Page 191 - Encyclopedia Of World History Vol V

1968 berkshire encyclopedia of world history

and vice versa on a number of occasions in the past two Paekche asserted independence. In 918 a general of the
millennia. For the most part, however, warfare in Japan Later Koguryo kingdom announced the establishment of
and Korea went their separate ways. the Koryo kingdom (918–1392), and in 935 Koryo
defeated the remnants of the Shilla state. Koryo also
Premodern Korea defeated Later Paekche, and in 936 the Korean peninsula
The great Chinese dynasties sought to control the Korean was reunited.The Koryo rulers constructed a wall along
peninsula as one of many areas on the periphery of Chi- their northern border to help keep out marauding
nese civilization. Thus, China’s Qin and Han dynasties nomadic Turks and Mongols, and they alternately allied
(221–206 BCE and 206 BCE–220 CE, respectively) both with the Chinese Song dynasty (960–1279) and the Khi-
made attempts to conquer the peninsula. The Korean tan Mongols to help preserve their independence.
kingdom of Koguryo (37 BCE–668 CE ) defended itself Koryo began to break apart in the twelfth century;
adroitly, but the Han did establish a commandery in invaded by the Mongols in 1231, it was a vassal state of
present-day P’yongyang.However,as the Han declined in the Mongol empire from 1270. Like Shilla, Koryo was a
the early third century CE, two other kingdoms on the strong naval power; its navy made use of cannon and
peninsula rose to increasing prominence—Paekche gunpowder in the late fourteenth century and used naval
(18 BCE–663 CE ) in the west and Shilla (57 BCE–935 CE) guns to turn back a Japanese maritime invasion in 1380,
in the east, with Shilla (aided by Tang dynasty China) destroying more than five hundred Japanese battleships.
eventually incorporating the other two in the seventh cen-
tury to form a single state. Kaya, a small tribal confeder- The Choson (Yi) Dynasty
ation in southern Korea had been subsumed into Shilla in Weakened by its dealings with the Mongols, the Koryo
the sixth century. The relationship between the various kingdom fell in 1392 to Yi Song-gye (1335–1408), a mil-
Korean kingdoms and the clans on the islands of Japan is itary leader who had risen to prominence battling the
hotly argued. Japanese textbooks maintain that there was Mongols.Yi became the first king of the Choson dynasty
a Japanese military outpost in southern Korea and that (1392–1910).
Japanese forces were called upon to aid the various king- Perhaps the most famous element in Choson’s military
doms in their conflicts with one another in the fourth and history is the development and deployment of the turtle
fifth centuries,but many scholars,both Korean and Japan- ships—armored warships—in the sixteenth century.They
ese,have insisted that there is no evidence of a permanent were developed by the military hero Yi Sun-shin (1545–
Japanese outpost and dispute the nature of Japanese mil- 1598), who used them to repel the invasions of the
itary activity. Most scholars agree on the major contribu- Japanese general Toyotomi Hideyoshi (1536/7–1598)
tions Korean culture made to what came to be the not once but twice, in the 1590s, though aid from China
dominant culture in Japan in the early centuries CE. was decisive in defeating those Japanese forces that made
One aspect of Shilla’s social structure that contributed it to land.
to its attaining preeminence over its neighbors was the
hwarang, an elite group of young warriors who lived by Premodern Japan
a moral code that emphasized loyalty, filial piety, and During Japan’s Nara and Heian periods (710–794 and
courage; it also opposed indiscriminant killing.The Shilla 794–1185, respectively), the aristocratic ruling elite made
kingdom also established a strong naval defense of the use of subordinate military clans for protection and to
peninsula’s coastal regions. extend Japan’s frontiers east and north, pushing back the
indigenous population, ancestors of today’s Ainu (an
The rise of Koryo originally Siberian people now found only in Hokkaido,
Shilla gradually lost control over its territories in the ninth Japan’s northernmost major island).These military clans
century and the kingdoms of Later Koguryo and Later became more and more powerful, until in the late twelfth