Page 317 - Merchants and Mandarins China Trade Era

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The Board, having already heard of Charles Gutzlaff s voyages

along the China coast, enthusiastically supported the co-op­

eration of missionaries and merchants in enterprises of trade
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an d prose 1 t. ism. 7 As the American missionaries sent back
y
reports of their own participation in coastal voyages, the

Board of Commissioners sagely printed the journals and letters

in its publication the Missionary Herald. These descriptions

of the coast usually emphasized the natives• "readiness to

seize opportunities of intercourse, and especially trade, with
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us Li.e., the foreigner_§_/."

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Missionaries efforts to expand their work through
foreign trade was a natural outgrowth of the central position

occupied by commercial enterprise in foreign contact with the

Chinese. They therefore sought assistance from the foreign

merchants at Canton. Since interest in foreign missions was
a relatively new phenomenon in English and American Protes­

tantism, the mission societies which supported the China mission

were not yet prosperous. The foreign merchant community at

Canton, living in obvious luxury, constituted a natural source

of prospective donors. To involve the merchants, the mission­

aries formed philanthropic societies which supported the

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Instructions, American Board of Cornrnissioners to S. W.
Williams & I. Tracy, Jun. 1833, in Missionary Herald, XXIX,
8 (August 1833), 274.
28 . .
Missionary Hera ld , XXXII, 2 ( February 1836 , 79. One
)
American missionary noted in his journal that foreign trade had
an impact on all Chinese who engaged in it with Westerners. He
concluded that if Christianity did not follow in the steps
of commerce, foreign trade could have a deleterious effect on
Chinese society by prejudicing them against Christianity. Mis­
sionary Herald, XXXI, 2 (February 1835), 69.