A Scottish vision of Korea and East Asia before the ‘Great Divergence - John Campbell and Early Modern European Comparative Historical Discourse

This article explores the intellectual significance of the early modern British interest in global and comparative historical discourse. It highlights the prominent concern with the relations between East Asia and Europe as central to the dynamic patterns of world order. Early modern British intellectual life was shaped profoundly by the insights of the Scottish Enlightenment about East Asia’s importance in global history. We can see this clearly in the writings of one of the most wide-ranging but now largely neglected eighteenth-century Scottish authors: John Campbell (1708-1775). A leading contributor to the Universal History project (London, 1747-1766), Campbell wrote extensively on European settlements in the East Indies. For Campbell, the key benefit of disseminating knowledge of East Asia was the encouragement of commercial relationships that would elevate the wealth and power of Britain. His work illustrates the self-conscious realization of Europe’s peripheral status in regard to East Asian power and economy. Crucially, Campbell highlighted the central global historical dynamic of the enormous outflow of precious metals to Asia in the early modern era. His arguments contribute new details and insights to the perspective of Chinese economic historians such as Kenneth Pomeranz and Robert B. Marks who contend that the hegemony of a Western-dominated world system was both a historically contingent and very recent phenomenon.