By Franklin Rausch
Contributing Writer
In order to understand Ahn Jung-geun, we must first understand the historical context in which he lived. A good place to start is not with Korea but with Tokyo, or as it was once known, Edo.
In 1853, American Commodore Matthew Perry came to Edo with a flotilla of powerful ships. Perry's mission was to open Japan for trade and to see to it that American whalers who might wash up on Japanese shores would be treated humanely.
Perry delivered a letter from President Millard Fillmore and made his demands, pledging to return in a few months with an even larger fleet so as to destroy Edo should the Japanese prove unreceptive.
In 1854, he returned and the Japanese government, despite wishing to maintain its former isolationist stance, had no other choice but to give in. Perry's fearsome ``black ships" were simply too advanced for the Japanese to resist. Japan had been opened to the wider world ― by force.
At first, many Japanese, including Hirobumi Ito, wanted to resist the foreign ``barbarians" but further exposure to Western technology, science, and culture showed them they had much to learn.
The Japanese sought new knowledge from abroad in order to strengthen their country, a trend that increased when the former government, the Tokugawa Bakufu, was overthrown in the Meiji restoration of 1868.
Impressed by the West, many wished to rebuild their society in accordance with ``civilization and enlightenment" ideas. Essentially, to be civilized meant to be in accordance with Western understandings of government, culture, science and even hygiene.
Thus, not only did the Meiji state adopt a constitution that recognized such rights as freedom of religion and allowed some of its citizens the right to vote, it also encouraged Japanese people to cut their hair and give up the practice of mixed-sex bathing.
Some Japanese people even claimed that to be civilized, it was necessary to eat beef like Westerners did! Such issues were important because the empires considered uncivilized countries fair game for colonization.
The Japanese had learned from Western imperialism just how dangerous the outside world could be and sought to strengthen their country. Furthermore, many of the leaders of their government had no intention of being a ``second-rate power."
They wanted to stand shoulder to shoulder with the great empires of Britain, France, and Russia. And so a combination of ambition and strategic concerns, as well as the difficult diplomatic relations that existed between their two countries, led Japan to threaten to use force if Korea did not sign a treaty.
The Korean government, partly out of fear of Japanese attacks and on the advice of China agreed, leading to 1876 treaty of Kanghwa. The Japanese could then proudly claim that just as the United States had opened their country, they had opened Korea.
When Japan forced Korea to give up its policy of isolation and sign a modern treaty, it legitimized its actions by appealing to international law.
This body of law, meant to regulate the conduct between nations, was made by powerful countries for powerful countries and so favored empires.
Furthermore, international law was enforced by the very people who made it. Thus, when Japan and the United States violated their previous treaties with Korea by promising to respect each other's control over that country and the Philippines respectively, there was no one to turn to in order to actually enforce the law.
Because adherence to international law marked one as civilized, ignorance or non-compliance marked one as uncivilized and therefore as fair game for colonization.
Concepts of civilization and international law were not the only sources of authority that could be used to legitimize imperialism.
After Charles Darwin's famous work ``The Origin of the Species" and Herbert Spencer's subsequent coining of the famous phrase ``survival of the fittest," people began to apply their ideas to human societies, ethnic groups, or races.
This system of thought, known as Social Darwinism, basically held that might made right ― that if a country was powerful enough then it was quite acceptable for it to take over another country; just as a strong animal could eat a weaker one.
Thus, no legitimate protest could be offered when an empire colonized an independent country. After all, it was just following scientific laws.
Civilization and enlightenment thought and Social Darwinism provided very different visions of the world.
The former tended to offer the hope of political liberty and victory over poverty, disease, and ignorance. The latter presented a much darker view of the world as a place of bloody conflict for survival, in which ``the elite eat and the weak are meat."
Despite these very different visions, they often managed to co-exist, albeit uncomfortably, and were used to legitimize the colonization of the weak by the strong.
As Andre Schmind has shown in his book, ``Korea Between Empires: 1895-1910," these two systems of thought dominated the intellectual discourse in Korea as Koreans struggled to restore their country's ever shrinking sovereignty.
They were also deployed by representatives of Japan to legitimize that country's growing power in the peninsula.
It was with these systems of thought, and the ruthless forms of empire they supported, that Ahn Jung-geun and other Korean reformers and patriots had to contend with as they struggled for independence.
The writer is a doctoral candidate at the University of British Columbia in the department of Asian studies where he focuses on Korean religious history. His research was supported in 2007-2008 by the Korea Foundation and in 2008-2009 by Fulbright Korea.