making border s in modern eastasia · 2018. 4. 24. · dynastic frontier geog raphy:yi chung- ha...

Cambridge University Press978-1-107-17395-8 — Making Borders in Modern East AsiaNianshen Song FrontmatterMore Information

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Making Borders in Modern East Asia

Until the late nineteenth century the Chinese– Korean Tumen River

border was one of the oldest, and perhaps most stable, state boundaries

in the world. Spurred by severe food scarcity following a succession of

natural disasters, from the 1860s countless Korean refugees crossed

the Tumen River border into Qing China’s Manchuria, triggering a

de cades- long territorial dispute between China, Korea, and Japan. This

major new study of a multilateral and multiethnic frontier highlights the

competing state- and nation- building projects in the fraught period that

witnessed the First Sino- Japanese War, the Russo- Japanese War, and

the First World War. The power plays over land and people simultane-

ously promoted China’s frontier- building endeavors, motivated Korea’s

nationalist imagination, and stimulated Japan’s colonialist enterprise,

setting East Asia on an intricate trajectory from the late imperial to a

situation that, Song argues, we call “modern.”

Nianshen Song is Assistant Professor of History at the University of

Maryland, Baltimore County.

www.cambridge.org/9781107173958

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Making Borders in Modern

East Asia

The Tumen River Demarcation, 1881– 1919

Nianshen Song

University of Maryland, Baltimore County


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University Printing House, Cambridge CB2 8BS, United Kingdom

One Liberty Plaza, 20th Floor, New York, NY 10006, USA

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Cambridge University Press is part of the University of Cambridge.

It furthers the University’s mission by disseminating knowledge in the pursuit of

education, learning and research at the highest international levels of excellence.

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Information on this title: www.cambridge.org/ 9781107173958

DOI: 10.1017/ 9781316795491

© Nianshen Song 2018

This publication is in copyright. Subject to statutory exception

and to the provisions of relevant collective licensing agreements,

no reproduction of any part may take place without the written

permission of Cambridge University Press.

First published 2018

Printed in the United Kingdom by Clays, St Ives plc

A catalogue record for this publication is available from the British Library.

ISBN 978- 1- 107- 17395- 8 Hardback

Cambridge University Press has no responsibility for the persistence or accuracy

of URLs for external or third- party internet websites referred to in this publication

and does not guarantee that any content on such websites is, or will remain,

accurate or appropriate.


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Contents

List of Figures page vii

List of Maps viii

List of Tables ix

Acknowledgments xi

A Note on Romanization xv

Measures xvii

Abbreviations of Some Sources xix

Introduction: A Lost Stele and a Multivocal River 1 Historical Spaces in East Asia 6 Multilateral Local 10 Regional Local 11 Global Local 13

1 Crossing the Boundary: The Socioecology of the Tumen

River Region 16 The Tumen River Region: Northeast Qing versus Northeast Korea 17 Early Negotiations between Qing and Choso ̆ n 32 East Asia in Crisis, Tumen in a Nexus 39

2 Dynastic Geography: Demarcation as Rhetoric 54 Geographic Knowledge before the Demarcations 55 The Demarcations: Ritual Competition 71 The Nexus of Qing’s Border Makings 79 Cartography in the Borderland 84 Dynastic Frontier Geography: Yi Chung- ha and Wu Dacheng 92

3 Making “Kando”: The Mobility of a Cross- Border Society 102 The Formation of “Kando” 104 Landownership, Production, Ethnic Relations, and Trade 113 “Bandits”: Between Society and State 120

4 Taming the Frontier: Statecraft and International Law 127 Qing: Interiorization and Naturalization 129 Russia: Railway Colonialism and Coadministrative Prefecture 137 Korea: Militarization and Territorialization 139


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Contentsvi

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Japan: Leading Asia, Conquering Manchuria, and “Protecting” the Koreans 143 The Coming of International Law: A New Discourse 152

5 Boundary Redei ned: A Multilayered Competition 171 State and Nonstate Actors in the Contest 173 Towards the Jiandao Convention: Three Layers of Confrontation 190 Spatial Imaginations: Naito ̄ Konan, Song Jiaoren, and Sin Ch’ae- ho 201

6 People Redei ned: Identity Politics in Yanbian 219 Yanbian Society: New Developments 221 Being Japanese: Colonial Economy and Politics 226 Being Chinese: The Inclusion and Exclusion of Koreans 232 Being Korean: Minjok Politics beyond Korea 241

Conclusion: Our Land, Our People 256 The Loss of the Mukedeng Stele and the Transformation of Manchuria 258 The Identity of the Korean Chinese 260 Boundary Redrawn 265 Boundary and History 267

Epilogue: Tumen River , the Film 270

Selected Bibliography 273

Index 293


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Figures

1 The Mukedeng stele page 2

2 Population increase in Yanbian (1907– 1921) 223

3 Public and private schools in Kanto ̄ (1918) 249

4 Religion- afi liated schools in Kanto ̄ (1918) 249


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Maps

1 Topographical map of Hamgyo ̆ ng province (Yo ̆ jido/

Hamgyo ̆ ng- do); detail page 67

2 The Changp’a area of northern Hamgyo ̆ ng province

(Pukkwan Changp’a chido Hamgyo ̆ ng- do); detail 68

3 General map of the land east to the sea, Hamgyo ̆ ng

province (Haedong ch’ongdo/ Hamgyo ̆ ng- do); detail 69

4 The upper Tumen River system 78

5 The Sino- Korean Demarcation Map (1887); detail 85

6 Kim Cho ̆ ng- ho’s Atlas of the Great East ( Taedong yo ̆ jido ); the

section showing Mt. Paektu 89

7 Taipinggou village 110

8 The Kingdom of Korea 163


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Tables

1 Korean population in “Kando” (1901) page 108

2 Household and population in “Kanto ̄ ” (1907) 109

3 Numbers of adherents of religious groups in “Kanto ̄ ”(1917) 247


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Acknowledgments

This book would not have become what it is had I not received immeas-

urable help and encouragement from the University of Chicago, where

I learned how to become a historian. The intellectual and spiritual debt

I owe to my mentors – Bruce Cumings, Prasenjit Duara, James Hevia,

and James Ketelaar – is simply beyond words. Kenneth Pomeranz kindly

read the early version of the manuscript and made invaluable comments.

Choi Kyeong- Hee took great care of the project and put me in contact

with other scholars. Jacob Eyferth generously contributed his knowledge

whenever I call on him. The History Department, the Division of the

Social Sciences, and the Center for East Asian Studies funded several of

my i eld trips. Curators at the East Asian Library, especially Zhou Yuan,

always responded enthusiastically to my requests. It is truly a privilege to

have this kind of support at the beginning of a career.

The book was largely revised at Vassar College, where I was a Mellon

Postdoctoral Fellow for three years. Friends and colleagues there taught

me how to be a good teacher as well as an efi cient writer and researcher.

I thank, among others, Nancy Bisaha, Robert Brigham, Maria Höhn,

Julie Hughes, James Merrell, Quincy Mills, Qiu Peipei, Su Fubing, and

Zhou Yu. At the University of Maryland, Baltimore County, where I now

serve on the faculty in History and Asian Studies, I received immense

encouragement and support from my colleagues and students. With their

backing, the completion of this book went surprisingly smoothly. For

this, I thank Christy Chapin, Amy Froide, Meredith Oyen, Yang Fan,

Constantine Vaporis, and many, many others.

My research was made possible with i nancial assistance from various

institutions: the Social Science Research Council, the Academy of Korean

Studies, the Harvard- Yenching Library, the American Geographical

Society Library, the Korea Foundation, and the Northeast Asia Council

of the Association for Asian Studies. Numerous individuals helped me

during my research trips in China, Korea, Japan, and the United States.

For my China travels, my gratitude goes to Cui Shunji, Diao Shuren,

Jiang Longfan, Jin Chenggao, Jin Chunshan, Li Hongxi, Liu Debin, Sun


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Acknowledgmentsxii

xii

Chunri, Wang Qiubin, Yang Zhaoquan, Yi Baozhong, and many more.

Doing archival research and interviews on ethnic and border issues

in Yanbian (and China in general) can be very tricky. I thank Huang

Guangchun, Jin Xianghu, Li Fanjun, Qu Jianjun, and Wei Xiaoli for

making the process less so. I would like to express my deepest gratitude

to the late Professor Quan Hexiu, whom I could always rely on whenever

there was difi culty, and Professor Li Huazi, who took me on the most

exciting research trip into the deep forest of Mount Changbai/ Paektu. In

Korea, staff of the Kyujanggak Library at Seoul National University and

the Jangseogak Library at the Academy of Korean Studies (AKS) offered

amicable assistance. Li Chengzhu at the AKS shared his abundant know-

ledge on the history of Korea and the Korean- Chinese. I wish to acknow-

ledge the hospitality and help given by Liu Di and Zhao Hongwei in

Japan. My research there also benei ted from long conversations, in some

noisy restaurants in Ueno, Tokyo, with Professors Jin Guanglin and Bai

Rongxun, two outstanding Korean- Chinese historians. I am also grateful

to Tobi Mayer- Fong, who kindly invited me to become a visiting scholar

at Johns Hopkins University, and to Kang Mikyung at the Harvard-

Yenching Library, Zhang Nongji at the Harvard Law School Library,

and Jovanka Ristic at the American Geographical Society Library, who

guided me to many treasures in their massive collections.

Over the years I have presented different parts of the manuscript at

various workshops and conferences. It is impossible to name all those who

offered valuable comments, criticism, and suggestions, but I must thank

those who helped to create these important intellectual platforms: Eric

Vanden Bussche, Nicole Constable, Hang Xing, Nicholas Harkness,

Hasegawa Masato, Douglas Howland, Kim Nan, Kim Seon- min, Ronald

Knapp, Kwon June Hee, Kirk Larsen, Nicole Levit, Joshua Van Lieu, Ma

Jian, James Millward, Scott Relyea, Victor Seow, Shao Dan, Su Xiaobo,

David Szanton, Wang Sixiang, Wang Yuanfei, Xie Qiong, Yang Myungji,

and Theodore Jun Yoo. Through our discussions at different phases of my

research and writing, I learned a lot from Gao Shihua, Ken Kawashima,

Lam Tong, Andre Schmid, Sun Ge, Tang Xiaofeng, and Wang Hui.

Academic research, for the most part, is lonely work. But I am lucky

to belong to a community of scholars who enthusiastically shared their

cross- disciplinary i ndings and trans- regional concerns on East Asian

studies. They kept urging me to think and rethink themes of border and

people, nation and society, and time and space: Chae Jun Hyun, Han

Ling, Hirata Koji, Hui Kwok- wai, Eleanor Hyun, Ishikawa Tadashi,

Stacie Kent, Kim Seong Un, Kim Taeju, Lee Cheng- Pang, Li Yuhang,

Lin Le, Liu Xueting, Covell Meyskens, Cameron Panwell, Seng Guo

Quan, Seto Tomoko, Teh Limin, Saul Thomas, Tian Geng, Wang Fei


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Acknowledgments xiii

xiii

Hsien, Wang Liping, Jake Werner, Xiao Tie, Xu Jin, Xu Peng, Yamaguchi

Noriko, Ryan Yokota, Elaine Yuan, Zhang Ling, Zhang Yang, Zhao Hai,

and Zhong Yijiang. I want to thank Hsia Kechin for translating some

legal texts from the original German and Kim Ji Young for sharing her

study on Ch’oe Nam- so ̆ n. I am grateful to Wang Yuanchong, who not

only reviewed the whole manuscript but also constantly offered his ideas

on the history and historiography of Sino- Korean- Japanese relations

over the past seven years.

My editor at Cambridge University Press, Lucy Rhymer, worked dili-

gently at every stage of the publication process. Two anonymous review-

ers provided insightful comments and criticism. I appreciate their time

and contribution to this book.

Lastly, support from my parents and family is so crucial to me that

I simply cannot deliver my gratitude in words. I dedicate this work to

them, especially my wife, Zhao Yanling. And I thank our children, Chuhe

and Charles, for bringing so much joy to us.


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A Note on Romanization

In general, this study takes a critical stand on various boundaries that

came along with the regime of modernity. It seems that nothing illus-

trates the awkwardness of this kind of modern demarcation more vividly

than the different romanizations of Chinese- Han characters in Chinese,

Korean, and Japanese (Hanzi, Hanja, and Kanji) texts. For example, one

of the key concepts of this study, 間島 , must be transliterated as Jiandao

(Pinyin system), Kando (McCune– Reischauer system), and Kanto ̄

(Hepburn system), respectively, for the Chinese, Korean, and Japanese

contexts. I can’t just choose one of them and use it consistently in my

narrative, simply because the signii ed is not exactly the same for each,

and the term had quite different political connotations in its respect-

ive contexts. The romanized forms, on the other hand, tear the natural

integrity of the term (written in the same Chinese characters in all three

languages) into fragments. As a remedy to the incorrigible, I have given

different romanized versions simultaneously whenever necessary. I am

sincerely sorry for the possible confusion caused by this strategy. Perhaps

it shows the unfortunate fact that, in the end, nobody is able to com-

pletely escape the prison made by reconstructing everything in terms of

nation states: land, people, language, culture, and history.


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Measures

1 chi (China) ≈ 0.32 m

1 cho ̄ (Japan) ≈ 9917 m 2

1 jin (China) ≈ 0.59 kg

1 kung (Korea) ≈ 2.5 m

1 li (China) ≈ 576 m

1 mu (China) ≈ 667 m 2

1 ri (Korea) ≈ 420 m

1 shang (China) = 15 mu ≈ 1 hectare


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Abbreviations of Some Sources

GXCZPZZ Guangxu chao zhupi zouzhe

HCFDTYMD Hunchun fudutong yamen dang

JACAR Japan Center for Asian Historical Records

QJZRHGXSL Qingji zhongrihan guanxi shiliao


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making border s in modern eastasia · 2018. 4. 24. · dynastic frontier geog raphy:yi chung- ha...

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