Adam Bohnet | Evaluating Fragments: Reconstructing the Lives of Ming Migrants

Korea Colloquium

Adam Bohnet
Associate Professor, Department of History, King’s University College at University of Western Ontario

Adam Bohnet received his MA at Kangwon National University and his PhD at the University of Toronto. After serving in positions at St. Mary’s University in Halifax, the University of British Columbia in Vancouver and the Research Institute of Korean Studies of Korea University in Seoul, South Korea, he joined the Department of History at King’s University College at Western in London, Ontario, in 2012. His monograph, Turning toward Edification: Foreigners in Chosŏn Korea, was published with the University of Hawaii Press in 2020. A second book, a translation with commentary of Ihyang kyŏnmun nok by Yu Chaegŏn, is in press.

Chaired by Sun Joo Kim, Harvard-Yenching Professor of Korean History, Harvard University

Abstract:
The eighteenth-century Choson court, as it sought to establish the presence of Ming Loyalist migrants in its territory, faced a problem of a lack of sources. Unwilling to simply invent Ming migrant descendants, it sought to discover what it believed to be genuine Ming Loyalist migrants, from often highly limited sources or sources that hinted at a very different reality from that which the court wanted. Short references in private histories, or in poems, could often be enough to launch a search for the descendants of Ming migrants, while the supposed descendants of Ming migrants would themselves seek to connect themselves to such sources. Conversely, other fragments needed to be suppressed. The biographical narratives formed through this process often appear to be complete but are, in fact, the result of numerous actors involved in a contentious process of arranging fragmentary texts into a narrative that made sense to them.  

In this paper, I will focus on the record of two Ming migrants who gained a reputation for geomantic skill and settled in regions near Taegu – Du Shizhong and Shi Wenyong. I will explore how the fragmentary and often controversial material concerning them was assembled during the late Chosŏn to transform them into appropriate subjects for commemoration.

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Generously supported by the Young-Chul Min Memorial Fund at the Korea Institute, Harvard University