Robert Morrison (1782–1834), the first Protestant missionary to operate in China, was sent alone to his East Asian post by the London Missionary Society (LMS) in 1807. He spent more than half of his life (he died at his station in Guangzhou, China) planting a foothold in China for the benefit of the Protestant missionary movement, and, consequently, established the foundation upon which all subsequent Protestant missions to China rested. To list but a few of his achievements, Morrison composed the first Chinese translation of the New Testament, produced the first Chinese-English dictionary and grammar, recorded the first conversions...

This story begins in 1660 with the restoration of the House of Stuart, commenced by Parliament’s offering of the throne to an exiled Charles II and the consequent conclusion of the period of parliamentary and military rule known as the English Interregnum. At this stage in its history, England was recovering from involvement in the Thirty Years’ War (1618–48), as well as from three consecutive ‘civil wars’ (1642–46, 1648–49, 1649–51), which were collectively referred to as the English Civil War (despite the wars’ inclusions of clashes with and civil wars within other countries, notably Scotland and...

Guided by the ‘Report on Missionary Training’, presented in the previous chapter, David Bogue began to develop a three-year training programme which included lessons on biblical languages, evangelical theologies, rhetoric skills, and mission histories. Since ‘the design [of the programme] being to confine their education to theology, at least, with such slender additions of languages as might be compatible with the shortness of time’, Bogue weighted his efforts towards instilling evangelical theologies into the missionaries’ worldviews.¹ In terms of the strategy he proposed for communicating the Gospel, Bogue suggested ‘that the missionary be carefully trained to inculcate the heathen with...

Speaking at Gosport, David Bogue estimated that at the time of Morrison’s studentship the world’s population consisted of 600,000,000 pagans, 200,000,000 of which were ‘Mahometans’ and at least 3,000,000 of which were Jews.¹ He further approximated that these 600,000,000 ‘heathen’ were dispersed throughout a vast range of nations, all of which the tutor felt eventually needed to be converted by the LMS, but some of which were more important and, accordingly, he prioritised. To produce such a hierarchy of priorities, Bogue claimed to use the locations selected by the Apostles when he submitted that the LMS must address ‘civilised countries’...

On September 4, 1807 the Trident docked on the coast of Macau and on September 6, 1807,¹ more than seven months after departing Great Britain, Robert Morrison arrived at Shamian Island, below the city walls of Canton.² While in Macau he met with George Staunton and other East India Company officials, such as William Chalmers, as well as with other British residents, including Thomas Manning, all of whom warned him of the physical dangers implied by his missionary status.³ Their early concerns for Morrison’s mission were threefold: the East India Company forbade Britons not employed by them to remain in...

As already noted, William Milne began translating David Bogue’s lecture notes for the China Mission’s seminary at the beginning of 1814¹ and he continued to work on this translation during his tour of Southeast Asia.² He acknowledged that translating the tutor’s notes was valiant,³ but he predicted that the directors would be pleased with the plan: ‘I do not know any system of theological lectures equally unexceptionable or that would be more generally approved of by the body of Protestant Churches as those just mentioned.’⁴ Upon completion, the notes were to provide the foundation for the first Protestant Christian academy...

After Robert Morrison’s death in 1834, his pioneering mission became the focus of a hagiographical discourse. Such writings narrated the pioneering mission as phenomenal, drawing attention to its chain of accomplishments, whilst failing to get to grips with the complex processes through which they were obtained by the missionary. Surprisingly, the participants in the idolising discourse were not met with any major competition from the academic disciplines of sinology, history, or religious studies. The disengagement and resulting ignorance on the part of the scholarly world is unfortunate because, as a consequence, the hagiographies have been entrusted by academics with the...