Excerpt from China's Intercourse With Korea From the Xvth Century to 1895 In the following pages I have endeavoured to explain with the aid of official Chinese publications and writings of Chinese holding official positions, or well situated to know whereof they wrote, the nature of Korea's relation to China from the end of the fourteenth century to the conclusion in 1876 of the treaty of Kang-hua between Japan and Korea, which marks the beginning of a new era in the history of the latter country, its entry into the family of nations. Prior to the Kang-hua treaty the nature of Korea's relation to China was a puzzle to Western nations. They were told, at one and the same time, that Korea, "though a vassal and tributary state of China, was entirely independent as far as her government, religion, and intercourse with foreign states were concerned," a condition of things hardly compatible with our ideas of either absolute dependence or complete independence. About the Publisher Forgotten Books publishes hundreds of thousands of rare and classic books. Find more at www.forgottenbooks.com This book is a reproduction of an important historical work. Forgotten Books uses state-of-the-art technology to digitally reconstruct the work, preserving the original format whilst repairing imperfections present in the aged copy. In rare cases, an imperfection in the original, such as a blemish or missing page, may be replicated in our edition. We do, however, repair the vast majority of imperfections successfully; any imperfections that remain are intentionally left to preserve the state of such historical works.