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Europeans and Americans in Korea, 1882–1910: A Bourgeois and Translocal Community

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  29 March 2016

Klaus Dittrich
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Abstract

This article deals with the European and American community in Korea between the conclusion of Korea’s first international treaties in the early 1880s and the country’s annexation by the Japanese Empire in 1910. It begins by presenting an overview of the community. Concentrated in Seoul and Chemulp’o, the Anglo-Saxon element dominated a community made up of diplomats, foreign experts in the service of the Korean government, merchants and missionaries. Next, the article describes two key characteristics of the European and American residents in Korea. First, they were individuals who defined themselves as bourgeois, or middle-class; second, the term “translocality” serves to bring together the multiple layers of border-crossing these individuals were involved in—as long-distance migrants between Europe or North America and East Asia, as migrants within East Asia, and as representatives of different European and American nationalities living together in Korea.

Keywords

Koreatreaty powersextraterritorialitybourgeoisietranslocality
Type
Articles
Information
Itinerario , Volume 40 , Issue 1 , April 2016 , pp. 3 - 28
Copyright
© 2016 Research Institute for History, Leiden University 

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Footnotes

*

Klaus Dittrich is assistant professor at the Hong Kong Institute of Education. He held positions at Hanyang University and Korea University in Seoul, South Korea. He started research for this paper in the spring of 2011 with support from a fellowship from the Northeast Asian History Foundation in Seoul. Evolving versions of this research have been presented at the Northeast Asian History Foundation, the Research Institute of Comparative History and Culture at Hanyang University, the Modern History Research Seminar at the University of St Andrews, and the Tübingen Korean Studies Lectures. The author is thankful for all the comments he received on these occasions.

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