It may not be too much to argue that spurred by the increasing influence of the  viewpoint of maritime history, topics related to the history of international  relations observed through the maritime area surrounding the continent, are drawing  an increasing interest of the academic community in East Asia. In particular, in  Korea, when the effectiveness and limitations of ‘maritime/ continental’ in the  discussion about East Asian Community have been proved, it is being confirmed that  the identity of Korea, which was found in East Asian Sea in history with  ‘maritime/continental’, was not depending on the policy of maritime trade  prohibition(Haegeum, 海禁) but the people’s actions in East Asia  Sea, with whom carrying a ‘maritime intentionality’¹. And one of those people was the drifter, who  survived from the shipwreck.

Research on shipwrecks or the drifter in East Asia focusing on China, Japan, Korea,  Ryukyu and so on, has produced a wealth of papers. And most of their topics tend to  focus on the salvage activities or individual events in a country or between two  regions.² But compared with  Japan, the related researches in Korea and China are still insufficient.  Particularly, although Korea and China themselves are keeping a lot of drifting  materials related to each other, works dealing with salvage activities and  repatriation systems between two countries are still few in number. Personally, the  reason should be that the related materials in Korea have not been sorted out  effectively, as well as they in China.

This paper focuses on the historical materials on the shipwrecks in China, which have  not been compiled separately. These materials, including information on shipwrecks  rescue among China, Chosǒn, Japan, Ryukyu and other Southeast Asian countries, are  basically scattered in different literature collections or massive archives. This  paper aims at introducing the one rescue between Ch’ing Dynasty and Chosǒn among  these materials to Korean academics. Certainly, other scholars have begun this work  before. Since 1999, Liu Shiuh-feng(劉序楓), Tang Shi-yeoung(湯熙勇) from Taiwan and  Matsuura Akira(松浦章) from Japan had begun collating the materials on the shipwrecks  around the China coast.³ In  addition, in 2004, Liu Shiuh-feng personally published a book with a high reference  value, named Catalogue of Shipwreck Records in the Ch’ing Archives(Qingdai  dang’an zhong de hainan shiliao mulu, 清代檔案中的海難史料目錄), which lists and  catalogues some parts of Ch’ing Dynasty archives related to the historical  shipwrecks.⁴ On the basis of  these achievements, this paper will sort out and summarize the historical materials  on the shipwrecks related to Ch’ing Dynasty and Chosǒn, and then introduce the  relevant retrieval and use methods. Simultaneously, it will be illustrated that the  importance of the comparison between the Ch’ing Dynasty archives and the Chosǒn’s  archives.

The Korean Peninsula’s geographical location, surrounded by sea on three sides,  determines its inseparable relationship with the sea. The people, then, born on this  land, are by nature carrying a ‘maritime intentionality’. Although Chosǒn Korea  implemented the relatively strict policy of maritime trade prohibition, in effect  the coastal people’s maritime activities—situations of putting out to sea without  authorization—are not completely cut off, which give rise to the increase in the  frequency of shipwrecks. The definition of the shipwreck involved in this paper is  mainly for the drifters, namely the experiences of the ship’s personnel who managed  to survive by drifting to other countries or regions and the cargo carried on board  after maritime casualty. This reference scope differs from the relevant connotations  in modern law, which has also been clearly pointed out in previous studies.

In Ch’ing Dynasty, shipwreck salvage and survivor’s repatriation between Chosǒn and  China were an important part of the diplomatic relations between two countries. In  particular, Chosǒn, as the tributary state of the Ch’ing, was an important vassal  state in Ch’ing Dynasty’s foreign policy called “chershing men from  afar(Huairou yuanren, 懷柔遠人)” and its drifters hence received  preferential treatment. In addition, although most of shipwrecks were caused by  natural factors such as severe weather, it was not excluded that some people had  created an illusion of shipwreck intentionally. On the other hand, the local  government conducted relevant inquiries and investigations when they confronted  surviving the drifters from Chosǒn. And in principle, these processes would be  recorded and reported to the central government. The materials preserved till now  were parts of those records. And the other records about the interpersonal process  between local scholar-officials and the drifters from Chosǒn were scattered in some  local scholars’ anthologies. Similarly, the relevant records of the Chosǒn’s salvage  for the drifters of Ch’ing Dynasty would also be delivered to the Ch’ing’s central  government, which one were kept in the Ch’ing Dynasty archives. Furthermore, there  were no lack of records about the shipwrecks among the historical materials  well-known by the academics, for instance, the official materials like  Da-Qing huidian(大淸會典), Da-Qing huidian  zeli(大淸會典則例) and Da-Qing huidian shili(大淸會典事例). The  materials on shipwrecks of Chosǒn in the Ch’ing Dynasty archives collected by author  so far could be classified as follows:

It should be noted that, although such a batch of historical materials on shipwrecks  mentioned above in China can be used for the research, there are still some  limitations if only focusing on them. The historical materials on shipwrecks,  especially those related to drifting, are characterized by one-sidedness from the  perspective of ‘the other’ since they were generally recorded by other countries.  Consequently, in order to grasp the historical facts from a broader perspective, it  is needed to cooperate with the relevant records of the drifter’s homeland as well,  besides the information of the salvation country. On the contrary, Korean academics,  as so far, have gained lots of researches about the maritime history, especially in  the case study of Chinese and Korean drifters, in which has made considerable  progress. But there still have considerable room for the use of the archives in  China. The fact that the Korean academics themselves only rely on their own archives  to carry out the study of the history of shipwrecks between Korea and China, is  really a question needed to be reflected.

As we all know, the shipwreck survivors’ repatriation networks, which gradually  institutionalized in the tribute trade system and became a reference for dealing  with similar problems later, had existed in the pre-modern East Asian Sea. To be  specific, the Asian countries had been treating each other’s shipwreck survivors in  a reciprocal manner by rescuing them and offering them assistance to return home  from the middle of 18th century, regardless of whether there are diplomatic or trade  relations between two countries¹¹.  After receiving the returned drifters from other countries, the local government  would investigate the drifter and make a record. In this way, the records of both  countries can be compared and help to restore the original appearance of the  drifting incidents. Therefore, this paper aims at showing many interesting topics  that can be found by comparing the records of both countries in use of taking the  actual case as an example. Considering that GF has been introduced  to Korea, this paper will choose the drifting incident recorded in it as a case  study.

The record of a Jeju drifting incident in 1741 in GF is described as  follows:

Even though studies of history were mainly centering on the continent in the past,  recently the increasing interest itself of the maritime history may be regarded as a  reflection on the paradigm of their own research. The sea, however, can be no more a  geographic space but not a historical field in the studies of maritime history  currently. But if we take into account the fact that human beings are by nature  social creatures at the end of the day, it is no doubt that the “maritime society”,  relative to the continent, could be constituted by all ships sailing on there.  Further, even the ship itself can also be seen as a concentrated social space.  Michel Foucault remarked that “the boat is a floating piece of space, a place  without a place, that exists by itself, that is closed in on itself and at the same  time is given over to the infinity of the sea.”¹⁸ In this space, sometimes the crews have been very diverse  in their composition. For instance, according to the record by Choi Du-chan  mentioned above, there were 50 people on the drifting ship, including tradesman,  classical scholar, farmer and local governor. In such spaces success, the livelihood  and even life itself not only depend on coordinated acts of seamanship, but how the  order was maintained effectively. This should be the object of interest to the  sociology, which typically focused on much larger and much diffuse social  relationships.

In a word, it is hoped that the materials on the shipwrecks of Chosǒn Korea in the  Ch’ing Dynasty archives mentioned above could provide new ideas for Korean  academics. But the analysis of them should not only stay at the diplomatic level of  the two countries but also, from the perspective of maritime history, give attention  to the different maritime peoples themselves. Because the sea was a historical field  separated from the land symbolically, socially and practically. Just like John Mack  remarked, “It is only when we fully comprehend the extent to which the sea is  constituted as a domain in its own right that the fuller significance of any such  reconciliation of the sea to the land emerges.”¹⁹