Human-Animal Relations and the Hunt in Korea and Northeast Asia

George Kallander

Published by Edinburgh University Press 2023

Human-Animal Relations and the Hunt in Korea and Northeast Asia

George Kallander

In the series Encounters in the Middle East and Asia

https://doi.org/10.1515/9781399512114

Overview
Contents

About this book

Studies the hunt, animals and how regional dynamics informed local cultural practices on the Korean peninsula

Elucidates the significance of the peninsula in regional and Eurasian history through detailing and navigating animals and the hunt, themes scholarship has overlooked.
Reframes the struggle between a kingship and a powerful bureaucracy competing for authority over an expanding state in the shifting geopolitics of Northeast Asia at the advent of the Little Ice Age.
Explores political and military contacts across Northeast Asia through Korean encounters with Yuan Mongols, Ming Chinese, Jurchen tribes, and Japanese on Tsushima and pirates along the coasts, all in the context of hunts, hunting grounds, and wild beasts.
Rereads the primary sources with an eye on animals and the hunt, including neglected sources such as a fifteenth-century manuscript on falcons and falconry.
Draws upon secondary sources across the fields of animal studies, zoology, geography, biology, and more, including forays into the larger topic of human-animal affairs and environmental history.
Studies the circulation of ideas and intellectual contacts across the region, such as the cultural flows of Buddhism, Neo-Confucianism, and folk and shaman beliefs related to animals and hunting.

This book focuses on the transitional period in late Koryŏ and early Chosŏn dynasty Korea from the 1270s until 1506, situating the Korean peninsula in relations to the neighbouring Mongol Empire and Ming Dynasty China. During this period, Korean statesmen expanded their influence over people and the environment. Human-animal relations became increasingly significant to politics, national security, and elite identities.

Animals, both wild and domestic, were used in ritual sacrifices, submitted as tax tribute, exchanged in regional trade, and most significantly, hunted. Royal proponents of the hunt, as a facet of political and military legitimacy, were contested by a small but vocal group of officials. These vocal elites attempted to circumscribe royal authority by co-opting hunting through Confucian laws and rites, either by regulating the practice to a state ritual at best, or, at worst, considering it a barbaric exercise not befitting of the royal family. While kings defied the narrow Confucian views on governance that elevated book learning over martial skills, these tensions revealed how the meaning of political power and authority were shaped. Attention to animals and hunting depicts how a multiplicity of cultural references—Sinic, Korean, Northeast Asian, and steppeland—existed in tension with each other and served as a battleground for defining politics, society, and ritual. Kallander argues that rather than mere resources, animals were a site over which power struggles were waged.

Topics

Frontmatter Publicly Available Download PDF	i
Contents Publicly Available Download PDF	v
List of Illustrations Publicly Available Download PDF	vi
Acknowledgements Publicly Available Download PDF	vii
List of Kings Publicly Available Download PDF	ix
Introduction: Why Animals and the Hunt? Requires Authentication Unlicensed Licensed Download PDF	1
1 Wild Beasts on a Premodern Peninsula Requires Authentication Unlicensed Licensed Download PDF	26
2 Koryŏ and the Empire of the Hunt Requires Authentication Unlicensed Licensed Download PDF	59
3 Growth, Transformation and Challenge in the Late Fourteenth and Early Fifteenth Centuries Requires Authentication Unlicensed Licensed Download PDF	88
4 Confucian Beasts: Human–Animal Relations in Early Chosŏn Requires Authentication Unlicensed Licensed Download PDF	110
5 Stalking the Forests: The Military on the Chase in the Mid-Fifteenth Century Requires Authentication Unlicensed Licensed Download PDF	138
6 Challenges to the Royal Military Kangmu Hunt Requires Authentication Unlicensed Licensed Download PDF	164
7 Public Animals, Private Hunts and Royal Authority in the Fifteenth Century Requires Authentication Unlicensed Licensed Download PDF	185
8 Release the Falcons: A King in a Confucian Court Requires Authentication Unlicensed Licensed Download PDF	209
9 Taming Wild Animals and Beastly Monarchs Requires Authentication Unlicensed Licensed Download PDF	236
Conclusion: Legacies of the Hunt in Politics, Society and Empire Requires Authentication Unlicensed Licensed Download PDF	271
Bibliography Requires Authentication Unlicensed Licensed Download PDF	282
Index Requires Authentication Unlicensed Licensed Download PDF	300

(Deutsch)

Language: English
Publisher: Edinburgh University Press
Audience: College/higher education;
Pages
- Main content: 320
Illustrations
- Other: 6 B/W illustrations 9 b/w illustrations (3 b/w maps and 6 b/w figures)
Keywords: Islamic Studies

eBook

Published: May 17, 2023
ISBN: 9781399512114