Boundless Winds of Empire
Rhetoric and Ritual in Early Choson Diplomacy with Ming China
Columbia University Press
Boundless Winds of Empire
Rhetoric and Ritual in Early Choson Diplomacy with Ming China
Columbia University Press
Winner, 2025 James B. Palais Prize, Association for Asian Studies
Winner, 2024 UC Berkeley Hong Yung Lee Book Award, Center for Korean Studies at UC Berkeley
For more than two hundred years after its establishment in 1392, the Chosŏn dynasty of Korea enjoyed generally peaceful and stable relations with neighboring Ming China, which dwarfed it in size, population, and power. This remarkably long period of sustained peace was not an inevitable consequence of Chinese cultural and political ascendancy. In this book, Sixiang Wang demonstrates how Chosŏn political actors strategically deployed cultural practices, values, and narratives to carve out a place for Korea within the Ming imperial order.
Boundless Winds of Empire is a cultural history of diplomacy that traces Chosŏn’s rhetorical and ritual engagement with China. Chosŏn drew on classical Chinese paradigms of statecraft, political legitimacy, and cultural achievement. It also paid regular tribute to the Ming court, where its envoys composed paeans to Ming imperial glory. Wang argues these acts were not straightforward affirmations of Ming domination; instead, they concealed a subtle and sophisticated strategy of diplomatic and cultural negotiation. He shows how Korea’s rulers and diplomats inserted Chosŏn into the Ming Empire’s legitimating strategies and established Korea as a stakeholder in a shared imperial tradition. Boundless Winds of Empire recasts a critical period of Sino-Korean relations through the Korean perspective, emphasizing Korean agency in the making of East Asian international relations.
Winner, 2024 UC Berkeley Hong Yung Lee Book Award, Center for Korean Studies at UC Berkeley
For more than two hundred years after its establishment in 1392, the Chosŏn dynasty of Korea enjoyed generally peaceful and stable relations with neighboring Ming China, which dwarfed it in size, population, and power. This remarkably long period of sustained peace was not an inevitable consequence of Chinese cultural and political ascendancy. In this book, Sixiang Wang demonstrates how Chosŏn political actors strategically deployed cultural practices, values, and narratives to carve out a place for Korea within the Ming imperial order.
Boundless Winds of Empire is a cultural history of diplomacy that traces Chosŏn’s rhetorical and ritual engagement with China. Chosŏn drew on classical Chinese paradigms of statecraft, political legitimacy, and cultural achievement. It also paid regular tribute to the Ming court, where its envoys composed paeans to Ming imperial glory. Wang argues these acts were not straightforward affirmations of Ming domination; instead, they concealed a subtle and sophisticated strategy of diplomatic and cultural negotiation. He shows how Korea’s rulers and diplomats inserted Chosŏn into the Ming Empire’s legitimating strategies and established Korea as a stakeholder in a shared imperial tradition. Boundless Winds of Empire recasts a critical period of Sino-Korean relations through the Korean perspective, emphasizing Korean agency in the making of East Asian international relations.
Wang has not only laid the theoretical and methodological footings of a new paradigm of diplomatic history, he has opened numerous doors and left them ajar for future scholars to enter. Journal of Asian Studies
An exceptional work. Wang’s stimulating and highly illuminating account should be read by anyone interested in Korea–China relations, the workings of empire, rhetorical strategies, or the history of diplomacy. Felix Kuhn, Journal of Chinese History
This is a book I have been waiting for. Wang argues that historically Korea was not the compliant vassal that Chinese imagined it to be, but a canny role-player manipulating China’s imperial myth so as to constrain its capacity to dominate. An eloquent revision of what we thought we knew. Timothy Brook, coeditor of Sacred Mandates: Asian International Relations Since Chinggis Khan
Sixiang Wang’s Boundless Winds of Empire is destined to be a classic. Wang provides a new lens to study the historical relations between Ming and Chosŏn. His emphasis on ritual and rhetoric as frames of reference and the extensive use of Chinese and Korean sources make a tremendous contribution to numerous fields. David C. Kang, author of American Grand Strategy and East Asian Security in the Twenty-First Century
Generations of scholars have stripped down the relationship of Chosŏn Korea and Ming China into an abstract model of the ‘tribute system.’ With sensitive readings of poetry, apocryphal inscriptions, and other sources rarely considered by the model builders, Sixiang Wang brilliantly restores the idiosyncratic texture of Korean-Ming relations. Christopher P. Atwood, author of The Rise of the Mongols: Five Chinese Sources
Boundless Winds of Empire sets a new standard for Anglophone scholarship on Chosŏn Korea. Eugene Y. Park, author of Korea: A History
A study rich in empirical and theoretical contributions. By weaving together a set of rigorously analyzed case studies on Chosŏn-Ming relations, Wang has succeeded in not only deconstructing the old framework of the tributary system but also creating a new framework. H-Asia
Preface
Chronology
Maps
Introduction: Korea and the Imperial Tradition
Part I: The Shared Past
1. Serving the Great
2. Terms of Authority
Part II: The Practice of Diplomacy
3. Beneath the Veneer
4. In Empire’s Name
Part III: Ecumenical Boundaries
5. Cajoling Empire
6. Representing Korea
7. Contests of Ritual
Part IV: An Empire of Letters
8. The Brilliant Flowers
9. The Envoy’s Virtue
10. The East Does Not Submit
Conclusion: The Myth of Moral Empire
Notes
Bibliography
Index
Chronology
Maps
Introduction: Korea and the Imperial Tradition
Part I: The Shared Past
1. Serving the Great
2. Terms of Authority
Part II: The Practice of Diplomacy
3. Beneath the Veneer
4. In Empire’s Name
Part III: Ecumenical Boundaries
5. Cajoling Empire
6. Representing Korea
7. Contests of Ritual
Part IV: An Empire of Letters
8. The Brilliant Flowers
9. The Envoy’s Virtue
10. The East Does Not Submit
Conclusion: The Myth of Moral Empire
Notes
Bibliography
Index
Winner, 2024 Hong Yung Lee Book Award in Korean Studies, Center for Korean Studies at UC Berkeley
Winner, 2025 James B. Palais Prize, Association for Asian Studies