Charles Dallet’s History of the Korean Church: 150 Years Later

Charles Dallet is today only remembered, if at all, for his two-volume Histoire de l’Eglise de Corée,1 which was published in May 1874. It was the first full-length book about Korea ever published in the West except for various texts published in several languages around 1700 that were based on the account by Hendrick Hamel of his time in Korea, or on Chinese sources. It has never been revised, translated, or edited (except in Korean). In recent years I have been translating Dallet’s work into English, modernizing his romanization of Korean names and adding a comprehensive set of footnotes, which include a precise identification of the persons he names, together with indications of the sources on which Dallet was drawing when he was not simply following Bishop Daveluy’s draft History. This has involved collecting all the main documents available for the period covered by Dallet, whether used by him or not, and translating many of them into English.