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An Information War Waged by Merchants and Missionaries at Canton: The Society for the Diffusion of Useful Knowledge in China, 1834–1839*

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  05 December 2011

SONGCHUAN CHEN
SONGCHUAN CHEN*
Affiliation:
Nanyang Technological University, HSS, #05-12, 14 Nanyang Drive, Singapore 637332. Email: chensongchuan@gmail.com
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Abstract

This paper explores the efforts and impact of the Society for the Diffusion of Useful Knowledge in China (1834–1839), which existed during the five years before the First Opium War. It contends that the Society represented a third form of British engagement with the Chinese, alongside the diplomatic attempts of 1793 and 1816, and the military conflict of 1839–1842. The Society waged an ‘information war’ to penetrate the information barrier that the Qing had established to contain European trade and missions. The foreigners in Canton believed they were barred from further access to China because the Chinese had no information on the true character of the Europeans. Thus, they prepared ‘intellectual artillery’ in the form of Chinese language publications, especially on world geography, to distribute among the Chinese, in the hope that this effort would familiarize the Chinese with the science and art of Westerners and thereby cultivate respect and a welcoming atmosphere. The war metaphor was conceived, and the information war was waged, in the periphery of the British informal empire in Canton, but it contributed to the conceptualization of war against China, both in Canton and in Britain, in the years before actual military action. Behind the rhetoric of war and knowledge diffusion in Canton, lay a convergence of interests between merchants and missionaries, which drove both to employ information and military power to further their shared aim of opening China up for trade and proselytizing.

Type
Research Article
Information
Modern Asian Studies , Volume 46 , Issue 6 , November 2012 , pp. 1705 - 1735
Copyright
Copyright © Cambridge University Press 2011

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Footnotes

*

This work was supported by the British Economic and Social Research Council (RES-062-23-1057). The draft of this paper was presented to the 2008 ‘Bridge between Cultures’ Conference, Washington DC, and to the Department of East Asian Studies, Cambridge University. I am grateful for the thoughtful comments received. My thanks also to Lars Peter Laamann, Nicolas Standaert, Felix Boecking, Hans van de Ven and Susan Daruvala who read the draft of the paper and made invaluable suggestions.

References

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6 Ulrike Hillemann argues that the changing perceptions of China made war against the country imaginable; see Asian Empire and British Knowledge: China and the Networks of British Imperial Expansion (London: Palgrave Macmillan, 2009), pp. 104–105.

7 Some key works redressing the relations between British imperial metropolis and periphery: Bayly, C. A., Imperial Meridian: the British Empire and the World 1780–1830 (London and New York: Longman, 1989)Google Scholar; and Empire and Information: Intelligence Gathering and Social Communication in India, 1780–1870 (Cambridge and New York: Cambridge University Press, 1996). Also, Wilson, Kathleen (ed.), A New Imperial History: Culture, Identity and Modernity in Britain and the Empire, 1660–1840 (Cambridge, Cambridge University Press, 2004)Google Scholar.

8 Greenberg, Michael, British Trade and the Opening of China, 1800–42 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1969), pp. 15–16Google Scholar, and Chapter II.

9 ‘Prize Essay’, Canton Register 4:12 (18 June 1831). The Register was the first English newspaper at Canton, founded by James Matheson.

10 ‘Civilization’, Canton Miscellany, pp. 11–12. The Miscellany was published by the East India Company staff in Canton.

11 ‘Progress Society’, Register 5:5 (8 March 1832).

12 ‘The Press in China’, Register 6:6 (31 May 1833).

13 ‘Prospectus of a Monthly Periodical in the Chinese Language’, Register 6:10 (15 July 1833). For Karl Gützlaff, see Lutz, Jessie, Opening China: Karl F. A. Gützlaff and Sino-Western Relations, 1827–1852 (Cambridge: Wm. B. Eerdmans, 2008)Google Scholar.

14 Greenberg, British Trade, pp. 139–140. For Gützlaff's account on the voyage see Karl Gützlaff, Journal of Three Voyages along the Coast of China, in 1831, 1832 & 1833.

15 ‘Chinese Monthly Magazine’, Register 7:15 (15 April 1834); ‘The Chinese Magazine’, Chinese Courier and Canton Gazette 3:6 (23 September 1833); and ‘The Chinese Magazine’, Chinese Repository 2:5 (Septembre 1834), 234–236. Chinese Courier was founded by the American merchants W. W. Wood, and the Chinese Repository was a monthly journal on Asia published by missionaries.

16 For the Society, see Smith, Harold, The Society for the Diffusion of Useful Knowledge 1826–1846 (Halifax, Nova Scotia: Dalhousie University, 1974)Google Scholar.

17 ‘Literary Notices’, Repository 2:7 (Nov 1833), 329–331.

18 ‘Society for the Diffusion of Useful Knowledge in China’, Register 7:26 (1 July 1834).

19 For Napier affairs, see Beeching, The Chinese Opium Wars.

20 Register 7:49 (9 December 1834).

21 For Brougham, see Michael Lobban, ‘Brougham, Henry Peter, first Baron Brougham and Vaux (1778–1868)’, in Oxford Dictionary of National Biography (www.oxforddnb.com [accessed 23 October 2011]).

22 For the regulations of the Society, see Register 7:49 (9 December 1834).

23 For the circulation of the Chinese Repository, see Repository 5:4 (August 1836), 159–160.

24 ‘First Report of the Society for the Diffusion of Useful Knowledge in China’, Repository, 4:8 (December 1835), 354–361; For the argument concerning the over-used terms of ‘tribute system’ and ‘Sinocentrism’, see Wills, John E. Jr., ‘Tribute, Defensiveness, and Dependency: Uses and Limits of Some Basic Ideas about Mid-Qing Dynasty Foreign Relations’, The American Neptune 48 (Fall 1988)Google Scholar.

25 ‘Second Report of the Society for the Diffusion of Useful Knowledge in China’, Repository 5:11 (March 1837), 507–513.

26 ‘The Third Annual Report of the Society for the Diffusion of Useful Knowledge in China’, Repository 6:7 (November 1837), 334–340.

27 Ibid.

28 ‘The Third Annual Report’, Repository 6:7 (November 1837).

29 ‘Fourth Annual Report of the Society for the Diffusion of Useful Knowledge in China’, Repository 7:8 (December 1838), 400–401.

30 See Yuezhi, Xiong, Xixue dongjian yu wanqing shehui (The Eastwards Diffusion of Western Knowledge, and the Late Qing Society (Shanghai: Shanghai renmin chubanshe, 1994), p. 171Google Scholar.

31 Rubinstein, The Origins, p. 131.

32 ‘The Third Annual Report’, p. 334.

33 ‘First Report’, pp. 354–355; and ‘The Third Annual Report’, pp. 335–356. For the translated term, see Aihanzhe (ed.) Dongxiyangkao (Eastern Western Monthly Magazine), p. 185.

34 The term ‘devils’ originated in the context of European pirates on the south China coast during the early years of the encounter between China and the West. See Liu, Lydia, The Clash of Empires (Cambridge, Massachusetts; London: Harvard University Press, 2006), pp. 96–107Google Scholar.

35 For Samuel Dyer and Legrand working on movable type, see Jing, Su, Malixun yu zhongwen yinshua chuban (Robert Morrison and Chinese Printing (Taipei: Xuesheng shuju, 2000), pp. 191–202Google Scholar.

36 ‘First Report’, p. 356; ‘Second Report’, pp. 512–513; and ‘The Third Annual Report’, p. 339.

37 For the English version of Napier's placard, see ‘Interesting to the Chinese Merchants’, Register 7:35 (2 September 1834). For the voyage to Fujian, see Edwin Steven's account in Repository 4:2 (June 1835), 82–96.

38 ‘Chinese Monthly Magazine’, Register 7:15 (15 April 1834).

39 ‘First Report’, p. 357. For the opium-receiving boats, see Peter Ward Fay, The Opium War, 1840–1842, Chapter 4.

40 The book titles in the column ‘publications proposed’ are as given at the meetings of the Society.

41 ‘First Report’.

42 ‘The Fourth Annual Report’, p. 403.

43 ‘Freedom of Press in China’, Register 8:38 (22 September 1835). In Steven's account, only Christian books were mentioned, but when the Register complained about the Canton authorities searching for those Chinese who assisted in the writing and printing of the tracts, it alluded to the distribution of the magazine.

44 ‘First report’, p. 356. ‘Second Report’, p. 512. ‘The Third Annual Report’, pp. 339–340. ‘The Fourth Annual Report’, pp. 403–404. For the publication and distribution of the magazine, see Huang Shijian, ‘Daoyan (Introduction)’ in Dongxiyangkao (Eastern Western Monthly Magazine), pp. 3–35.

45 ‘First Report’, pp. 359–360.

46 For the personal distribution of Bridgman's book, see Lazich, E. C. Bridgman, p. 144 and p. 154. For Bridgman's revision of the treatise, see Xiong, Xixue Dongjian, pp.117–118.

47 Xiong, Xixue Dongjian, pp. 220–226; and Jing, Su, Zhongguo kaimen: malixun ji xiangguan renwu yanjiu (China Opening up: A Study on Robert Morrison and Other People; Hong Kong: Jidujiao Zhongguo zongjiao wenhua yianjioushe, 2005), pp. 226–232Google Scholar. For a discussion of the letter to Queen Victoria, see Lydia Liu, The Clash of Empires.

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49 Xiong, Xixue Dongjian, pp. 255–266. For Wei Yuan, see Barnett, Susanne Wilson, ‘Wei Yuan and Westerners: Notes on the Sources of Haikuo t'u chih’, in Qingshi wenti 2:1 (November 1970)Google Scholar; and Leonard, Jane, Wei Yuan and China's Rediscovery of the Maritime World (Cambridge, Massachusetts: Harvard University Press, 1984)CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

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52 Fred Drake, ‘E. C. Bridgman's Portrayal of the West’; Lazich, ‘The Diffusion of Useful Knowledge in China’, p. 316. Also Lazich, E. C. Bridgman (1801–1861), p. 120.

53 For merchants’ opinions on waging war with China, see Greenberg, British Trade, pp. 196–197; for missionaries’ opinions, see Rubinstein, ‘The Wars They Wanted: American Missionaries’ use of The Chinese Repository before the Opium War’, American Neptune 48 (Fall 1988); also, the Register throughout the 1830s.

54 ‘To the King's most Excellent Majesty in Council, the Petition of the Undermentioned British Subjects at Canton’, in Le Pichon, Alain (ed.), China Trade and Empire (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2006), pp. 560–563Google Scholar; see also Register 7:50 (16 December 1834) and 7:52 (30 December 1834).

55 Melancon, Glenn, Britain's China Policy and the Opium Crisis: Balancing Drugs, Violence, and National Honor, 1833–1840 (Aldershot: Ashgate, 2003), pp. 41–44Google Scholar.

56 ‘To the King's most Excellent Majesty in Council’.

57 Hillemann, Asian Empire and British Knowledge, p. 168.

58 Rubinstein, ‘The Wars They Wanted’.

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60 ‘First Report’, p. 355.

61 ‘Proceedings’, pp. 380–381; ‘First Report’, p. 361. ‘Second Report’, p. 507; ‘The Third Annual Report’, p. 340; and ‘The Fourth Annual Report’, p. 410. There are three individuals, William Bell, Cox, and Thomas Fox, on whom further study is required to identify their roles in the Canton trade.

62 ‘Proceedings Relative to the Formation of the Morrison Education Society’, Repository 5:8 (December 1836), 373–381; also in NAUK, FO17/9. For the funding of the Medical Missionary Society, see Colledge, T. R. and Parker, Peter, Address and Minutes of Proceedings of the Medical Missionary Society (Canton: Chinese Repository, 1838)Google Scholar.

63 ‘Suggestions for the Formation of a Medical Missionary Society’, Repository 5:8 (December 1836), 370–373, quotation 372–373.

64 ‘Second Report’, p. 513.

65 ‘The Chinese Magazine’, Repository 2:5 (September 1834), 235.

66 ‘Second Report’, p. 510. ‘Third Report’, Repository 6:7 (November 1837), 339.

67 Rubinstein, The Origins, p. 135.

68 ‘Society for the Diffusion of Useful Knowledge in China’, Register 11:32 (7 August 1838).

69 ‘The Fourth Annual Report’, p. 407.

70 Ibid., p. 408. For the original regulation, see ‘Proceedings’, p. 383.

71 Lutz, Opening China, pp. 90–91, pp. 99–116; and Lazich, E. C. Bridgman.

72 Cohen, Paul A., ‘Christian Missions and their Impact to 1900’, in The Cambridge History of China vol. 10 Late Ch'ing, 1800–1911 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1978), pp. 543–590Google Scholar.

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75 For William Jardine's participation and the so-called ‘Jardine plan’, see Fay, The Opium War, 1840–1842, pp. 215–216 and Beeching, The Chinese Opium Wars, pp. 110–112. For the significant role that John Morrison played during the First Opium War and in the negotiation of the Treaty of Nanjing, see Su Jing, Zhongguo Kaimen, pp. 191–198.

76 ‘William Jardine in London to James Matheson in China’, in Le Pichon (ed.) China Trade and Empire, pp. 387–388, 411.

77 See also Hillemann, Asian Empire and British Knowledge, pp. 34–106.

78 For the Jesuits portrait of China see Mungello, David E., Curious Land: Jesuit Accommodation and the Origins of Sinology (Stuttgart: Franz Steiner, 1985)Google Scholar; and Brockey, Lian Matthew, Journey to the East: the Jesuit Mission to China, 1579–1724 (Cambridge Massachusetts; London: Harvard University Press, 2007)CrossRefGoogle Scholar. For changing perceptions of China see Marshall, P. J., and Williams, Glyndwr, The Great Map of Mankind: British Perceptions of the World in the Age of Enlightenment (London, Melbourne and Toronto: J. M. Dent & Son, 1982)Google Scholar; and Ulrike Hillemann, Asian Empire and British Knowledge. For perceptions of China in general in this period see Markley, Robert, The Far East and the English Imagination, 1600–1730 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2006)Google Scholar.

79 For rebellion of the Qing and its relation to Christianity in China see, Kuhn, Philip A., Rebellion and its Enemies in Late Imperial China: Militarization and Social Structure, 1796–1864. (Cambridge, Massachusetts: Harvard University Press, 1970)Google Scholar. Naquin, Susan, Millenarian Rebellion in China: the Eight Trigrams Uprising of 1813 (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1976)Google Scholar. Yang, C. K., Religion in Chinese Society; a Study of Contemporary Social Functions of Religion and Some of Their Historical Factors (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1961)Google Scholar. Laamann, Lars, Christian Heretics in Late Imperial China: Christian Inculturation and State Control, 1720–1850 (London and New York: Routledge, 2006)Google Scholar.

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81 Su Jing, Zhongguo Kaimen, p. 123.