A confucian state and its commerce: The commerce of early chosŏn revisited

Abstract

This research engages the criticism and concerns on the current structure of understandings prevalent in academic studies of the early Chosŏn commercial history conducted in Korea and overseas. In contrast to the prevailing viewpoint regarding the fifteenth and sixteenth century commerce in Chosŏn, it is yet to be thoroughly examined whether it was indeed a time of commercial stagnation, so much as that it had created a self-sufficient natural economy. Moreover, in the advance of ‘the age of commerce’ in a global perspective, what is also not yet determined is whether Chosŏn was undeniably alienated from or intentionally distanced itself from joining this global trend, and as an exemplary Confucian state, kept this pro-agricultural feature of denying the mere existence of commerce and suppressed any kind of development for as long as two centuries. Since the end of the Koryŏ Dynasty, commerce in Chosŏn, after having been restructured in accordance with the Confucian order at the beginning of the state, continued to adapt and develop internally while also expanding contact and trade with China and Japan. Chosŏn’s commercial development became more prominent in the sixteenth century. During this period, there had been commercial expansion and development in the capital, the emergence of non-licensed merchants and their pressuring of the original licensed market, or sijŏn, in the form of nanjŏn, the appearance of local markets and their country-wide dispersion, the circulation of a quasi-nominal crude cotton cloth currency, or ch’up’o, as a means of exchange leading to the development of a ‘ch’up’o economy’, and merchants actively engaging in foreign trade between China and Japan by intermediating Chinese luxury goods and Japanese silver. These points have gone unnoticed in the existing literature of historical studies in Korea and elsewhere. Undoubtedly, Chosŏn merchants vibrantly and purposefully engaged in commercial activities in the era of commerce that began to form from the sixteenth century at the level of global history including East Asia. Therefore, Chosŏn, as a Confucian state and an agricultural society, experienced a historical progression in commercial perceptions and policies which can be organized into three phases; from (I) the promoting of the root [agriculture] and the constraining of the branch [commerce] to (II) the adopting of commerce to supplement agriculture, and finally, to (III) the building of a nation state upon commerce and industry. The detailed aspects of Chosŏn commerce in the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries illustrated in this paper describe the typical features of phase (I), and the conditions in the transitional period from phase (I) to phase (II).