Lew Young Ick (Yu Yŏng-ik) is a senior historian well known to scholars of Korea. He is generally regarded as one of the leading interpreters of the turbulent period comprising the last four decades of the Chosŏn dynasty (1392–1910), and it is this period that is the focus of the book under review.

The six essays represent revisions of articles or papers produced over a period of nearly thirty years between 1976 and 2002, and they are the culmination of a lifetime of meticulous, multilingual, multiarchival scholarship in an attempt to understand the forces at work leading up to the demise of Korean independence. In Korea, prominent scholars nearing retirement often produce commemorative volumes (kinyŏm ch'aek) composed of their previous writings, usually churned out with little effort at revision. While these volumes represent a symbolic retrospective on the person's academic career, the scholarly discourse usually has long since passed them by. Such is not the case here. The original essays have been completely updated, taking into account the scholarship that has appeared since they were originally published. One need only compare them with the originals, several of which I found in my own collection, to appreciate the thoroughness of the revisions. The result is a volume that will remain a touchstone for those interested in the dynamics of the foreign relations of the late Chosŏn.

Like any volume of collected works on a particular period and topic, one would expect a certain amount of repetition. While there is some overlap, and although each essay can easily stand on its own, it is not enough to prevent the essays from being appreciated as a collective whole. Still, one finds occasional differences in interpretation among the separate essays. For example, on pages 34–35, the author suggests that the Chinese replaced the German advisor P. G. von Möllendorff with the American Henry Merrill as the head of the Korean customs service because of his lack of transparency. But on page 127, he suggests that Möllendorff was replaced by the Chinese because of his approach to the Russians in 1885. Noting this is not meant as a criticism, because both factors were clearly at play, and I suspect that the latter reason for his dismissal was the more salient one.

Moreover, unlike a monograph, a volume of collected essays makes it difficult to identify a single overarching theme, and consequently it is difficult to evaluate it in the space of a short review. The first three essays deal primarily with the United States, beginning with the 1882 Shufeldt Treaty. While many sources view Christianity and American missionaries as uniformly transformative and beneficial, Lew suggests a more mixed legacy, impacting the Korean reform movement and its leaders in differing ways. American advisors in Korea at the same time were largely failures, in his view, because of the convergence of Korean domestic conditions, American indifference, and Chinese opposition.

The next two essays deal primarily with the role of Japan. Pervading both is a sense of inevitability of the outcome in 1910, as reflected in phrases such as “consequently the option of conquering Korea was shelved, if only temporarily” (p. 121), and “[Japan's policies] were carried out with the larger goal in mind of eventually bringing Korea fully within the Japanese sphere of influence” (p. 137). Within that overall framework, Lew looks at the differing roles that Japan played during this period, first as mediator between the United States and Korea, then as Korea's “champion,” and finally as imperialist overlord. In looking at the triangular relationship among the three, he suggests that Japan's role in supporting American interests in Korea was repaid handsomely when the United States supported the Japanese takeover. Because of Japan's anti-Korean propaganda, the United States came to believe that Japan had the best interests of Koreans at heart and that a Japanese takeover would benefit Korea. I found this assertion to ring true in my own examination of why Japan prevented Korean immigration to Hawaii in 1905. That is, the Americans believed Japan's claim that it had to protect the Koreans from the incompetence of their own government, when in fact the Japanese selfishly prevented Koreans from leaving in order to forestall a Japanese Exclusion Act from being enacted by the United States.

The sixth and final essay, written relatively recently in 2002 and seemingly slightly out of place, takes a different tack than the other five by looking at the contributions made by Western scholars to the study of Korea, with particular reference to the role of the Royal Asiatic Society, Korea Branch. Its role was important both historically, as Lew demonstrates, and in the contemporary period. In an age when collected essays are increasingly spurned by most scholarly or university presses, it is commendable that the Royal Asiatic Society can publish this work and thus make it available to a wider audience.

In sum, this volume will stand as a testament not only to the leading scholarship in the field but also to the leading scholar in the field. While some scholars familiar with the field may have encountered earlier iterations of one or more of these essays, it is doubtful that they would have encountered all six. And for those unfamiliar with this terrain, it serves as a fine example of the best scholarship available in a single volume. Although this is meant as a retirement volume, Lew is by no means retired. He continues to work with the papers of Syngman Rhee (Yi Sŭng-man), and the scholarly community eagerly awaits his findings.