earticle

영어

This paper examined botanical practices by To Pong-Sup(1904~?), Tokyo-trained Korean botanist in colonial Korea, to highlight an understudied part in colonial history of science. Historians of science have successfully revealed the ‘imperial’ nature of scientific practices in colonial peripheries, utilized as practical and ideological tools of empire. However, they did not pay enough attention to scientific practices conducted by the colonized themselves. By focusing on the agency of To in carving out botanical practices that were not the absorption of imperial science but the independent production of local, “Korean” science, this paper attempted three things. Firstly, it showed that what used to be seen as the acceptance of “imperial science,” thus that of “the civilizing mission,” could be a very anti-imperial search for differentiated knowledge practice. Secondly, by tracing his nationalism in the making, it sought to highlight complex opportunities that nationalism brought to many people at the age of imperialism. His sensible choice of “Korean” botany under colonial restraints on his career development was much less indicative of his self-sacrificing commitment than of the creative agency that the colonized could devise in overcoming insurmountable power of empire governing their lives. Lastly, it enriched our understanding of colonial science biased to science at the center by showing a local botany in the periphery, concurrently being made by the initiative of the colonized.