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At the end of the nineteenth century, western incursions into Korea had gradually opened the peninsula to the outside world, and by the 1890s foreigners were not only permitted to reside in the country, but becoming commonplace in treaty ports and in the capital. At the same time, Britain, Russia, and increasingly, Japan, were engaged in a contest for geopolitical supremacy in the northern Pacific; Great Power contestation over access to trade in north China centred on the Korean peninsula as a major point of tension for the international balance of power. In this period a number of British official visitors came to Korea, and three prepared reports on the characteristics of the Korean people, society, economy, and geography. They were all politicians or colonial functionaries: Charles W Campbell, a naturalist and consular official stationed in Seoul, George Nathaniel Curzon, a Conservative member of Parliament, who would later become Viceroy of India, and Joseph Walton, a Liberal member of Parliament from Yorkshire with a consuming interest in East Asian affairs. These men's narratives provided a great deal of the information on Korea available to the British official mind as it formulated its East Asian policy. This article assesses the underlying motivations behind these visits, and examines the effect of British regional geopolitics on these men's attitudes to encounter in Korea.
Keywords: Korea, travelogues, imperial history, political history, British Empire
I. The Korean Nation and 19th Century Encounter
The closing decades of the nineteenth century saw a drastic change in the relationship between Great Britain and East Asia. Communications and transportation became increasingly rapid and accessible, fuelling popular and official demand for detailed information about British activities overseas (Potter 2004; Pratt 1992; Thomas 1994).1 Imperial policy was subject to extensive debates over the nature of colonial expansion, as a response to rigorous competition from imperial rivals in an age of "new imperialism." At the same time, Britain, as the foremost manufacturing power in the world, remained focused on the expansion of trade (Hobsbawm 1987; Thompson 2005). In this context, the first British nationals legally (Kim and Kim 1967, 12) set foot on the Korean peninsula, beginning with merchants and missionaries, and followed closely by military personnel (the Royal Navy briefly occupied the Komun island group...