Table of Contents

Introduction: A Monumental Story 1: The Universalizing Winds of Civilization 2: Decentering the Middle Kingdom and Realigning the East 3: Engaging a Civilizing Japan 4: Spirit, History, and Legitimacy 5: Narrating the Ethnic Nation 6: Peninsular Boundaries 7: Beyond the Peninsula Epilogue

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Turning from more traditional modes of historical inquiry, Korea Between Empires explores the formative influence of language and social discourse on conceptions of nationalism, national identity, and the nation-state.

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A groundbreaking and border-crossing work in modern Korean intellectual history. A dazzling combination of rich textual analysis, sustained argument engaging the latest historiography and theoretical literature, and limpid, elegant prose, it lays bare the genealogy of twentieth-century Korean nationalist identity and consciousness and challenges the embedded colonizer/colonized binary of much previous scholarship by situating that genealogy in a universalizing discourse which simultaneously embraced both Korea and Japan. -- Cater Eckert, Harvard University A fascinating account, in sparkling prose, of the way Korean intellectuals thought forth a nation in the years between the end of Chinese imperial relations in 1895 and the beginning of Japanese colonial rule in 1910. Of interest -- and relevance -- to 'pre-post-colonial' forms of knowledge in many parts of the early twentieth-century world. -- Carol Gluck, Columbia University

About the Author

Andre Schmid is associate professor of East Asian Studies at the University of Toronto.

Reviews

Schmid provides a stimulating tour of current theorizing about the nation and nationalism... profoundly stimulating and highly recommended. Choice A breathtaking historiography, magisterial in sweep, elegant in structure, lucid in idiom, and insightful and illuminating in interpretation... The book's strengths are likely to make it an unrivaled work of scholarship on modern Korea for a long time to come. American Historical Review Schmid's new book is a significant contribution to the English-language study of Korean nationalism at the turn of the twentieth century... a rich and rewarding study. -- Christine J. Kim Pacific Affairs In this provocative new study Andre Schmid examines how intellectuals of the Korean 'patriotic enlightenment movement' began to re-imagine their own society as a national community... [A] persuasively argued and felicitously written book. -- Peter Duus Korean Studies Schmid's book is a welcom and important contribution...deft and elegant prose -- Sheila Miyoshi jager Journal of Asian History enriches our understanding of Korean nationalism...This book is a joy to read -- Kenneth Wells Asian Studies Review I highly recommend Schmid's book as an earnest narrative that illumines the cultural and intellectual setting and dialogues. -- Jacqueline Pak Journal of Asian Studies A fascinating study in the recent intellectual history of Korea... highly recommended. -- Michael Finch Acta Koreana