Reverse engineering as history and method: The Portuguese espingarda in Chosŏn Korea

Abstract

ABSTRACT How does one reverse engineer a technical artefact, let alone build a system of knowledge, use, and production around it? This article investigates Korean artisans and practitioners in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries, and their efforts to understand and rebuild the Portuguese espingarda (matchlock musket). What emerges, first, is a hitherto untold story of how a global artefact became reconstituted in Korea – a process that generated new practices, practitioners, and unexpected innovations. In telling this story, a second, methodological contribution is made: the demonstration of a hands-on approach to historical research that investigates material objects and, in this case, does so through the very act of reverse engineering, defined here as mechanical dissection.