In January 1882 in his brush-talk (筆談) with Li Hongzhang, Kim Yunsik (金允植) described the Ching authorities as of 上國 in his response to Li’s question about whether Chosŏn had already provided for measures to learn mining from the Japanese. He answered that the Japanese did not yet suggest it, and this lowly state (獘邦, referring to Chosŏn as an honorific for the Ching) would always look up to and depend on this higher-authority state (上國). This is why our students recently came here (天津) to learn various ventures including mining and why we have not allowed the Japanese in [日本人未嘗不自請而獘邦每事專仰上國擬從 近送人上國學徒采壙之法故 姑未許也].[1]
Kim’s mention of 上國, given his position as royally-appointed envoy to the Ching (領選使) and seven rounds of talks with Li, could be said of a representative view of political relations with the Ching among the ruling faction of the government (and a majority of (relatively) conservative scholar-elites) in Chosŏn at the time, who did not have “independence” leanings connected to Japanese influence (開化黨).
W. A. P. Martin’s translations of Western international law serve as a common thread running through both the ubiquitous references to “protection” found across the East and the West and Kim’s perception of the higher-authority polity regarding exercising external sovereignty. In Martin’s translation of Le droit international codifié, 《公法會通》, there are several pertinent entries in this regard.
For one, it says that there exists a range of gradations between the state of complete sovereignty and the dependent state whose diplomatic relations are authorized through the intermediary of its suzerain state. For example, the German states were, at the end of the Middle Ages, vassal states held in suzerainty to the emperor but since the Peace of Westphalia they could conduct diplomatic functions as with foreign states. Other examples include Islamic states of Tunisia and Egypt and Christian states of Serbia and Montenegro, all of which were vassal states of the Ottoman empire. There is a range of norms applicable to states dependent on other states (suzerains) in exercising certain rights “essential to the perfect external sovereignty”, which have been termed “semi-sovereign states”[2]:
國之全然自主與夫籍上國以理外交者其間等次不一 如昔日耳曼各邦俱係藩屬 悉歸上國約束 自威司發里和約之後方准與外邦自行通好 今土耳其之屛藩 有奉回敎者 如突尼･埃及等國是也 有奉基督敎者 如賽費･孟德內格等國是也 俱與上國相繫 其法不一其權差等[3]
“On peut se représenter cependant une foule de gradations entre l’état de liberté complète et l’état de dépendance, qui n’autorise les rapports diplomatiques d’unétat avec d’autres états que par l’intermédiaire de l’état suzerain.
Les états allemands étaient, à la fin du moyen âge, des états vassaux, car ils tenaient leurs droits régaliens de l’empereur et dépendaient de l’empire;
mais depuis la paix de Westphalie, on leur reconnaissait le droit de conclure des alliances avec les puissances étrangères.
Les états vassaux de la Turquie, les uns mahométans, comme Tunis, Tripoli et l’Egypte, d’autres chrétiens comme la Servie, les principautés danubiennes et le Monténégro, sont vis-à-vis de la Porte dans les positions les plus différentes.”[4]
Unlike Elements of International Law and its translation 《萬國公法》(1864) where the term 上國 was not used to match “suzerain state” but to refer to “federal government”[5] or “confederation”[6], here in Le droit international codifié and 《公法會通》(1880) the term does correspond to “l’état suzerain” [the suzerain state]. It is also used to refer to “l’empire” and “Porte” (the Ottoman Empire government). This may indicate that either the nature of the object to which 上國 refers had changed over the gap between the two publication dates of 1864 and 1880 (in translators’ perception of the then political landscape of East Asia) or the term came to be versatile in its meaning to refer to “suzerain state” or “empire”, as well as “federal government” or “confederation”.
The above-quoted passages offer several important historical observations: first, some states are completely sovereign but other states have limited sovereignties; second, states with qualified sovereignties perform their diplomatic functions through the states they depend on; third, such practices of limited sovereignties and accompanying limited capacities for foreign affairs were found among non-East Asian polities as well; fourth, the normative mutuality between the dependent and suzerain polities was not uniform and this led to gradations in rights ascribed to the dependent state. More or less similar to vassal polities in Europe as well as in the Middle East and North Africa, Chosŏn had been in mutually constructed relations with its suzerain, the Ching state, considering their political subjectivity and behaviors of foreign powers thereto. Then King Kojong may be said as having been a ruler of a vassal polity, with its rights limited by reciprocal obligations with a superior polity under which it was placed.
The second qualification by which to counter Denny’s claim that Chosŏn entered into treaty relations with Western states in exercising its right as an independent state is the vassal-status memorandum (屬邦照會文) sent to the signatory states in the king’s name. Notwithstanding the absence of recipients’ formal recognition, it was a notification of presence of bilateral normative status to be informed by the concerned parties, and no signatory state had ever refused to receive the memorandum since 1882. Austria-Hungary representative initially declined to do so, but seems to have received it before concluding a treaty in June 1892.[7] Li Hongzhang observed that the reason that the governments did not yet dare to deny the vassal status of Chosŏn was because of the King’s memorandum to that effect [今各國尙不敢强辯謂朝鮮非中國屬邦者賴有此國王照會耳].[8]
For another argument to deny Chosŏn’s vassal status and to assign the status of a sovereign state, Denny cites two sentences from Wheaton’s Elements of International Law, which says, “The sovereignty of a particular State is not impaired by its occasional obedience to the commands of other States, or even the habitual influence exercised by them over its councils. It is only when this obedience, or this influence, assumes the form of express compact, that the sovereignty of the State, inferior in power, is legally affected by its connection with the other.”[9] Such an express compact did exist between the Ching and Chosŏn. In 1637 when the first emperor of the Ching dynasty (太宗) sent an official letter prescribing rules and regulations as between Sovereign and Subject (君臣) [今盡釋前罪詳定規例以爲君臣世守之信義也][10], the message was accepted by King Injo (仁祖) as the latter agreed, performing kowtow, to the former’s terms.[11] According to Paul Georg von Möllendorff, “an extension of the vassalage treaty of 1637 became necessary” and the 1882 Ching-Chosŏn trade regulations (中(國)朝(鮮)商民水陸貿易章程) “was therefore concluded referring shortly in the preamble to the vassalage relations.”[12]
[1] 金允植, 《天津談草》 辛巳 十一月三十日 督署談草
[2] Wheaton, Henry, Elements of International Law, Eighth Edition, Boston: Little, Brown and Company, 1866, p. 53.
[3] 《公法會通》 建陽元年 (1896), 漢城 學部編輯局, 卷一論公法之源流及邦國之權位 第七十六章
[4] Bluntschli, Johann Caspar, Le droit international codifié, translated by Charles Lardy, 1874, pp. 91-92.
[5] Wheaton, Henry, Elements of International Law, Sixth Edition, Boston: Little, Brown and Company, 1855, p. 78; 《萬國公法》 同治三年 (1864) 歲在甲子孟冬月鐫, 京都崇實館存板, 第一卷釋公法之義明基本源 題其大旨 第二章論邦國自治自主之權 第二十四節美國係衆邦合一 各邦所無之權
[6] Wheaton, Henry, Elements of International Law, Sixth Edition, Boston: Little, Brown and Company, 1855, pp. 79-80; 《萬國公法》 同治三年 (1864) 歲在甲子孟冬月鐫, 京都崇實館存板, 第一卷釋公法之義明基本源 題其大旨 第二章論邦國自治自主之權 第二十四節美國係衆邦合一 各邦所無之權
[7] 林明德, 《袁世凱與朝鮮》, 臺北 中央硏究院近代史硏究所, 1984年 再版, p. 306.
[8] 《淸季中日韓關係史料》 中央硏究院近代史硏究所 朝鮮檔 01-25-029-02-017 朝鮮與奧國議約朝鮮國王 照會聲明爲中國屬邦一節爲奧所拒應飭韓堅持 光緖十八年四月十三日(1892-05-09)
[9] Wheaton, Henry, Elements of International Law, Eighth Edition, Boston: Little, Brown and Company, 1866, p. 52. Italic emphasis is O. N. Denny’s.
[10] 仁祖實錄 34卷, 仁祖15年1月 28日 (February 22, 1637)
[11] 仁祖實錄 34卷, 仁祖15年1月 30日 (February 24, 1637)
[12] P. G. von Möllendorff, Ein Lebensbild, Otto Harrassowitz (Leipzig, 1930), p. 128.