Page 321 - Merchants and Mandarins China Trade Era

307.
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interest in educating Chinese youths.

Bridgman, with the help of J. Robert Morrison, organ­

ized the Morrison Education Society. Its stated object was to

11
improve and promote education in China by schools and other

means. 11 More explicitly, the missionaries aimed at bringing

to the Chinese all the varied learning of the western world. 11
11
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Part of this instruction would include the English language.
Already the missionaries had attempted to establish classes at

Canton, but they lacked the funds for adequate rooms and equip­

ment. They counted on the Education Society to provide the

funds for such necessities. The missionaries created a Board

of Trustees, composed of five residents in China, to promote

the founding of a school and to oversee the finances connected

with it. Most members and officers were English merchants.

The Education Society superceded the Society for the Diffusion

of Useful Knowledge, although the Education Society was slow

in realizing the missionaries• goals. At the first annual

meeting in September 1837, the Board of Trustees admitted that

the preceding year had been one of preparation rather than of
11

32
George H. Danton, in The Cultural Contact of the
United States and China: The Earliest Sino-American Culture
Contact, 1784-1844 (New York, 1931), p. 55, credits Bridgman
with responsibility for the Morrison Education Society.
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chinese Reposit�ry, V, 8 (December 1836), 375 reports
on the meeting held to establish the Society. Williams, Middle
Kingdom, II, 343. Danton, Culture Contact of the United States
and China, pp. 52-53. Danton claims that the missionaries
included the instruction of English in the curriculum to attract
the support of foreign merchants 2n the missionaries themselves
were sa�isfied to teach in Chinese.