Snapshot Christian History - Robert Morrison and Racism
The First Protestant Missionary to China Harbored Disparaging Views of the Chinese
Eliza Morrison. Memoirs of the Life and Labours Robert Morrison. Volume 1. London : Longman, Orme, Brown, and Longmans, 1839. http://archive.org/details/memoirsoflifelab01morr.
Robert Morrison (1782-1834) was a British Presbyterian Protestant missionary to China, sent to Canton as a member of the London Missionary Society by 1807. He is acknowledged as the first Protestant missionary to China. While he has been especially revered in Chinese evangelical circles, controversial parts of his legacy are often left out of the discussions.
Apart from his legacy as a missionary was his role as a well-paid translator for the East Indian Company from 1809 till his death, the monopolistic English company which facilitated the opium trade illegally to Qing China. Financially speaking, he had it made. He managed to baptize just 10 converts in 27 years during what was a difficult operating environment for missionaries in China.
In his work introducing China to the Western world, A View of China (1817), Morrison demonstrated his low view of Chinese culture:
Abstract Science, or the Fine Arts can learn nothing from China
And of the Chinese people, Morrison saw them as godless and degenerate:
the Chinese are Specious, but Insincere, Jealous, Envious, and Distrustful to a high degree. There is amongst them a considerable prevalence of scepticism; of a Sadducean, and rather Atheistical spirit; and their conduct is very generally such as one would naturally expect from a people whose minds feel not that sense of Divine Authority, nor that reverence for the Divine Majesty and Goodness which in Sacred Scripture is denominated the 'Fear of God.' Conscience has few checks but the laws of the land; and a little frigid ratiocination, on the fitness and propriety of things, which is not generally found effectual to restrain, when the selfish and vicious propensities of our nature, may be indulged with present impunity. The Chinese are generally selfish, cold-blooded, and inhumane.
In a later work, A Memoir of the principal occurrences during an embassy from the British Government to the Court of China (1820), Morrison went on to illicit his view of the Chinese as “Barbarians”:
If ‘barbarity’ or being ‘barbarous’ express something savage, rude and cruel, the present inhabitants of China do not deserve the epithet; if it expresses a cunning, selfish policy, endeavouring to deceive, to intimidate, or to brow-beat, as occasion may require, connected with an arrogant assumption of superiority on all occasions, instead of cultivating a liberal, candid, friendly intercourse with men of other nations, they are Barbarians.
The Morrison Education Society was later founded in Morrison’s memory in Macau and subsequently relocated to Morrison Hill in Hong Kong, during the few years of its existence. The school provided education to the ethnic Chinese towards their Westernization. Even though the hill in Hong Kong was eventually demolished, the area still bears Morrison’s name.
Also worthy of note is his son John Robert Morrison, a British interpreter and colonial official responsible for dipolmacy for the British government. He was notably involved in the Treaty of Nanking of 1842, which forced Qing China to lease Hong Kong as a British colony in the aftermath of the military conflict in the First Opium War.
As this period of history coincided with White Anglo-Saxon supremacist imperialist attitudes, and it could be argued that this was part of Morrison’s belief system as well, as evidenced in these racist attitudes towards the Chinese. If Morrison has been upheld as such a representative figure of Protestant missions to China, these forms of imperialistic attitudes can only be expected for later missionary efforts towards the Chinese. And especially for those of us who identify as Chinese and as Protestant Christians, how do we adjust our attitudes towards Chinese culture with this in mind?
See also:
Smith, Carl T. Chinese Christians : Elites, Middlemen, and the Church in Hong Kong. Vol. New ed. Echoes: Classics of Hong Kong Culture and History. Hong Kong: Hong Kong University Press, 2005.
Ying, Fuk-Tsang. “Evangelist at the Gate: Robert Morrison’s Views on Mission.” The Journal of Ecclesiastical History 63, no. 2 (April 2012): 306–30. https://doi.org/10.1017/S0022046910001107.