from the chief temple at Chusan
Harbour of Chusan, 4 July 1840
Conference between Commodore Sir James John Gordon Bremer and Chang, the Chinese Admiral (Governor of Chusan) and the Chief Mandarin, on board H.M. Ship Wellesley on the 4th July 1841
Coloured lithograph by J.H. Lynch after Darell, published January 1842.
As the paddle steamer Atalanta towed the 74 gun flagship of an invading fleet, HMS Wellesley, into the harbour, she struck a sand bank. Those on deck thought the smaller steamer would be smashed ‘to a thousand shivers’ but the Wellesley also caught the bottom, only grazing the steamer’s side and knocking off her starboard paddle-box.1
Zhoushan’s shoreline appeared to be covered by a ‘forest of merchant-craft’, with eleven ‘war-junks… easily distinguished by their flaunting streamers, red-muzzled guns, and painted poops’ forming a protective line in front of them.2 The Wellesley anchored opposite the town of Dinghai. The Conway (26 guns), Alligator (28 guns) and Rattlesnake (troopship) followed her into the harbour and took up positions near a hill with a temple on its summit.3
John Fletcher, Captain of the Wellesley, Robert Jocelyn, Military Secretary, and Karl Gützlaff, their translator (and a missionary), boarded the ‘Chumpin’ or Admiral’s junk, three tiger’s heads painted on its stern. Unwelcome visitors, they were nevertheless greeted ‘with great civility’, told the Admiral was on shore, and offered tea.4
In his account of these events, published the following year, Jocelyn noted that it was ‘not such as ladies in England would approve of, for the Chinese always drink it so weak that the water is barely tinged, and the leaves of the plant form a necessary part of the nauseous mixture’.5 The English had clearly already developed their own ideas about tea drinking!
After half an hour, Admiral Zhang Chaofa returned to his ship, where Gützlaff presented him with a written summons in Chinese, informing him of their intention to occupy the island. He was invited to surrender to avoid any bloodshed and given an hour for his answer.
Before the hour was up a number of senior Chinese officials transferred to the Wellesley, declining Fletcher and Jocelyn’s offer to remain behind as hostages. On the Wellesley they met Commodore James Bremer, Commander-in-Chief, who reiterated his orders. Accepting an offer of sweet wine, the Chinese officials complained at being made responsible for the actions of their colleagues at Canton (who had destroyed stocks of opium a year earlier), informing the Commodore that they would nevertheless do their duty in defending the island.6
Harry Darell, aide-de-camp to Brigadier-General George Burrell who was commander of the landing troops, sketched the meeting, wine glasses and a decanter on the table in front of the Chinese delegation. Two years later, his sketch became the basis for an acquaint print. At its centre is Gützlaff, the only man wearing no obvious signs of rank.
How did a missionary come to occupy such a central role in an invasion which, during the twentieth century, came to be regarded as the beginning of China’s ‘century of humiliation’? How did a catalogue of the Missionary Museum, printed around 1860, come to include an ‘Idol taken in the late war, from the chief temple at Chusan’?
Back home, the East India Company was under pressure from British manufacturers, who felt the Company was content with its profits from the trade in tea alone. The Lord Amherst, therefore, took two hundred bales of British goods to see if they would sell. Gützlaff also took a selection of tracts, as well as copies of Morrison’s Bible translation, distributing these wherever the Lord Amhert stopped while offering medical treatment.15
To answer at least the first of these questions, we have to return to Robert Morrison, the original LMS missionary in China. He had found his foothold as a translator for the East India Company at Canton (Guangzhou), attempting to serve two masters. The promise of mainland China, with its unconverted population of hundreds of millions, was central to Morrison’s appeals for missionary recruits during the time he spent in Britain between March 1824 and May 1826 (Chapter 9).
A number of those who studied Chinese in London with Morrison subsequently volunteered. One of these, Maria Newell, became the Society’s first unmarried ‘Lady Missionary’, leaving England in April 1827. Another, Mary Ann Aldersey, followed in August 1837.7
Someone else who met Morrison in London was Karl Gützlaff, at the time preparing for missionary service with the Rotterdam based Nederlandsch Zendeling Genootschap [Netherlands Missionary Society]. Born in the Prussian Province of Pomerania, Gützlaff received his initial missionary education at Johannes Jänicke’s Mission Institute in Berlin, under the patronage of the Prussian King.8
Li Shigong, Chen Laoyi, and Robert Morrison
Engraving made from a painting by George Chinnery around 1828, following Morrison’s return to China.
Gützlaff sailed for Jakarta in September 1826, where he spent four months learning Chinese with Walter Medhurst, sent by the LMS as a missionary printer a decade earlier. Gützlaff then went to the Dutch controlled island of Bintan, near Singapore, to work with its Chinese population. 9
By August 1827, however, he felt called to the mainland, with its significantly larger population. In June 1828, Gützlaff was preparing to visit Siam (Thailand) and Cochin China (Vietnam), with the LMS missionaries Walter Medhurst and Jacob Tomlin, another of Morrison’s students in London. They planned to distribute bibles and medicine, but when Medhurst was late to arrive, Gützlaff and Tomlin went ahead without him.10
In 1829, Gützlaff went to assist the Anglo-Chinese College at Malacca, marrying Maria Newell, who returned to Bangkok with him. Despite numerous bouts of ill health, Gützlaff made plans to travel to China. In February 1831, however, Maria died in childbirth, along with one of their twins.
Severing his links with the Dutch Missionary Society, a despondent Gützlaff made arrangements for the care of his surviving daughter, who died soon afterwards, and sought passage on a Chinese trading ship.11
View of the Rev. Charles (Karl) Gutzlaff's Residence in the vicinity of Bangkok, the capital of Siam
Cover for Missionary Sketches LVIII in July 1832
In December 1831, Gützlaff arrived at Macao, having travelled the length of China’s coast with a group of Chinese sailors he later described as ‘from the most debased class of people’:
The major part of them are opium-smokers, gamblers, thieves, and fornicators. They will indulge in the drug till all their wages are squandered; they will gamble as long as a farthing remains; they will pull off their only jacket and give it to a prostitute… A person who has lived among these men, would be best qualified to give a description of Sodom and Gomorrah, as well as to appreciate the blessings of Christianity…12
Nevertheless, Gützlaff’s immersion in Chinese language and customs gave him a fluency and perspective unparalleled among other Europeans. He was not, however, particularly suited to working with them. Robert Morrison, with whom Gützlaff stayed in Macao, wrote to the LMS treasurer in London, that:
He would not work well, I fear, with others. Secondly, he would be insubordinate and, at first, domineering. He is unaccustomed to the yoke of social intercourse, but seems since he came to improve.13
By February 1832, Gützlaff had been employed as translator and physician on an East India Company vessel, the Lord Amherst. This was to sail as far as Korea “to ascertain how far the northern ports of this Empire may gradually be opened to British commerce’.14
Captain Lindsay’s report on the Lord Amherst’s journey, together with a supplementary section by Gützlaff, was published in London in 1833. Seemingly anticipating the subsequent invasion, details were given of Chinese harbours and rivers, reporting that their defences were often in disrepair and the soldiers poorly trained and equipped.
At Zhoushan they noted that the ‘extensive fort’ on a high hill was ‘dismantled and ungarrisoned’.16 The report even suggested that the common people might be induced to ‘shake off the Tartar yoke’, the ruling Qing dynasty being of Northeastern Manchu, rather than Han origin.17 Concerned Chinese official communications described the Lord Amherst as creeping ‘like a rat’ along the coast.18
While British manufactures only traded for comparatively low prices, opium was established to be highly valued all along the coast. Although the Lord Amherst’s attempts to engage in illegal trade were resisted, some local officials indicated they would turn a blind eye to opium trading in exchange for a bribe.
By October 1832, Gützlaff had been hired as an interpreter and guide for the Sylph, an armed clipper that was built in India for the Parsi merchant Rustomji Cowasji Banaji. The Sylph had recently arrived from Calcutta with a cargo of opium and was chartered by the traders William Jardine and James Matheson to seek out new trading locations along the Chinese coast.19
Title page for 'Report of Proceedings on A Voyage to the Northern Ports of China, in the Ship Lord Amherst'
Extracted from Papers, Printed by Order of the House of Commons, Relating to the Trade with China. London in 1833.
The Barque, Sylph, off the Macao, China
Oil painting by William John Huggins, c. 1838
Gützlaff’s account of this third voyage, published in London in 1834 as the final part of his Journal of Three Voyages Along the Coast of China, notes that he joined the Sylph only ‘After much consultation with others, and a conflict in my own mind’.20 His account of the voyage, in an uncharacteristically diplomatic manner, makes no mention of the opium that was sold from the vessel, which as translator he presumably negotiated prices for.
Gützlaff does state, however, that he took and distributed three times the number of religious books on this trip as he had on his earlier voyages, providing ‘an opportunity of scattering the light of divine truth’.21 The Sylph returned to Lintin Island (Nei Lingding Island), the centre for opium trading near Macau, on 19 April 1833.22
In December 1833, on renewal of its Royal Charter, the East India Company lost its monopoly and therefore control of British trade with China, rendering opium trading essentially unregulated and, as a result, extremely competitive. Gützlaff continued to be employed by Jardine Matheson & Company, who were determined to dominate the trade, making at least four more voyages between 1833 and 1835.23
One of these journeys had the additional purpose of obtaining tea seeds and plants, as well as information about their cultivation and processing. There was concern that Britain’s substantial market for tea, worth £4 million a year to the East India Company and the source of 7% of Britain’s public revenue in excise duties, created a dependency on a potentially unstable supply at Canton.24
Attempts to reduce the unidirectional transfer of European silver to China had resulted in a triangular trade, in which opium grown in India was illegally traded to China by ‘country traders’ such as Jardine Matheson & Co. The narcotics trade between India and China remained officially independent of the East India Company, who nevertheless used the resulting silver to purchase Chinese tea. This model was obviously disrupted when the East India Company was converted into what became an essentially administrative body, responsible principally for the government of India.25
The establishment of Indian tea plantations offered a way for the Company to short-circuit the Chinese trade. George J. Gordon was sent by the East India Company’s Tea Committee to China from India in June 1834, where he engaged Jardine Matheson & Co to assist him.26 He secretly travelled into the hills of Fujian with Gützlaff as translator, seeking tea seeds, plants and cultivators to send to India. Most of the seedlings ultimately died, and tea production in Assam proceeded using local plants but neverthrless drew on the technical knowledge of Chinese workers.27
Following the end of East India Company’s monopoly in China, Robert Morrison’s services as translator were transferred to Lord Napier, the newly appointed Chief Superintendent of Trade for the British Government. Arriving at Canton in late July 1834 without an official permit, Napier attempted to establish direct diplomatic relations with Chinese officials, in which Britain, having established global naval dominance alongside a substantial Asian empire, sought to be treated as an equal.
Cover of Missionary Sketches No. LXIX, April 1885
Showing a plan of Canton, showing the site of the Foreign Factories outside the the city walls
Napier had Robert Morrison direct a letter directly to Lu Kun, Governor-General of Liangguang, rather than going through the Canton Hong merchants as the East India Company had customarily done.28 Lu Kun refused to accept private letters from an ‘outside barbarian’, creating a diplomatic impasse. Robert Morrison died on 1 August 1834, within a week of Napier’s arrival, and was replaced as official translator by his twenty-year-old son, John Robert Morrison.
In August 1834, in the midst of growing frustration, Lord Napier wrote to London suggesting, for the first time, that the British might take possession of Hong Kong island to establish a trading entrepôt. When Lu Kun halted British and American trade, ordering Chinese staff to leave the factories, Napier ordered two British frigates and a cutter to approach Canton, exchanging fire with Chinese forces at Whampoa.
British and Indian merchants ultimately pressurised Napier, who was seriously ill, to back down. He was only allowed to travel to Macao for medical treatment when the British frigates departed, dying there on 11 October 1834.29
In December, Gützlaff was recruited as a second Chinese interpreter by John Francis Davis, Napier’s replacement as British Superintendent of Trade. Davis was the son of an East India Company director and had worked at Canton as a young man, accompanying Lord Amherst’s embassy to Peking in 1816 with Robert Morrison (Chapter 9). Peaceful trading relations resumed at Canton, at least for a time.30
In 1835, James Matheson (of Jardine Matheson & Co) traveled to London along with Napier’s widow in an attempt to drum up support for a war against China. Ultimately dismissed by the Duke of Wellington, Britain’s Foreign Secretary at the time, Matheson nevertheless raised the profile of China among British statesmen, not least through the publication of his book The Present Position of Prospects of the British Trade with China, a free-trade tract demanding ‘the full countenance and support of the British government’.31
In September 1835, as a mark of Gützlaff’s growing celebrity in Europe, the Evangelical Magazine announced the publication of a print for sale, showing him ‘in the dress of a Fokien Sailor’. This was based on a painting made by George Chinnery at Canton, which had recently been exhibited at the Royal Academy in London.35
Meanwhile, the illegal opium trade continued expanding rapidly and in May 1835 Gützlaff, despite his official government position, accompanied Gordon on another illicit journey to obtain tea plants. They were fired upon by Chinese troops in the hills northwest of Fuzhou, a bullet narrowly missing Gützlaff’s head.32 As a result of rising tensions and the expanding opium trade, Chinese coastal defences were reinforced and Chinese opium traders prosecuted. Chinese Christians were also targeted, with Liang Fa (an early convert of Robert Morrison’s), escaping to (British-controlled) Singapore.
At the end of August 1835, Walter Medhurst and Edwin Stevens, an American Congregationalist chaplain to the sailors at Whampoa, embarked on their own missionary voyage along the Chinese coast, chartering the Huron from David Olyphant. Olyphant was an American trader who refused to deal in opium and was a member of the American Board of Commissioners for Foreign Missions. Indeed, Olyphant had named his own son Robert Morrison Olyphant in tribute to his friendship with the LMS missionary he first met at Canton in 1820.33
Writing to the LMS directors on 1 November 1835, Medhurst rather pointedly described his voyage as ‘the first instance of a decidedly Missionary ship going up the coast’ to distribute scriptures and tracts. While they had been able to land and walk about, Medhurst thought it would prove ‘entirely out of the question for a Missionary to attempt taking up his residence in any part of China, except Canton, or to penetrate far into the interior by roads or rivers’.34
Revd. Chas. Gutzlaff,in the Dress of a Fokien Sailor
1835 Lithograph print by R.J. Lane, based on painting by George Chinnery.
In August 1836, Walter Medhurst returned to London, after eighteen years serving with the Ultra Ganges Mission. Medhurst made a number of appeals in the evangelical press. Inspired by the contemporary success of John Williams’ Missionary Enterprises (Chapter 15), he also wrote a book of his own.
China; Its State and Prospects, with Especial Reference to the Spread of the Gospel was published in May 1838, following a template established by Williams’ book. Its illustrations were even produced by George Baxter, including a colour frontispiece.
This showed Medhurst, together with Choo Ti Lang, a Confucian scholar from Guangdong province who accompanied Medhurst to England to assist with Bible translations, attended by a Malay boy.
Summarising the British reaction to Gützlaff’s accounts of his voyages, Medhurst suggested that:
There were not a few, also, who insinuated that his lively imagination, and confident expectation, had led him to give too high a colouring to things; while his zeal had prompted him to state what he wished or contemplated, rather than what he actually experienced.36
Medhurst presented his own voyage as intended to ‘set this question at rest’ as well as ’to ascertain the openings which existed, for the propagation of the Gospel, in that empire’.37 He made it very clear he felt that ‘All wise and good men, also, consider the cause of God contaminated’ by a connections with opium vessels:
But the most serious objection is, that the Chinese bring it as the main argument against Christianity, that its professors vend opium; with how much greater force would they urge this objection, should a missionary embark in an opium ship, and carry out boxes of tracts in company with chests of opium?38
Medhurst was clear that ‘the evils connected with the disposal of opium’ on such a voyage ‘were likely to be greater, more extensive, and more durable, than the good that might be accomplished by the distribution of books’.39 Such objections betray a fairly obvious criticism of the approach taken by Gützlaff, though how apparent this would have been to all contemporary readers is unclear.40
Choo Tih Lang was baptised at Hackney on 20 July 1838, having recently joined the crowds to see the coronation of Queen Victoria.41 At the end of that month, just over three months after the departure of the Camden (Chapter 15), he sailed from Gravesend with Medhurst and his family, as well as William Lockhart, recently appointed as a medical missionary to China.42 The first of the Society’s medical missionaries, Archibald Ramsay, had established a Medical Mission at Neyyoor in Travancore (Chapter 14), only months earlier.43
In September 1838, most likely with the assistance of the London agents for Jardine Matheson & Co, Gützlaff published his own two-volume book, China Opened. This opened with an advertisement declaring:
China is now happily open to our commerce; China will soon be open to our more general intercourse: and China will eventually be open to Missionary enterprise. It is therefore a favourable and indicative circumstance, that it is being opened to our understanding by a variety of useful publications.44
Gützlaff seems to have regarded missionary and trading interests as essentially aligned in their efforts to ‘open’ China, whereas Medhurst was rather more cautious about entangling evangelical efforts with those of opium dealers. This difference between the two men seems to have marked an emerging division with Britain’s evangelical communities.
Mr Medhurst, in conversation with Choo-Tih_Lang, attended by a Malay Boy
Frontispiece for Medhurst’s China: Its State and Prospects, printed in Oil by George Baxter
Opium Box from the London Missionary Society museum
Acquired when following the museum’s closure in 1910. The later catalogue of the Missionary Museum includes a listing for ‘Two opium pipes. Presented by Mrs Brandram’. The box seems to include the clay bowls of two pipes. Andrew Brandram was Secretary of the British and Foreign Bible Society from 1823 to 1850, and ‘Mrs Brandram’ may be his wife, the mother of Lydia, wife of George Smith, who went to Hong Kong in 1949 as a missionary.
The embrace of Christianity by the early Victorian British state enabled empire and evangelicalism to become increasingly entangled and elided. Some argued that an expanding empire of free trade opened a door for the entry of Christianity, while others preferred the missionary movement to maintain its independent moral high ground.
The situation in China began to shift decisively in early 1839, when Lin Zexu, recently appointed Imperial Commissioner, made his way from Beijing to Canton. William Jardine, regarded as leader of the opium traders, hearing that he was in the new Commissioner’s sights, left Canton for Macao, before departing for London.45
Commissioner Lin made it clear to the Chinese population of Canton that he expected them to assist in suppressing the opium trade once and for all. He even composed a letter to Queen Victoria, asking for assistance in preventing the export of opium from India. Within two months, Lin had arrested over 1600 people and seized 43,000 pipes as part his war on opium.46
In March, Lin ordered that all stocks of opium in the Canton warehouses be surrendered. When Dent and Company, Jardine Matheson’s principal rival, failed to hand over all their chests, Lin summoned Launcelot Dent.
As the situation escalated, Lin blockaded the factories at Canton, and on 27 March 1839. Charles Elliott, British Plenipotentiary at the time, instructed British merchants to surrender their stocks, telling them that they would be compensated. Over 20,000 chests of opium were handed over and publicly destroyed by Lin Zexu.
Commissioner Lin and the Destruction of the Opium in 1839
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Destruction_of_opium_in_1839.jpgColour image produced by a Chinese Artist
News of these events began arriving in London during late summer, and on 27 September 1839, Jardine met with Palmerston, Britain’s Foreign Secretary, demanding a forceful response. Jardine provided detailed maps, a plan for the invasion (including the invasion of Chusan), as well as his desired outcome – the opening of additional Chinese ports to British trade. Three days later, the cabinet agreed to embark on Britain’s first war with China.47
It took time to raise a fleet from across the Empire, but twenty-four ships from England, the Cape, India, and New South Wales sailed from Singapore to Macao at the end of May 1840. What they didn’t have, however, was anyone who could speak Chinese.
John Robert Morrison and Charles Gützlaff were seconded to the fleet as translators, along with Robert Thom, an employee of Jardine Matheson & Company. With the entrance to Pearl River and Canton blockaded, a number of ships sailed north to Chusan. On the 3rd of July, the Atalanta made its way into the harbour to establish a route.
The Chinese delegation left the Wellesley at around 8pm on 4 July 1840, but sounds of activity and the sight of lanterns moving about on the shore lasted all night. Chinese trading ships were allowed to sail between the British ships ‘laden half way up their masts with good and merchandise, and crowded with women and children… although in their cargoes many a captain might have made their fortune’.48
According to official despatches, sent by Commodore Bremer, by morning Chinese commanders:
had placed a body of troops on the the Temple hill, together with three guns in position, twenty-one guns were in line on the different wharfs, and on a round tower of solid masonry they had five guns. The war junks were hauled on shore in line, with their rudders unhung, and presented thirty-four guns, and forty-five large gingals.49
High tide at noon allowed the remaining men-of-war (Cruiser and Algerine, 18 guns each), as well as a number of transport ships to enter the harbour. By half-past two, with landing troops waiting in boats, the Wellesley fired a single shot at the round masonry tower. This was answered by the Chinese guns and responded to by a cannonade lasting around eight minutes, the British ships having between them over 200 guns.
When the smoke cleared, the shoreline had been cleared of people and the landing force arrived on the beach where ‘bodies, bows and arrows, broken spears and guns’ were ‘the sole occupants of the field’.50 The Eighteenth Royal Irish Regiment took possession of the temple on the hill, but the city walls of Tinghai were not breached until the following morning.
Entering the largely abandoned town with Gützlaff, Jocelyn found placards on houses reading ‘Spare our lives’. They also saw men, women and children on their knees in the temples, burning incense. Making their way to the ‘Chumpin’ or Admiral’s house, they found ‘silks, fans, china, little shoes, crutches, and paint-pots’ in the ‘apartments of the ladies’.51
In his published account, Jocelyn recorded that ‘many of these fairy shoes were appropriated by us as lawful loot’. A footnote in the published account explains that ‘loot’ is ‘A Bengalee word for plunder, at which, by-the-bye, they are peculiar adepts’.52 Miniature women’s shoes were by no means the only things plundered, however. An article in the Indian Gazette declared that after troops were landed ‘a more complete pillage could not be conceived than then took place’:
Every house was indiscriminately broken open; every drawer and box ransacked; the streets strewed with fragments of furniture, pictures, chairs, tables, grain of all sorts, &c; and the whole set off by the dead, or living bodies of the inhabitants, who had been unable to leave their city from the wounds received from our merciless guns….
It went on:
The plunder was carried to an extreme — that is to say, did not cease till there was nothing left to take; and the plunderers will no doubt be able, on our return to Calcutta, to place at their friends’ disposal, and for the ornamenting of their houses, trophies gained, not from Chinese soldiers or from a field of battle, but from the harmless and peaceable inhabitants and tradesmen of a city doomed to destruction by our men-of-war; who, a few days previous, issued a very strict order to all the transports to use forbearance towards all the natives in our dealings with them, as we did not war with the people, but required reparation at the hands of the Chinese Government.53
This passage was to be reprinted many times, particularly by those who argued that the ‘opium war’, with its use of what came to be known as ‘gunboat diplomacy’, had placed a moral stain on the British nation.54
View of Jos-house-hill from Chusan Harbour
Image from Lieutenant John Ouchterlony’s (1844) The Chinese War, opposite p.48.
Taking the Island of Chusan on 5 July 1840
Print by Harry Darell
Chinese Miniature Shoe
At Livingstone House, headquarters of the Council for World Mission.
Photograph by the Author (2010)
Many evangelicals continued to campaign against the opium trade, with the Missionary Museum displaying opium pipes, as well a series of:
Six etchings by a Chinese artist named Sunqua, exhibiting the Progress of the Opium Smoker from health and prosperity, to misery and degradation, and forming together a counterpart to Hogarth’s famous set of the ‘Rake’s Progress’. Presented by Rev. Micaiah Hill of Berhampore.55
These seem to have painted in early 1837, a detailed description appearing in April of that year in The Chinese Repository, a periodical published by American Protestant missionaries at Canton.56 Nevertheless, the anti-opium stance of the London Missionary Museum did not prevent it openly acknowledging that at least one of the items displayed in the case alongside Sunqua’s paintings was the result of looting at Zhoushan.
While many of the soldiers were indeed Indian, the East India Company’s army being larger than that of the British state at the time, Jocelyn’s comments about ‘lawful loot’ make it clear that plunder was seen as legitimate and fairly normal, even by those at the top of the British military establishment. A ‘prize’ system was instituted at Chusan, two officers appointed as commissioners ‘to collect and take care of all public property’.
Although disappointed to find no bullion in the public treasury, they nevertheless organised a sale to dispose of property including ‘some very handsome dresses’. Shares in the proceeds were distributed according to rank, with ‘a captain’s share of prize-money’ being expected to amount to twenty reals. One particularly ‘beautiful war dress’ was reserved to be sent to Victoria, the British queen.57
As part of his description of the aftermath of the invasion, Jocelyn described seeing temple figures ‘surpassed by none in China’:
In the great temple, some of the figures in the principal hall are upwards of fifteen feet high, handsomely wrought, standing in the centre on a lofty pedestal, while around the walls are small images of the same description in all sorts of grotesque attitudes. We were particularly struck by one, the figure of a woman, with a child apparently issuing from her breast, and a glory round her head. It seems difficult to say from what this has arisen, unless for pictures of the Virgin, which the Chinese formerly obtained from the Jesuit missionaries, and have this distorted.
Did the ‘Idol taken in the late war, from the chief temple at Chusan’ at the Missionary Museum form part of the military spoils of the invasion on 5 July 1840? Was it sent to the museum by missionary supporters in India, like ‘Burmese Idols’ had been following the invasion of Rangoon in 1824? Did it from part of an allocation of spoils to John Robert Morrison or Charles Gützlaff, in their role as interpreters? Or was it purchased by them at the auction organised by the prize agents after the battle?
I haven’t been able to establish any conclusive evidence to show how this item found its way to London and the collection of the Missionary Museum, or even to identify the ‘idol’ in question. The close connections between with the London Missionary Society and several people involved in the invasion of Zhoushan, chiefly Karl Gützlaff and John Robert Morrison, creates a field of possibilities, some more likely than others.
In addition, the LMS was quick to take advantage of the British capture of Zhoushan. William Lockhart worked briefly at the missionary hospital in Macao following his arrival in early 1839, but left for Batavia that August because of the developing conflict. At the end of August 1840, Lockhart, together with a number of other new missionary recruits, wrote to the Directors from Macao, expressing a hope that the ‘home government’ might suppress the opium trade, and suggesting a new Mission should be established in the Chusan Archipelago, by then under British control.58
Two Wealthy Chinese Opium Smokers
19th Centure Gouache Painting on rice-paper, possibly similar to the series produced by Sunqua.
Representation of the Idol Kwan-Yin
Cover Image for Missionary Sketches XXXVIII, June 1827. The figure represented was sent to the missionary museum by Rev. W.H. Medhurst from Batavia.
The following month Lockhart sailed to Chusan to establish a missionary hospital, where, by the 14th December he had treated 1600 people, many of them sickly soldiers.59 Gützlaff’s second wife sailed for Dinghai in October, to join her husband, who had been appointed Chief Magistrate. At the end of February 1841, Lockhart left Zhoushan after the British returned the island to Chinese hands, in exchange for the cession of Hong Kong and an indemnity of $6 million.60
The agreement, however, was rejected by both the Chinese Emperor and the British Government, so Chusan was invaded once again on 1 October 1841. The British conflict with China ultimately concluded at Nanjing in August 1842. There, once again, Gützlaff and Morrison played important parts in translating the treaty. This opened five Chinese ports to British trade (Canton or Guangzhou, Amoy or Xiamen, Fuchow or Fuzhou, Ningbo and Shanghai) and committed the Chinese government to an increased indemnity of $21 million.61
The Signing and Dealing of the Treaty of Nanking
Colour engraving by John Burnet after painting by Captain John Platt, published 20April 1846 by F.G. Moon.
In an image commemorating the signing of the treaty aboard the HMS Cornwallis, Gützlaff is once again shown near the centre, standing behind the table where the Chinese delegates are seated. His position is mirrored by John Robert Morrison although the translator sitting at the table was not a missionary, but Robert Thom, Jardine Matheson & Company’s translator.
Following the signing of the Treaty of Nanjing, Gütlaff returned to Zhoushan as Chief Magistrate, but when John Robert Morrison died in August 1843, he became Chinese secretary to the British government at Hong Kong. Zhoushan was eventually restored to China in July 1846 after the indemnity had been paid.
By that time, many felt that the island would have been a better long-term British possession than Hong Kong.62 The LMS, however, had already moved on to the Chinese mainland. In late 1843, a new mission was established to Central China by Walter Medhurst, with the establishment of a mission at Shanghai, with William Lockhart serving as a medical missionary.63
When conflict with China once again tipped into military confrontation a decade and a half later, Zhoushan was occupied for a third time, on 21 April 1860. On that occasion, the published narrative of Garnet Wolseley noted that:
The gods and various paraphernalia of idolatry were removed from the temples to places of security by the priests and other parties interested in their preservation.64
In late 1843, with news of the conflict in China still fresh in Europe, a twenty-five year old Karl Marx sat down to write the introduction for A Contribution to the Critique of Hegel’s Philosophy of Right. Summarising the position developed by Ludwig Feuerbach in his 1841 book Das Wesen des Christentums (translated as The Essence of Christianity by George Eliot in 1854), he wrote that ‘the foundation of irreligious criticism is: Man makes religion, religion does not make man’.65 He then famously suggested:
Religious suffering is, at one and the same time, the expression of real suffering and a protest against real suffering. Religion is the sigh of the oppressed creature, the heart of a heartless world, and the soul of soulless conditions. It is the opium of the people.66
Marx argued that religion should be abolished so that the illusory happiness of the people could be converted into a demand for real happiness, resulting from the abolition of conditions of life that need such illusions.
While much of the rest of his essay concerned itself with the political condition of contemporary Germany, it is striking to reflect on the ways in which the historical conjunction between opium and Christianity in China may have contributed to the formation of a phrase that came to define Marxian attitudes to religion, with significant historical consequences, not least in China itself.67
Two Poor Chinese Opium Smokers
19th Centure Gouache Painting on rice-paper, possibly similar to the series produced by Sunqua.
Comments
This is an experiment in writing – intended to stretch the idea of the academic monograph.
I am keen to recognise and incorporate the input and expertise of others into the writing process, so I would welcome any comments or feedback.
Notes
1 Jocelyn, Lord (1841). Six Months with the Chinese Exhibition; or, Leaves from a Soldier’s Note-Book, London: John Murray, p. 48: https://books.google.co.uk/books?id=tsQGRQgIcP8C&newbks=1&newbks_redir=0&dq=Robert%20Jocelyn%20six%20months&pg=PA48#v=onepage&q&f=false
2 Jocelyn, Lord (1841). Six Months with the Chinese Exhibition; or, Leaves from a Soldier’s Note-Book, London: John Murray, p. 48: https://books.google.co.uk/books?id=tsQGRQgIcP8C&newbks=1&newbks_redir=0&dq=Robert%20Jocelyn%20six%20months&pg=PA48#v=onepage&q&f=false
3 (1840). ‘China – Asiatic Intelligence, Supplement The Asiatic Journal, December 1840, pp.345-354: pp. https://books.google.co.uk/books?id=ug0oAAAAYAAJ&pg=RA1-PA346#v=onepage&q&f=false
4 Jocelyn, Lord (1841). Six Months with the Chinese Exhibition; or, Leaves from a Soldier’s Note-Book, London: John Murray, pp. 49-50: https://books.google.co.uk/books?id=tsQGRQgIcP8C&newbks=1&newbks_redir=0&dq=Robert%20Jocelyn%20six%20months&pg=PA49#v=onepage&q&f=false
5 Jocelyn, Lord (1841). Six Months with the Chinese Exhibition; or, Leaves from a Soldier’s Note-Book, London: John Murray, p. 50: https://books.google.co.uk/books?id=tsQGRQgIcP8C&newbks=1&newbks_redir=0&dq=Robert%20Jocelyn%20six%20months&pg=PA50#v=onepage&q&f=false
6 Jocelyn, Lord (1841). Six Months with the Chinese Exhibition; or, Leaves from a Soldier’s Note-Book, London: John Murray, p. 53: https://books.google.co.uk/books?id=tsQGRQgIcP8C&newbks=1&newbks_redir=0&dq=Robert%20Jocelyn%20six%20months&pg=PA53#v=onepage&q&f=false
7 McKelvey, L. (nd.) The Witch of Ningpo – Mary Ann Alderney: https://www.historic-uk.com/CultureUK/Mary-Ann-Aldersey/
8 Lutz, J. G. (2008) Opening China: Karl F.A. Gützlaff and Sino-Western Relations, 1827-1852. Michigan/Cambridge, William B. Eerdmans Publishing Company, pp. 22-35.
9 Lutz, J. G. (2008) Opening China: Karl F.A. Gützlaff and Sino-Western Relations, 1827-1852. Michigan/Cambridge, William B. Eerdmans Publishing Company, pp.38-40.
10 Lutz, J. G. (2008) Opening China: Karl F.A. Gützlaff and Sino-Western Relations, 1827-1852. Michigan/Cambridge, William B. Eerdmans Publishing Company, pp. 42-47.
11 Lutz, J. G. (2008) Opening China: Karl F.A. Gützlaff and Sino-Western Relations, 1827-1852. Michigan/Cambridge, William B. Eerdmans Publishing Company, pp. 47-50.
12 Gutzlaff, C. (1834) Journal of Three Voyages along the Coast of China in 1831, 1832, & 1833. London: Frederick Westley and A. H. Davis, pp. 61-62: https://books.google.co.uk/books?id=wkYNAAAAYAAJ&newbks=1&newbks_redir=0&dq=Journal%20of%20Three%20Voyages%20Along%20the%20Coast%20of%20China.&pg=PA61#v=onepage&q&f=false
13 Lutz, J. G. (2008) Opening China: Karl F.A. Gützlaff and Sino-Western Relations, 1827-1852. Michigan/Cambridge, William B. Eerdmans Publishing Company, p. 52.
14 Lutz, J. G. (2008) Opening China: Karl F.A. Gützlaff and Sino-Western Relations, 1827-1852. Michigan/Cambridge, William B. Eerdmans Publishing Company, p. 69.
15 Lutz, J. G. (2008) Opening China: Karl F.A. Gützlaff and Sino-Western Relations, 1827-1852. Michigan/Cambridge, William B. Eerdmans Publishing Company, pp. 70-76.
16 (1833). Report of Proceedings on a Voyage to the Northern Ports of China, in the ship Lord Amherst. Extracted from Papers, Printed by Order of the House of Commons, Relating to the Trade with China. London: B. Fellowes, p. 99: https://books.google.co.uk/books?id=8VlCAAAAcAAJ&newbks=1&newbks_redir=0&dq=gutzlaff%201833&pg=PA99#v=onepage&q&f=false
17 (1833). Report of Proceedings on a Voyage to the Northern Ports of China, in the ship Lord Amherst. Extracted from Papers, Printed by Order of the House of Commons, Relating to the Trade with China. London: B. Fellowes, p. 14: https://books.google.co.uk/books?id=8VlCAAAAcAAJ&newbks=1&newbks_redir=0&dq=gutzlaff%201833&pg=PA14#v=onepage&q=gutzlaff%201833&f=false
18 (1833). Report of Proceedings on a Voyage to the Northern Ports of China, in the ship Lord Amherst. Extracted from Papers, Printed by Order of the House of Commons, Relating to the Trade with China. London: B. Fellowes, p. 119: https://books.google.co.uk/books?id=8VlCAAAAcAAJ&newbks=1&newbks_redir=0&dq=gutzlaff%201833&pg=PA116#v=onepage&q&f=false
19 Lutz, J. G. (2008) Opening China: Karl F.A. Gützlaff and Sino-Western Relations, 1827-1852. Michigan/Cambridge, William B. Eerdmans Publishing Company, pp. 77-82.
20 This was published with an introductory essay on the history of the Chinese mission by William Ellis, Foreign Secretary of the London Missionary Society; Gutzlaff, C. (1834) Journal of Three Voyages along the Coast of China in 1831, 1832, & 1833. London: Frederick Westley and A. H. Davis, p. 413: https://books.google.co.uk/books?id=wkYNAAAAYAAJ&newbks=1&newbks_redir=0&dq=Journal%20of%20Three%20Voyages%20Along%20the%20Coast%20of%20China.&pg=PA413#v=onepage&q&f=false
21 Gutzlaff, C. (1834) Journal of Three Voyages along the Coast of China in 1831, 1832, & 1833. London: Frederick Westley and A. H. Davis, p. 448: https://books.google.co.uk/books?id=wkYNAAAAYAAJ&newbks=1&newbks_redir=0&dq=Journal%20of%20Three%20Voyages%20Along%20the%20Coast%20of%20China.&pg=PA448#v=onepage&q&f=false
22 Gutzlaff, C. (1834) Journal of Three Voyages along the Coast of China in 1831, 1832, & 1833. London: Frederick Westley and A. H. Davis, p. 450: https://books.google.co.uk/books?id=wkYNAAAAYAAJ&newbks=1&newbks_redir=0&dq=Journal%20of%20Three%20Voyages%20Along%20the%20Coast%20of%20China.&pg=PA450#v=onepage&q&f=false
23 Lutz, J. G. (2008) Opening China: Karl F.A. Gützlaff and Sino-Western Relations, 1827-1852. Michigan/Cambridge, William B. Eerdmans Publishing Company, pp. 83.
24 Neal, S. (2017). “Opium and Migration: Jardine Matheson’s imperial connections and the recruitment of Chinese labour for Assam, 1834–39.” Modern Asian Studies 51(5): p.1633
25 (2023) For All the Tea in China: The East India Company, Global History of Capitalism Project Case Study #3: https://globalcapitalism.history.ox.ac.uk/files/case33-englisheastindiacompanypdf#:~:text=However%2C%20it%20was%20not%20until,site%20of%20alternative%20tea%20production.
26 Neal, S. (2017). “Opium and Migration: Jardine Matheson’s imperial connections and the recruitment of Chinese labour for Assam, 1834–39.” Modern Asian Studies 51(5): p.1632.
27 The first batch of Indian produced tea arriving in London in November 1838: Neal, S. (2017). “Opium and Migration: Jardine Matheson’s imperial connections and the recruitment of Chinese labour for Assam, 1834–39.” Modern Asian Studies 51(5): p.1645.
28 Lutz, J. G. (2008) Opening China: Karl F.A. Gützlaff and Sino-Western Relations, 1827-1852. Michigan/Cambridge, William B. Eerdmans Publishing Company, pp. 87-88.
29 Lutz, J. G. (2008) Opening China: Karl F.A. Gützlaff and Sino-Western Relations, 1827-1852. Michigan/Cambridge, William B. Eerdmans Publishing Company, pp. 87-88.
30 Lutz, J. G. (2008) Opening China: Karl F.A. Gützlaff and Sino-Western Relations, 1827-1852. Michigan/Cambridge, William B. Eerdmans Publishing Company, pp. 90-92.
31 Matheson, J. (1836). The Present Position of Prospects of the British Trade with China, London: Smith, Elder and Co.
p.7: https://archive.org/details/dli.bengal.10689.520/page/n23/mode/2up
32 Lutz, J. G. (2008) Opening China: Karl F.A. Gützlaff and Sino-Western Relations, 1827-1852. Michigan/Cambridge, William B. Eerdmans Publishing Company, pp. 84.
33 Holiday, J. (2016) Mission to China; How an Englishman Brought the West to the Orient, Stround: Amberley, pp. 138-140.
34 (1836), “China, Missionary Voyage along the North-East Coast’, The Missionary Magazine and Chronicle for July 1836, p. 318: https://books.google.co.uk/books?id=8NBGAQAAMAAJ&newbks=1&newbks_redir=0&dq=evangelical%20magazine%20and%20missionary%20chronicle&pg=PA318#v=onepage&q&f=false
35 Another version of this image ultimately appeared as the beginning of the Evangelical Magazine in May 1840; (1835) ‘List of New Publications’, The Evangelical Magazine and Missionary Chronicle for September 1835, pp. 370-371: https://books.google.co.uk/books?id=bsgoAAAAYAAJ&newbks=1&newbks_redir=0&dq=missionary%20chronicle&pg=PA370#v=onepage&q&f=false
36 Medhurst, W. H. (1838). China: Its State and Prospects with Especial Reference to the Spread of the Gospel. London: John Snow, p.365: https://books.google.co.uk/books?id=5bRfAAAAcAAJ&newbks=1&newbks_redir=0&dq=china%20its%20state%20and%20prospect&pg=PA365#v=onepage&q&f=false
37 Medhurst, W. H. (1838). China: Its State and Prospects with Especial Reference to the Spread of the Gospel. London: John Snow, p.365: https://books.google.co.uk/books?id=5bRfAAAAcAAJ&newbks=1&newbks_redir=0&dq=china%20its%20state%20and%20prospect&pg=PA365#v=onepage&q&f=false
38 Medhurst, W. H. (1838). China: Its State and Prospects with Especial Reference to the Spread of the Gospel. London: John Snow, p.368: https://books.google.co.uk/books?id=5bRfAAAAcAAJ&newbks=1&newbks_redir=0&dq=china%20its%20state%20and%20prospect&pg=PA368-IA3#v=onepage&q&f=false
39 Medhurst, W. H. (1838). China: Its State and Prospects with Especial Reference to the Spread of the Gospel. London: John Snow, p.368: https://books.google.co.uk/books?id=5bRfAAAAcAAJ&newbks=1&newbks_redir=0&dq=china%20its%20state%20and%20prospect&pg=PA368-IA3#v=onepage&q&f=false
40 The solution, Medhurst suggested, was a dedicated missionary ship, like the Camden, recently departed for the Pacific (Chapter 15).
41 (1838) ‘Baptism of Choo Tih Lang, A Native of China’, Evangelical Magazine and Missionary Chronicle for September 1838, pp.462-465: https://books.google.co.uk/books?id=5PUDAAAAQAAJ&newbks=1&newbks_redir=0&dq=evangelical%20magazine%20and%20missionary%20chronicle&pg=RA1-PA462#v=onepage&q&f=false
42 (1838) ‘Departure of Missionaries’, Evangelical Magazine and Missionary Chronicle for September 1838, p.465: https://books.google.co.uk/books?id=5PUDAAAAQAAJ&newbks=1&newbks_redir=0&dq=evangelical%20magazine%20and%20missionary%20chronicle&pg=RA1-PA465#v=onepage&q&f=false
43 Lovett, R. (1899). The History of the London Missionary Society 1795-1895. London, Oxford University Press, Volume II, pp. 223-224.
44 Gutzlaff, C. (1838). China Opened; or, A Display of the Topography, History, Customs, Manners, Arts, Manufactures, Commerce, Literature, Religion, Jurisprudence, etc. of the Chinese Empire, in two volumes. London: Smith, Elder and Co. : https://books.google.co.uk/books?id=kmIEAAAAQAAJ&newbks=1&newbks_redir=0&dq=Gutzlaff&pg=PR5#v=onepage&q&f=false
45 Waley, A. (1958).The Opium War through Chinese Eyes, London: George Allen and Unwin, p.22.
46 James, L. (2023) The Lion and Dragon: Britain and China: A History of Conflict, p.48.
47 Chen, S-C. (2017). Merchants of War and Peace: British Knowledge of China in the Making of the Opium War, Hong Kong University Press, p.121.
48 Jocelyn, Lord (1841). Six Months with the Chinese Exhibition; or, Leaves from a Soldier’s Note-Book, London: John Murray, p.53: https://books.google.co.uk/books?id=tsQGRQgIcP8C&newbks=1&newbks_redir=0&dq=Robert%20Jocelyn%20six%20months&pg=PA53#v=onepage&q&f=false
49 (1840) ‘Admiralty, December 14, DESPATCHES’, The London Gazette, Tuesday December 15, 1840,’ p. 2990: https://www.thegazette.co.uk/London/issue/19930/page/2990
50 Jocelyn, Lord (1841). Six Months with the Chinese Exhibition; or, Leaves from a Soldier’s Note-Book, London: John Murray, p. 57: https://books.google.co.uk/books?id=tsQGRQgIcP8C&newbks=1&newbks_redir=0&dq=Robert%20Jocelyn%20six%20months&pg=PA57#v=onepage&q&f=false
51 Jocelyn, Lord (1841). Six Months with the Chinese Exhibition; or, Leaves from a Soldier’s Note-Book, London: John Murray, pp. 59-61: https://books.google.co.uk/books?id=tsQGRQgIcP8C&newbks=1&newbks_redir=0&dq=Robert%20Jocelyn%20six%20months&pg=PA57#v=onepage&q&f=false
52 Jocelyn, Lord (1841). Six Months with the Chinese Exhibition; or, Leaves from a Soldier’s Note-Book, London: John Murray, p. 61: https://books.google.co.uk/books?id=tsQGRQgIcP8C&newbks=1&newbks_redir=0&dq=Robert%20Jocelyn%20six%20months&pg=PA61#v=onepage&q&f=false
53 (1841) ‘The British at Chusan’, The Museum, of Foreign Literature, Science and Art, January to April 1841, p. 433: https://books.google.co.uk/books?id=8O5S6WBqNB0C&pg=RA1-PA433#v=onepage&q&f=false
54 Chen, S-C. (2017). Merchants of War and Peace: British Knowledge of China in the Making of the Opium War, Hong Kong University Press, p.129; eg. Edmonds, J.W. (1841) Origin and Progress of the War between England and ChinaI. New York, Marine & Co, p. 18: https://books.google.co.uk/books?id=pBkMAAAAYAAJ&pg=PA18#v=onepage&q&f=false; Jay, W. (1842) War and Peace: The Evils of the First, and a Plan for Preserving the Last. New York: Wiley and Putnam, p.27: https://books.google.co.uk/books?id=0c1HW3xq2sUC&pg=PA27#v=onepage&q=27&f=false
55 Catalogue of the Missionary Museum, Blomfield Street, Finsbury. London: Reed and Parson. Bernice P. Bishop Museum: Fuller AM Museum Pam #619. p.23.
56 (1837) ‘Art VII. Admonitory Pictures, being a series of Chinese paintings representing the rapid career of the opium-smoker, from health and affluence to decrepitude and beggary,. By SUNQUA.’, The Chinese Repository, Vol. V, April 1837, No.12, p.571: https://books.google.co.uk/books?id=l5VCAAAAYAAJ&vq=sunqua&pg=PA571#v=onepage&q&f=false
57 (1840). “Progress of the Opium War”. The Spectator, Saturday December 12, 1840, pp.1182: https://books.google.co.uk/books?id=AQU4AQAAMAAJ&vq=1182&pg=PA1182#v=onepage&q&f=false
58 (1841) Chinese Mission, Evangelical Magazine and Missionary Chronicle for April 1841, pp. 203-204: https://books.google.co.uk/books?id=ey4EAAAAQAAJ&newbks=1&newbks_redir=0&dq=evangelical%20magazine%20and%20missionary%20chronicle&pg=PA203#v=onepage&q&f=false
59 (1841) ‘China. Letter from Mr Hobson’, Evangelical Magazine and Missionary Chronicle for April 1841, pp. 302-304: https://books.google.co.uk/books?id=ey4EAAAAQAAJ&newbks=1&newbks_redir=0&dq=evangelical%20magazine%20and%20missionary%20chronicle&pg=PA284-IA2#v=onepage&q&f=false
60 Munn, C. (1997). “The Chusan episode: Britain’s occupation of a Chinese Island, 1840–46.” The Journal of Imperial and Commonwealth History 25(1): 82-112.
61 Lutz, J. G. (2008) Opening China: Karl F.A. Gützlaff and Sino-Western Relations, 1827-1852. Michigan/Cambridge, William B. Eerdmans Publishing Company, pp. 103.
62 Munn, C. (1997). “The Chusan episode: Britain’s occupation of a Chinese Island, 1840–46.” The Journal of Imperial and Commonwealth History 25(1): 82-112.
63 Lovett, R. (1899). The History of the London Missionary Society 1795-1895. London, Oxford University Press, Volume II, pp. 509.
64 Wolseley, G.J. (1862.) Narrative of the War with China in 1860. London: Longman, Green. Longman, and Roberts, pp. 29-30: https://books.google.co.uk/books?id=zFYCAAAAMAAJ&newbks=1&newbks_redir=0&dq=J.%20Garnet%20Wolseley%2C%20Narrative%20of%20the%20War%20with%20China%20in%201860&pg=PA29#v=onepage&q&f=false
65 Pedersen, E. O. (2015). “RELIGION IS THE OPIUM OF THE PEOPLE: AN INVESTIGATION INTO THE INTELLECTUAL CONTEXT OF MARX’S CRITIQUE OF RELIGION.” History of Political Thought 36(2): 354-387; Mckinnon, A. M. (2005). “Reading `Opium of the People’: Expression, Protest and the Dialectics of Religion.” Critical Sociology 31(1-2): 15-38.
66 Marx, K. (1844) Introduction: A Contribution to the Critique of Hegel’s Philosophy of Right, first published in Deutsch-Französische Jahrbücher, 7 & 10 February 1844 in Paris. Translation available at: https://www.marxists.org/archive/marx/works/1843/critique-hpr/intro.htm
67 Feiya, T. (2008). “Drug or medicine? China’s experience of Marx’s opium thesis on religion.” Journal of Modern Chinese History 2(1): 59-75; Yang, F. (2011). Chinese Marxist Atheism and Its Policy Implications. Religion in China: Survival and Revival under Communist Rule, Oxford University Press.