고려대학교

초록/요약

The aim of the paper is to understand the political consciousness in the 19th century in regard to the changes of the ruling order and the transformation of political culture. Previous researches have viewed the common people's consciousness adapting economic determinism. Discourses of political culture could help overcoming the sharp conflict between common people's consciousness, or their movement and the suppression of economic determinism; and it could also provide a new clue to prospect the conflict in the broader stream of the social transformation. Starting from the 18th century, common people had been exposed more chances for education and their social status had been elevated. Confucian ideas and norms had also been distributed to the people. This social phenomenon was the important moment for the common people including the lower class to experience and internalized Confucian ideas. The phenomenon was also the process that common people could learn criteria to criticize the governing system and to urge benevolent rule. Moreover, communication channel for people to present their resentment and suffer was relatively open during king Jeongjo's reign. In this period, between the ruling class and the ruled class, the combination of the direct accusation against the tyrannical government of the local magistrates and, in answer to the accusation, the punishment for the failed local governor had settled down as a political culture. Yet, as the benevolent rule was abandoned in the 19th century, people tried to restore benevolent rule by themselves by expelling the local magistrates. That was the common people's uprising. Apologizing for abandoning benevolent rule, and promising to recover benevolent rule, kings could restore social order and maintain the ruling system. The executor of benevolent rule in the local society was magistrates in the level of people's uprising; however, it was the ruling clique in the central government in the level of Donghak Peasant War. To achieve their goal, people had developed a new political consciousness even dealing with a king.