Establishing a Pluralist Society in Medieval Korea, 918-1170

History, Ideology, and Identity in the Koryŏ Dynasty
Erscheinungsjahr 2010
ISBN: 978-90-04-18325-4
Verlag: Brill

Buch, Englisch, Band 1, 484 Seiten, Format (B × H): 163 mm x 241 mm, Gewicht: 839 g

Reihe: Brill's Korean Studies Library

This book offers no less than a radically different view of the Koryo state. Until now scholarship failed to recognize the complicated historical descent, byzantine international relations and multiple incommensurable worldviews of the early Korean Koryo state (918-1170). Instead, it subjected these to reductionist categories favouring reified particulars over broader views. Asking how Koryo meaningfully dealt with its environment, Remco Breuker rejects the reduction of Koryo intellectual abundance to analytical categories, and emphasizes the functional importance of Koryo’s pluralism in allowing the notion that realities were scattered, inconsistent and plural.
Here is a convincing argument that Koryo’s pluralism decisively contributed to the formation of a region-transcending communal identity that enabled Koryo to engage in a civilizational competition with neighbouring Chinese and Manchurian states, while maintaining a dynamic but stable society domestically.

Autoren/Hrsg.

Breuker, Remco

Fachgebiete

• Geisteswissenschaften Geschichtswissenschaft Weltgeschichte & Geschichte einzelner Länder und Gebietsräume Geschichte einzelner Länder Asiatische Geschichte

Über Autor(innen)

Remco E. Breuker, Ph.D. (2006) in Korean History, Leiden University, works on medieval Korean and Northeast Asian history and historiography. He has published extensively on Koryo history including Forging the Truth: Creative Deception and National Identity in Medieval Korea (2009).