A Korean Scholar’s Rude Awakening in Qing China

Two years after Adam Smith's Wealth of Nations was published in 1776, Pak Chega's (1750-1805) Discourse on Northern Learning appeared on the opposite corner of the globe. In a series of short essays, Pak gives us rare insights into life on the ground in late eighteenth-century Korea, and provides a window onto everyday life in Qing China.