Receiving the Celestial Envoy: Ritual as Sovereign Contention in Early Modern Korea and China, 1392–1592

The fifteenth and sixteenth centuries witnessed an enduring peace between the Korean kingdom of Chosŏn and the Ming empire. In relations usually described as one between Korea as a feudal vassal and China as imperial “suzerain,” their most fractious diplomatic controversies were not over borders, tribute, or jurisdiction, but ceremony. In particular, how the Korean king was to receive an ambassador from the “celestial court” became a persistent subject of debate. Sartorial pageantry, modes of transportation, seating arrangements, the timing of particular gestures—among other minutiae—all became, at some point, the focus of controversy. This paper argues that disputes over these rituals were the primary locus for imperial China and Chosŏn Korea to delineate questions of political authority. Rather than “sovereignty” defined in terms of territorial integrity familiar to post-Westphalian narratives of international relations, their debates reveal how the primary concern of authority was in the control and regulation of ritual action. That these ritual questions were never definitively resolved also suggests their rival narratives of political authority animating these conflicts were also never fully reconciled, precluding the possibility of a single, definitive narrative of the nature of the Ming or Korea’s sovereignty vis-a-vis each other. Whatever agreements proved temporary, as every new diplomatic encounter potentially invited new fronts of contention. As a result, debates over ritual were themselves “ritualized” in this process—a process where diplomatic norms were negotiated and reinvented on the ground, rather than imposed in toto by the dominant partner in this relationship, the Ming empire.