The History of Korea (vol. 1 of 2)

This volume, published in 1905 when Korea faced losing its sovereign status to imperial Japan, represents one of the earliest comprehensive histories of Korea written in English by a Western scholar. Homer B. Hulbert spent over two decades in Korea and drew extensively from native Korean sources, offering a perspective rare for its time. The book traces the peninsula's civilization from its legendary origins with Tan-gun and Ki-ja through centuries of dynastic rule, examining Korea's distinctive cultural development, its governance systems, and how it maintained independence despite being surrounded by powerful neighbors. Hulbert's work matters not only as historical scholarship but as a window into how Korea's own historians understood their past at a moment when that nation stood at the precipice of colonization.