A Research Of Xu Shilue Yijian Written By Choson Scholar Hong Seok-ju

Xu Shilue Yijian was a brief chronological history of Ming Dynasty, which was written by Choson scholar Hong Seok-ju in early nineteenth century. It covers about 294 years’ history, from the first year of emperor Hongwu(1368) to the sixteenth year of emperor Yongli (1662).Its predecessor was Hong In-mo’s Xu Shilue, and then Hong Seok-ju supplemented it as Xu Shilue Yijian between 1817-1821.The political environment of "Reserve Zhou and commemorate Ming" (尊周思明) and the popularity of writing Ming history among scholars at that time together promoted the appearance of this book. As for Hong Seok-ju, his purposes of writing this book had three, the first was to convey his emotion of "Reserve Zhou and commemorate Ming", the second was to provide a brief book of Ming history for Choson children, and the last was to express his personal attitude towards political reality. The book was achronicle history, but also contained some factors of Jishi Benmo (纪事本末). Since the book was based on Gangmu Sanbian (纲目三编) complied by Qing officials, and its other reference books were mostly Chinese Ming and Qing histories, so itwas outdated in content, only featured by the records of South Ming regime, Choson affairs and Ming’s Aid for Choson. The historical comments in this book focused on emperors and ministers of Ming Dynasty, and the reason of Ming’s collapse. The former showed that Hong Seok-ju attached great importance to the virtue of emperors and ministers, and the latter embodied his aversion to Factional Struggles (党 争),which originated from the reality of politics. Both of the two points sharply reflected his pursuit of the ideal political pattern.On the whole, Xu Shilue Yijian was a historical book which aimed to express the principle of "Reserve Zhou and commemorate Ming". It made little contribution to the collection of new historical materials and the improvement of historical books’ style. However, it provided us the Choson scholar’s thought world and the reality of Choson politics, which was abundant and deserved our further research.