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Christianity and so partly prepared the way for the foreign faith. Whatever its effects, however, the T'ai P'ing movement disappeared in the eighteen sixties, leaving behind it only a memory and the destruction it had wrought.

CHAPTER XVII

THE GRADUAL PENETRATION OF CHINA BY MISSIONARIES

(1856-1897)

INTRODUCTORY

ROMAN CATHOLIC MISSIONS

INTRODUCTORY

THE second war between China and Occidental powers and the second group of treaties were followed by about forty years of relatively uneventful intercourse between the Middle Kingdom and the West. Friction, to be sure, was frequent, and occasionally crises arose. Once, at the time of the Margary affair, in 1875 and 1876, war threatened with Great Britain. A few years later, in 1879, because of Kuldja, hostilities with Russia were narrowly averted. In 1884 and 1885 there was actual war with France. Some of China's outlying dependencies, never firmly attached to her rule, were seized by earth-hungry European powers. The trans-Ussuri region' and a part of Ili were lost to Russia, Chinese suzerainty over Burma was weakened by Great Britain, and that

over Tongking was cancelled by France. The Loo Choo Linchin (Ryukyu)

Islands passed to Japan, to be followed in 1895 by Formosa and the Pescadores. In 1895 the little remaining control over Korea was terminated. Occasionally, too, some new privilege within China was conceded to the foreigner, and now and again another city was added to the list of open ports. The pressure of Occidental commerce, governments, and culture continued to accumulate and foreign influences steadily penetrated the Empire. Ministers of foreign powers resided at Peking and consuls and merchants were to be found in growing numbers in the open ports. Foreign steamers plied the coastal waters and the lower reaches of the Yangtze. The Maritime Customs Service, organ

1 1 In 1860.

ized under foreign direction, not only collected the duties prescribed in the treaties but charted the coasts and began a postal department.

This growing contact with the West, however, was without a major crisis and effected but little apparent change in China. No thorough revision was made of the treaties which formed the legal basis of intercourse: relations between the Chinese and the peoples of the Occident continued largely on the terms of the agreements of 1842, 1844, 1858, and 1860. The question of altering the treaties was repeatedly raised, especially since the British. document of 1858 provided that at the end of ten years revision could be requested by either China or Great Britain. In 1867 the Tsungli Yamen sought the opinions of the viceroys and provincial governors on the main issues to be discussed, among them the increase of privileges to missionaries. No fundamental modifications were made, however. The Chefoo Convention (1876) made travel in the interior by foreigners, including missionaries, somewhat safer, and opened new ports to foreign residence, but it led to no great revolution in China's intercourse with the Occident. Under the vigorous but reactionary Empress Dowager the Manchu dynasty took on a new lease of life and opposed adjustment to the new conditions. Institutions and customs remained much the same as under K'ang Hsi and Ch'ien Lung. To be sure, legations were established in several Western capitals, an occasional telegraph line was built, a few miles of railway were constructed, iron works were opened at Hanyang, and at the urgent insistence of Yung Wing a few students were sent to America. There was little indication, however, of the upheaval which was soon to follow.

During the relatively quiet years between 1860 and 1897 both Protestant and Roman Catholic missionaries were steadily penetrating the country. They were soon scattered more widely than were the representatives of any other phase of Western activity, and had no small share in the transformation of Chinese culture which set in after 1897. As has been suggested before, this transformation would have occurred had never a missionary set foot in the land. Given the Industrial Revolution, it would have come as the result of the commercial and diplomatic pressure of the Occident and the consequent infiltration of new ideas. It is " Morse, International Relations of the Chinese Empire, Vol. 2, pp. 204-206.

not even certain that the missionary hastened the process. What he did was to affect the quality of the transformation by bringing China into contact with the highest spiritual and moral forces of the West. As we have said before-and it cannot be repeated too often-but for him the Chinese would have seen in the main only the materialistic and selfish side of Europe and America. When the inevitable breakdown came in the structure of the older Chinese life, Christian missionaries were on hand to aid the elements that were struggling for the moral and spiritual well-being of the country. The missionary was sometimes associated with the imperialistic designs of European powers, occasionally he was narrow and bigoted, but he came to China at great personal sacrifice, he worked devotedly for the welfare of the Chinese as he understood it, and through him new forces were set in motion which were to be of unmeasured benefit to many millions in the land of his adoption.

Roman Catholics, with the advantage of work begun centuries before, in the years between 1856 and 1897 were to register a large numerical growth and to rejoice in numerous and widespread Christian communities. For Protestants the years were distinctly ones of pioneering, of traversing territory and of gaining footholds in provinces and cities which had heretofore not known them. Their churches showed a large proportional increase both in numbers and membership, although, since they had so recently been begun, measured in figures their gains were not as great as were those of the Roman Catholics. They were, too, founding and developing schools and hospitals and were adding to their literature, thus following in the main the methods that had been outlined in the years before 1858.

THE EFFECT OF THE WAR OF 1856-1860

During the war of 1856 to 1860 Roman Catholics, both foreign and Chinese, were occasionally persecuted by the local authorities, probably in part because of their supposed connection with the enemy. In 1858 a missionary was captured at Jehol but was later conveyed safely to Shanghai. In the same year three Chinese Christians were killed in Kweichow and a vicar apostolic

* Mesnard from Jehol, Jan. 18, 1858, and from Shanghai, Apr. 19, 1858, in Annales de la propagation de la foi, Vol. 3, pp. 209, 232.

'Launay, Histoire des missions de Chine. Mission du Kuey-tcheou, Vol. 1, p. 509.

was apprehended in Hêngchow, Hunan, and sent to Canton." In December, 1859, an edict of persecution issued by Peking was put into effect in Chêkiang, Fukien, and Kiangsi, but not in Kiangnan. In 1860 there was persecution in Hupeh. During these years, however, the imperial and provincial authorities, perhaps because of the lack of national solidarity which was characteristic of China's attitude in the foreign wars of the period, were lenient with both missionaries and converts, and these did. not suffer at their hands nearly as much as from the T'ai P'ings. The sympathy of the Catholics was naturally with the Allies. The editor of Annales de la propagation de la foi saw in the bombardment of Canton by the French and English in December, 1857, the punishment of God for the blindness of the city to the missionaries; in March, 1859, a Te Deum was chanted in Hongkong in thanksgiving for the success of the British and French arms; and in Chihli in 1860 at the news of the capture of the Taku forts by the Allies Christians went from village to village proclaiming their joy.10

8

THE FRENCH PROTECTORATE

As we have seen, one of the effects of the treaties of 1844, 1858, and 1860 was to place both Roman Catholic missionaries and their converts under the ægis of the French Government. The motive of the French in establishing this protectorate was, obviously, not so much zeal for the Faith as a desire for prestige and power. French trade with China was not large, and, as in Cambodia, Annam, and Tongking, the chief basis for insisting that France be heard by the authorities was the claim to the guardianship over Roman Catholic missionaries. Even when, under the Third Republic, the French Government at home became first suspicious of and then hostile to the Church, French representatives in China continued to support it. The French Government seems never to have claimed the privilege, as had the Portuguese, of nominating bishops or confirming their appointment. It did, however, Annals of the Propagation of the Faith, Vol. 28, p. 81.

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7

Servière, Histoire de la mission du Kiangnan, Vol. 2, pp. 15 et seq.

Spelta from Hankow, May 16, 1861, in Annals of the Propagation of the Faith, Vol. 23, pp. 86-90.

8 Annales de la propagation de la foi, Vol. 30, p. 338.

9 Ibid., Vol. 30, p. 351.

10

Lebourg, Monseigneur Edouard Dubar, pp. 150-154.

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