Treaty of Ganghwa
The Treaty of Ganghwa, signed in February 1876 under the threat of Japanese warships, was Korea's first 'unequal treaty', modelled explicitly on the impositions Japan had itself suffered in 1854. It opened Korean ports to Japanese trade, granted extraterritoriality to Japanese subjects, and forced the Joseon state into an international competition for which it was structurally unprepared. The yangban aristocracy that controlled political revenue had no incentive to fund military modernisation, industry, or infrastructure, since these threatened their examination monopoly and land-rent income, while the peasant majority faced triple extraction from state taxes, landlord rents, and magistrate corruption. The treaty accelerated the disintegration of Joseon authority, helping set in train the Donghak Peasant Revolution of 1894, the Sino-Japanese War fought on Korean soil, and ultimately Japanese annexation in 1910. As the external shock that exposed and accelerated the breakdown of the Joseon state, it is best read as a marker of collapse.
- Year: 1876 CE
- Category: Political
