『乘槎錄』을 통해 본 19세기 강남의 水運과 物質文明 -표류 지식인 최두찬의 지리․문화 인식 연구-

초록

Seungsarok (乘槎錄) is a remarkable account written by Choi Du-chan (崔斗燦), a Joseon scholar who, along with some fifty companions, drifted for sixteen days from Jeju Island before arriving on the shores of Jiangnan in 1818. The text documents approximately six months of travel through Qing China before the group's eventual return home. This paper aims to reconstruct the actual conditions of Jiangnan's water transport civilization in the nineteenth century through Choi's perspective as a castaway, and to illuminate the gap between the idealized image of Jiangnan that Joseon intellectuals had constructed over centuries and the material reality he witnessed firsthand. During the northward journey by waterway (May 17–June 23), Choi closely observed the Grand Canal system and recognized that the water transport network was not merely a means of conveyance but the defining infrastructure of commercial urban formation and logistics across Jiangnan. In five supplementary essays—on dwellings, clothing, agriculture, tombs, and boats and carriages—he systematically analyzed the internal logic of Jiangnan society, in which commercial capital had dismantled status hierarchies and specialization had become the norm of daily life. This encounter with material civilization proved decisive in transforming Choi's Sinocentrist self-perception (小中華 Sojunghwa) from an ideological given into a self-determined civilizational standpoint. While acknowledging Qing China's material prosperity and pragmatic rationality, he characterized it as "barbarian territory wearing the mask of Junghwa," a land where moral values such as righteousness (ui 義) and trustworthiness (sin 信) had dissolved. At the same time, as his analysis of the essay on tombs reveals, he criticized irrational geomantic practices within Joseon itself. Navigating between the spiritual void of Qing pragmatism and the superstitious irrationality of Joseon custom, Choi sought a "third path" that would accept Qing rationality while preserving the essence of Confucian values. Seungsarok is not merely a castaway narrative but a reflective record of a Joseon intellectual forging a new civilizational vision at the crossroads of material and spiritual worlds.

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