Internalizing the West: Western Learning, Practical Learning, and Nationalist Historiography in Korea, 1930s–1980s

Abstract

This article examines how historical narratives on Western Learning in the late Chosŏn period emerged and evolved under the influence of nationalist historiography in late twentieth-century Korea. Despite virtual unanimity among historians about the nationalist understanding of Western Learning as a trend paving the way for Koreas modernization, the role historians have attributed to it, especially in relation to the Practical Learning (sirhak 實學) school, known as the intellectual alternative to Neo-Confucianism, varied greatly. Especially important in shaping the narrative on Western Learning was the rise of ideological internalism in the 1960s, which prioritized internal dynamism over external stimuli as the main source of modernity in late Chosŏn Practical Learning. This dominant historiographical orientation of the period assigned historians of Western Learning the difficult task of relegating Western Learning, obviously an element external to Chosŏn society, to a secondary but still significant role in preparing for Koreas transition to modernity.