Berkeley: Institute of East Asian Studies, University of California, 2012. xii, 193 pp. (Figures.) US$20.00, paper. ISBN 978-1-55729-100-4.
When East Asia was undergoing momentous changes in the late nineteenth century, Westerners were hired as officials and experts by East Asian governments. These Westerners were used to help establish new institutions based on Western models that started arising with the expansion of European and American influence in the region. Among the best known of these institutions is the Chinese Maritime Customs Service, which was set up by the Chinese government to collect customs dues from overseas traders. Most of its employees were foreigners, including its head, Sir Robert Hart. When Japan forced Korea to enter into the Western system of international and economic relations through the Treaty of Kanghwa in 1876, the Koreans also started hiring foreign experts to set up and administer new institutions that arose as a result of changes in the international system. Wayne Patterson tells the story of one of these Westerners, the British-American William Nelson Lovatt, based on letters and other documents that he obtained. The result is an interesting account of a Westerner’s personal experience in East Asia, his and his family’s interaction with Korean society during the 1880s, and the personal impact that domestic and international events in East Asia had on his and his family’s life.
Lovatt was born in Britain, but spent most of his working life in East Asia. He worked first for the British military and came to China during the last years of the Second Opium War and the Taiping Rebellion in 1860. Soon after, he switched employers to work for the Chinese Maritime Customs Service, where he worked in several treaty ports for the next twenty years and rose to a mid-level rank. During this time, he also married his American wife, Jennie, whom he courted in a long-distance relationship before going to Minnesota to get married. During his career in China, Lovatt also became friends with the German Paul Georg von Möllendorf, who also worked for the Chinese customs service and later for the German diplomatic service. It was this connection that would lead Lovatt to Korea. When Möllendorf resigned from the German diplomatic service to work for the top Chinese official Li Hongzhang, Li assigned him to act as a new Western expert to the Korean court to establish a Korean customs service on the model of the Chinese customs service. Möllendorf eventually persuaded Lovatt to become the head of the customs service in the southern Korean port of Pusan, where Lovatt lived along with his wife and one of his daughters from 1883 to 1886.
Most of the book deals with the life of Lovatt and his family in Pusan. What is striking is the strong Japanese presence in Pusan already in the 1880s. Lovatt lived and worked in the Japanese area of Pusan and most of his interactions were actually with Japanese people rather than Koreans. Lovatt did have interactions with Korean officials and with some Koreans working for his family as servants, but these contacts were less frequent. The book also reveals the isolation and loneliness of life for Westerners in Pusan, especially for Lovatt’s wife, Jennie. This book shines in its treatment of Western lives outside a capital region and its intimate portrayal of family life. In the end, Jennie became pregnant and left Pusan with her daughter before her husband to return to America to give birth to her son.
Lovatt’s story also reveals how vulnerable these foreign experts were to changes within the domestic and international spheres involving the East Asian governments they worked for. Lovatt’s stint in Pusan ended because of the consequences of the failure of the Japanese-supported Kapsin Coup in the Korean court in 1884. This led China to further reinforce its presence and influence in Korea. Möllendorf turned against his Chinese employers and instead advised the Korean court that Korea should look towards Russia rather than China to act as a counter-balance to Japan. This elicited a harsh Chinese reaction and Möllendorf was removed from office. This led anyone connected to him, like Lovatt, to suddenly come under suspicion. The increase in Chinese influence in Korea in the aftermath of the Kapsin Coup’s failure also led to a proposal by Sir Robert Hart, the head of the Chinese Maritime Customs Service, to merge the Korean customs service with the Chinese service. This would clearly be a severe weakening of Korea’s sovereignty and eventually never happened. However, Lovatt, knowing that his days in Korea were numbered, threatened to reveal this scheme to the Korean court unless he got an improved severance package to go quietly. In the end, Lovatt got most of what he wanted and left his position in Pusan and went to the United States to join his wife and family. However, he could not get used to being a farmer in Minnesota and ended up going back to China to work at a reduced rank for the Chinese customs service. He would eventually be able to rise to his old rank that he had before going to Korea by the time he died in China in 1904.
Wayne Patterson’s book is successful in bringing to a human level the effects that the economic, political, social and cultural changes in East Asia had on individuals and communities, both Western and East Asian. It relates a Westerner’s experience in East Asia in a place where there was not a large Western community and in this way, provides a new perspective. The fact that Lovatt worked for the Chinese and the Koreans also gives a new twist to the Western experience in East Asia. This is a good supplementary book that helps to show how the changing situation in East Asia was reflected in individual lives.
Carl Young
Western University, London, Canada
pp. 335-337