelized.
Sir Edward Belcher explored Jeju Island and the seas around
the south of Korea in 1845 as part of a much larger
expedition and published the results in “Narrative
of the Voyage of H.M.S. Samarang” [links to volume 1; click
here for volume 2] London : Reeve, Benham, and
Reeve, 1848. Belcher relates
their visit to Quelpart at length in Vol. 1 pages
324 - 358, relating how they were invited to land and talk
with local magistrates during their stay, but could sense that
they were not in fact welcome. See also Arthur Adams (1820-1878)'s fine account of the natural history of
Quelpart in Vol 2 pages 444 – 466. Adams was a natural historian and artist with a
love of poetry, his account is marked by a warmth of feeling
as well as quotations from Spenser's Faerie Queene. He
also wrote A
manual of natural history, for the use of travellers.
Also serving on the Samarang as a midshipman was Frank
Marryat (1826 – 1855), son of Captain
Frederick Marryat, a naval officer and popular novelist.
Frank was something of an artist and in 1848 he published a
volume of drawings made during the journey: Borneo
and the Indian Archipelago, Drawings of Costume and
Scenery, London: Longman, Brown, Green, and
Longmans, Paternoster-Row. 1848.. . The publisher wanted an
accompanying narrative, so he used his own and other
shipmates' diaries for that. His account of the visit
to Jeju can be compared with that by Belcher.
From page 533 of Volume 2 of Belcher, there is a section
titled "A
Brief Vocabulary of Languages" authored mainly by Ernest
Adams. This is mainly a table of corresponding words in
English, Spanish, Malay and 6 Philippino languages, to which
have been added Chinese, Japanese and Korean.
On page 534, Belcher indicates that the Japanese and Korean
words are taken from "publications by Medhurst, 1830, and
Philo Sinensis, 1835, at Batavia." He could hardly have been
expected to know that "Philo Sinensis" was a nom-de-plume used
by the scholarly missionary Walter
Henry Medhurst
(1796 - 1857). The 2 books referred to are his An
English and Japanese, and Japanese and English vocabulary
(this links to the Internet Archive source, it is also available
from Play.Google) (Batavia, 1830) and the much rarer Translation
of a Comparative Vocabulary of the Chinese, Corean and
Japanese Languages: to which is Added the Thousand Character
Classic in Chinese and Corean, the whole accompanied by
copious indexes, of all the Chinese and English words
occurring in the work by Philo Sinensis (1835)
which is not available online. The list of Korean words begins
on page
540 of Belcher Vol. 2. It constitutes the first list of
Korean vocabulary published in England. (For other works by
Medhurst see the Internet
Archive index or the Play
Google list of works available.)
In 1851 the
China Repository Vol 20 no 7 July 1851 pp 500-6 relates in some detailthe
expedition from Shanghai to rescue French sailors stranded on
an island off Quelpart when their ship the Narwal was wrecked
there. The description show how much the previous explorers
would have benefitted by having someone capable of writing in
Chinese characters.