Sadae in an Era of Changing Polarity (1608–1800): A Bipolar, an Imaginary Bipolar, and a Unipolar Order

Abstract

This chapter illustrates Joseon Korea’s practice of Sadae in a period that witnessed the change of dominance from Ming to Qing China in Northeast Asia. As the latter became obviously more powerful than the former, Joseon Korea did not adopt a rational policy of bandwagoning with the new great power in this process of power transition. Instead, it entangled itself in a much more complicated situation and continued to serve the Ming empire during its fall and even after its collapse. For almost two centuries, Korean political elites struggled between righteousness and pragmatism, putting their country between an imaginary great power and a real one. Although eventually Joseon Korea came to acknowledge the Qing empire as the only hegemon in the Sinocentric world after its rule in China for over a century, the country’s practice of Sadae during this period proved again that the Korea–great powers relations in the pre-modern era were driven by the interactions between ideational and material forces.