Page 315 - Merchants and Mandarins China Trade Era

301.

As the Chinese only permitted foreigners at Canton to trade,

all facets of life in the port revolved around merchants and

commercial enterprise. Without the merchants• sanction, mis­

sionaries could not live and work in China. Yet missionaries

wanted more from the merchants than mere acceptance. Since

virtually all contact between foreigners and Chinese was com­

mercial, the missionaries needed the merchants• active as­

sistance, if they were to utilize this contact as an ingress

for their proselytism. Missionaries attempted to make the

merchants partners in their endeavor to Christianize the

Chinese. Consequently, missionaries repeatedly linked Western

commerce with Christianity. They argued that trade was a

function of expanding Western civilization, of which Christi-

anity was an integral part. The American missionaries, much

less complacent than American merchants about the restricted

commercial system in China, further maintained that foreign

commerce could expand unimpeded to all parts of the Celestial

Empire. This conclusion they based on observations of Chinese

at Canton and elsewhere and their receptivity to any kind of

foreign trade.

From the arrival of Bridgman and Abeel in 1830, Ameri­

can missionaries at Canton advocated the use of commerce to

open China to Western influence. The official missionary pub-

lication at Canton, Bridgman's Chinese Repository, constantly

emphasized the desire of the local people and their authorities

to trade with foreigners. Impediments to the free development

of such enterprise originated with provincial authorities from

the Imperial Court at Peking. One missionary wrote in the