서구 지리학에 대한 동아시아 세계지리 전통의 반응: 17-18세기 중국과 조선의 경우 = Impact of Western Geography on East Asian Geographical Tradition in the Seventeenth and Eighteenth Centuries China and Korea

다국어 초록 (Multilingual Abstract)

In this article I investigate the influence of Western geographical texts on the geographical tradition of China and Korea in the seventeenth and eighteen centuries. There had been two distinctive geographical traditions in East Asia-that is the 'Confucian' and 'non-Confucian' traditions. The former emphasized the splendor of Chinese civilization with factual descriptions of the known world. The latter, on the other hand, pursued a comprehensive representation of the whole world with fabulous hearsay about remote regions. Since China was considerably less important in the latter, it had been denounced by most Confucian scholars as empirically groundless and ideologically dubious. This division played a significant role in shaping Confucian scholars' understanding of Western geographical representation. To Confucian scholars, the Western geographical representation bore a striking resemblance to that of the 'non-Confucian' tradition, because it included the whole world, contained many fabulous stories, and, the most importantly, conflicted with Sino-centric world-view. Accordingly, Western geographical texts, although widely circulated, generally took a marginal position with its indigenous counterpart. Yet the Western geographical texts did not totally fail to exert its influence on East Asian tradition. Some Chinese and Korean scholars, who trusted in the cogency of Western geographical representation, stitched up the traditional division in geography in order to make 'a Confucian' representation of 'the whole world.'