Page 324 - Merchants and Mandarins China Trade Era

310.

included their physical and intellectual well-being as well as

their spiritual state. Such interest often overshadowed the

ordinary religious activities of preaching and baptizing. The

initial lack of success in converting the Chinese to Christianity,

a very depressing experience for Bridgman and the other Americans,

probably reinforced the missionaries• enthusiasm for benevolent

work which produced tangible results. Missionaries ration­

alized that through schools and hospitals they reached poten­

tial candidates for Christianity and exposed men to the tenets

of that faith. At the very least, missionaries concluded, the

secular operations manifested Western philanthropy. Their

encouragement of the latter, furthermore, had struck a respon­

sive chord among the foreign mercantile community at Canton.
As the missionaries campaigned to introduce Western

values and culture into China, the English merchants supported
3
th ese missionary en eavors. 9 Imperial restrictions embodied
.
d
.
11
in the 11Canton system frustrated these men who agitated for
the Western concept of free trade. After the private English

traders gained ascendancy at Canton in 1834, proponents of

this view swelled dramatically. Convinced that the philan-

thropic societies founded by missionaries constituted one

channel of acquainting Chinese with the West, the merchants

readily offered their support. American, as well as English,

merchants joined the various mission societies. But the ex-

tent of American participation seemed to be more apparent

3 9 Barnett, in "Americans as Humanitarians," p. 10, and
Danton, Culture Contacts of the United States and China, pp. 52-53,
lump the American merchants together with the English, but the
Americans were not so anxious to change the system.