Human-Animal Relations and the Hunt in Korea and Northeast Asia - (Encounters in the Middle East and Asia) by George Kallander

About the Book

This book is a study of how human-animal relations became increasingly significant to politics, national security, and elite identities during the transitional period in late Koryŏ and early Chosŏn dynasty Korea from the 1270s until 1506.

Book Synopsis

This book focuses on the transitional period in late Koryŏ and early Chosŏn dynasty Korea from the 1270s until 1506, situating the Korean peninsula in relation to the neighbouring Mongol Empire and Ming Dynasty China. During this period, Korean statesmen expanded their influence over people and the environment. Human-animal relations became increasingly significant to politics, national security, and elite identities. Animals, both wild and domestic, were used in ritual sacrifices, submitted as tax tribute, exchanged in regional trade, and most significantly, hunted. Royal proponents of the hunt, as a facet of political and military legitimacy, were contested by a small but vocal group of officials. These vocal elites attempted to circumscribe royal authority by co-opting hunting through Confucian laws and rites, either by regulating the practice to a state ritual at best, or, at worst, considering it a barbaric exercise not befitting of the royal family. While kings defied the narrow Confucian views on governance that elevated book learning over martial skills, these tensions revealed how the meaning of political power and authority were shaped. Attention to animals and hunting depicts how a multiplicity of cultural references--Sinic, Korean, Northeast Asian, and steppeland--existed in tension with each other and served as a battleground for defining politics, society, and ritual. Kallander argues that rather than mere resources, animals were a site over which power struggles were waged.

Review Quotes

Kallander's most recent addition to the field of premodern Korean history is a valuable foray into the history of human-animal relations on the peninsula.--Aaron Molnar, Harvard University "International Journal of Asian Studies"

[A] formidable contribution to the young but growing fields of Korean animal studies and environmental history [...] Kallander's account offers compelling insights to many different kinds of readers, from those interested in Korea's environmental history and the fate of its [...] wild animals, to scholars interested in further evidence of Mongol legacies in premodern Korea or the politics and ideology of the Koryŏ- Chosŏn transition. Such a rich and thoroughly accessible volume shows the exciting possibilities that come from examining Korean history through a multispecies lens.--Joseph Seeley, University of Virginia "Journal of Korean Studies"

This innovative study of premodern Korea explores vital issues like the nature of rulership, foreign relations, and the state's efforts to extract human and animal resources throughout the realm. It is an inspired--and inspiring--illustration of how to integrate Korea into the broader span of eastern Eurasian history.--David Robinson, Colgate University

About the Author

George Kallander is Professor of History at Syracuse University, where he is also Director of the East Asia Program at the Moynihan Institute. He is author of 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). Kallander has received fellowships from the Institute for Advanced Study (Princeton), the Academy of Korean Studies, and Columbia University.