EASC Colloquium

PRESENTER: Wayne Patterson (St. Norbert College)

TOPIC: “Maritime Customs and Chinese Imperialism in the 1880s: A New Look at Korea's 'Chinese Decade”
DATE: Friday, September 30, 2011

TIME: 12:00-1:15 p.m.
LOCATION: Ballantine 004

When discussing Korea's "Chinese Decade," roughly defined as the dozen or so years prior to the Sino-Japanese War of 1894-1895, most of the attention is focused on the heavy-handed activities of Yuan Shikai in Seoul.  Less well known is that part of this Chinese effort to bind Korea more closely to China, which involved the absorption of Korea's newly-formed Maritime Customs Service.  Using the recently uncovered correspondence of the first commissioner of customs in Pusan, this presentation will discuss some heretofore unknown aspects of this attempted takeover by China.

Wayne Patterson, Professor of History at St. Norbert College in Wisconsin, received his undergraduate degree in history from Swarthmore College and his graduate degrees in history and international relations from the University of Pennsylvania.  He has taught Korean history at Harvard University, the University of Chicago, the University of Kansas, the University of Wisconsin-Madison, the University of South Carolina, Korea University, Ewha University, Yonsei University (as Fulbright Distinguished Lecturer), the University of the Philippines (as Korea Foundation Visiting Professor), and most recently at the University of California-Berkeley.  He is the author or editor of a dozen books on modern Korean history, including The Korean Frontier in America: Immigration to Hawaii, 1896-1910 (Honolulu, 1994) and The Ilse: First-Generation Korean Immigrants in Hawaii, 1903-1973 (Honolulu, 2000).  His most recent book is In the Service of His Korean Majesty: William Nelson Lovatt, the Pusan Customs, and Sino-Korean Relations, 1876-1888, scheduled for publication this fall by the University of California Institute of East Asian Studies Korea Monograph Series.

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