Crossing the Yalu,Crossing the Seine: A Comparative Look at Goryeo Textbooks and Eurasian Travelogues during the Mongol Empire,1206–1368

Abstract

The relative freedom of movement and commercial efflorescence in Mongol Eurasia has received increasing attention. The Mongol conquest and the dissolution of internal trade barriers have been credited with this period of intensified travel and exchange. Moreover, the normative and structural quality of human mobility in medieval Eurasia has recently been characterized as premodern globalism. Yet, Goryeo Korea’s integration in that global phenomenon, though an integrated part of Mongol Eurasia as a Mongol-Yuan ally and satellite, is not well understood, nor is the pan-Eurasian experience of travel in the Mongol period. This study attempts a preliminary comparative investigation of Goryeo sources documenting travel– such as the Nogeoldae, Bak tongsa, and literati-official poetry–with well-known European and Inner Asian travelogues, such as William of Rubruck, to texturize experiences of travel across Mongol Eurasia. It argues that the experience of travel was structured by the postal relay system, but that a culture of identification still relied on routine oral suasion alongside tangible written credentials. Second, dangers and anxieties surrounding travel plagued all Eurasian travellers, yet these were localized to specific routes. Last, both ends of Eurasia demonstrate the simultaneity of interlinked continental and maritime circuits of travel and silver as the common currency of travel. The article is an effort to write Goryeo Korea into the global history of human mobility in Mongol Eurasia.