Page 298 - Merchants and Mandarins China Trade Era

284.

1
During the 1820 s the American Board gradually developed
an interest in establishing a mission in China. The Board's de­

sire to expand into China was stimulated by Robert Morrison, an

English missionary at Canton. Although Morrison had gone to

Canton in 1807 as a representative of the London Missionary

Society, from the time he left England he had created strong

ties with Americans. Opposition on the part of the East India
Company to missionary activities at Canton had forced Morrison

to look elsewhere for a passage to China. He traveled to New

York, where American merchants offered to convey him to Canton.

Morrison obtained from Secretary of State James Madison a

letter of introduction to American Consul Edward C. Carrington
3
at Canton. In the years after his arrival in China, Morrison

corresponded with various Americans interested in the China

mission. At the same time the newly-formed American mission

societies developed close connections with such groups in

England, where missionary evangelism had fostered their forma­

tion. In fact, the founders of the American Board of Commiss­

ioners modelled their organization on the London Missionary

Society.

In 1818 Robert Ralston, a Philadelphia merchant also

interested in foreign missions, proposed to the American Board

"that one of the Board's representatives in India spend four

months of each year in Whampoa to preach to English-speaking

3
Kenneth S. Latourette, "The Story of Early Relations
between the United States and China, 1784-1844," Transactions
of the Connecticut Academy of Arts and Sciences, Vol. XXII (New
Haven, 1917), pp. 85-89. During his first year of residency at
Canton, Morrison lived at the establishment of American agents
Milner & Bull.