A history of the Puyo state, its people, and its legacy (Korea, China)

The earliest well-attested polity associated with Korean history, although its direct authority never extended to the peninsula proper, is the state of Puyo, which existed from about the third century B.C. until the mid-fourth century A.D. in what is today China's Jilin Province. The primary focus of this dissertation is the formation and history of the Puyo state and its people, while the secondary focus is the historiographical portrayal of the Puyo legacy by later peninsular states such as Koguryo and Paekche. The underlying theme of this project is state formation, both as a social process and as a political development, and it seeks to explore the questions of how the earliest "Korean" states came to exist and of how historiographic depictions of these earliest states developed. One commonly accepted view of history that will be explored and challenged in this dissertation is that the states of Koguryo and Paekche were the products of small-scale migrations from Puyo.; The study of Puyo state formation is based primarily on analyses of archaeological data from the central Jilin region, most of which have become available only in the past two decades. Such analyses suggest that Puyo represents a case of secondary state formation catalyzed by influences exerted by the expansion of the Chinese states of Yan and Han and by interchange with the nomadic societies to the west of Puyo. For centuries Puyo leaders reinforced their authority by engaging their neighbors in trade relations and military alliances, and this authority gained Puyo the respect of Chinese emperors and of its neighboring peoples. When those neighbors built states of their own in the wake of Puyo's collapse in the fourth century, their leaders claimed descent from the Puyo ruling house. Such claims were expressed in the form of foundation myths, but later historians have interpreted these myths as reflections of historical events and have postulated that small-scale migrations from Puyo were responsible for the formation of these later states. The present study suggests that such myths should not be addressed as history, and that they can more usefully be read instead as specific assertions of political legitimacy.