Although sovereignty (self-rule) as a modern, political imperative is often identified with the Westphalian Peace (1648) in Europe, the concept's iterations across the globe were inextricably linked to imperialism. Henry Em's The Great Enterprise elaborates on this paradoxical relationship between self-rule and global imperialism by tracing the ideal of sovereignty that was rigorously and often contentiously explored during the long hundred years of Korean history writing, heralded here as “the great enterprise.” Em's study takes a creative, interdisciplinary approach to these two related concerns of nationalism and historiography, drawing innovatively from the more established disciplines of history (historical materialism, positivism), political science (Park Chan-seung, anti-communism, world systems theory), and archaeology (colonial “discovery” of the Sŏkkuram Buddha, Manchurian history), as well as from the more recent disciplines of cultural history (hair cutting, the modern exhibitionary complex), translation studies (minjok as a neologism), and what Em calls “postnational/postcolonial” studies (subaltern, the...

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