Whose "Barbarism"? Whose "Treachery"? Race and Civilization in the Unknown United States–Korea War of 1871

Gordon H. Chang

Barbarism will still respect nothing but power, and barbaric civilization repels alike interference, association, and instruction.
—United States secretary of the navy George M. Robeson, 1871
Western barbarians foully attack! Should we not fight, accord must be made! To urge accord is to betray the country!
—Korea's prince regent, the Taewon'gun, 1871
An anecdote that diplomatic historians sometimes use to illustrate the national prejudices infusing popular historical understanding describes a French schoolboy's first visit to Trafalgar Square in the heart of London. He learns from his British host that the mighty column in the public space celebrates the great naval battle of 1805 near the Rock of Gibraltar, at the entry to the Mediterranean Sea. "My, how curious," the impressed but perplexed youngster exclaims, "to erect a monument to a terrible defeat!"	1
The following account of a battle between American and Korean military forces in June 1871 near Korea's Rock of Gibraltar, during an American expedition to "open" Korea as Matthew C. Perry had opened Japan in 1853, in some ways confirms the truth of that tale. The standard American interpretation of the war differs dramatically from the Korean, with the differences having everything to do with national perspective rather than with "facts" alone. The nationality of the storyteller commonly predicts which side will be identified as the "aggressor" and which the "defender" in the conflict. But in other ways, the national accounts of the United States–Korea War of 1871 depart from the simple wisdom of the Trafalgar Square anecdote. For one, there is no consensus over who was the "victor" and who the " vanquished"—whereas most French youngsters concede that Trafalgar was a French defeat. In the Korean case, each side has claimed glorious victory over a demoralized enemy. Each side has built its own version of a victory column at home and honored its martyrs as national heroes. And while every English and French youngster knows that the battle of Trafalgar ended with the defeat of Napoleon Bonaparte's navy, few, if any, American students (and only a small minority of American diplomatic historians) know anything about the 1871 events in Korea. It is, for Americans today, an unknown war. (Those who know of the incident may have read articles entitled "'Our Little War with the Heathen,'" "America's War with the Hermits," or perhaps "When We Trounced Korea," the dismissive titles themselves reflecting a common historical attitude toward the Asian enemy.) In contrast to their American counterparts, most Koreans, in the south as well as the north, are familiar with the outlines of the Shin-mi Yang-yo (the barbarian incursion of 1871, a name suggestive of attitudes toward the Western adversary) and with the valiant Korean resistance to the aggression.1 A respected Korean scholar, Dae-Sook Suh, eulogizes the war as "one of the bloodiest battles that Koreans have fought to defend their country."2	2
But why have Americans relegated this conflict to the margins of historical importance?	. . .