A bridge between cultures: commemorating the two-hundreth anniversary of Robert Morrison's arrival in China - Report on the Conference in Washington, March 2007

Between the 14th and 16th of March 2007 a remarkable gathering of scholars took place, during an academic conference organised by the Centre for the Study of Christianity in China (Oxford, England). ‘Remarkable’, firstly, because the conference was conceived and planned in an Oxford garden cottage but jointly hosted by the Asian Division of the Library of Congress (Washington, DC) and the Confucius Institute at University of Maryland (College Park, MD). The logistics of attempting to achieve synergy between the three organising bodies, as well as with participants hailing from Europe, American and Asia, went far beyond merely technical considerations. We would thus like to thank our co-organisers for their unceasing dedication. In this context, the generous help by the United Bible Society/Bible Society and AMO International should be acknowledged, in particular since their financial support enabled our speakers from China to participate.

The second ‘remarkable’ characteristic was the aim of the conference, namely to commemorate the bicentenary of Robert Morrison’s arrival to China. The question beckons why a missionary should be commemorated whose calling produced only the slimmest of concrete returns. A missionary without a sizeable number of converts would certainly have to be regarded as a failure; common sense would seem to dictate. Furthermore, Morrison is all too often remembered as a hard-hearted hermit who neglected his family in order to compete with Marshman, his arch-rival in Serampore (India), in a race to complete the first translation of the Bible into Chinese. Such fanaticism would hardly bode well for future remembrance. The conference, however, produced fascinating insight into aspects of Robert Morrison’s private - as well as professional – life, dispelling his rather sombre reputation as insubstantial. In particular the keynote paper by Barton Starr, as well as the insight provided by Christopher Hancock painted a much more nuanced portrait of Morrison, revealing a person capable of a high degree of tolerance as well as tender affection.

The final motivation for the conference’s uniqueness lies in the composition of its participants. Three generations of scholars congregated in order to ‘compare notes’, some of whom active in missionary research since the 1960s, others in the middle of their PhD theses. Given the comparative waning of interest in China’s missionary history over the past two decades, it was heart-warming to see how much interest the Morrison bicentennial generated among younger academics. This is particularly true of research into Christianity at academic institutions in China. The presence of both well established and of younger scholars from China can certainly be taken as an encouraging sign.

In thematic terms, the conference intended to shed light on Robert Morrison as a “bridge between cultures”. In particular today, at a time when China is assuming ever greater importance in international relations, the beginnings of modern diplomatic and commercial contacts between China and the western world become visible in Morrison’s work for the East India Company and as ambassadorial interpreter. He was survived by his son John Robert Morrison who, prior to his premature death in 1843, assumed senior positions within the East India Company and the Hong Kong government. His long-term influence is, however, most intensely felt in his translations. A special space was thus created at the conference for Morrison the translator and author, with a dedicated book exhibition at the Asian Reading Room, Library of Congress. As a man of humble origins and schooling, Robert Morrison devoted his life to missionary work already in young years. His greatest satisfaction would indubitably have been derived from the knowledge of having converted many Qing subjects to the Christian faith burning within him, but the conditions of the early nineteenth century made this nigh impossible. The greater his delight must have been when, during a visit to England between 1823 and 1826, he ordained the first Chinese Protestant pastor. Morrison died in China eight years after his return to Guangzhou in 1826.

The structural approach of the two-day conference was to narrow down the topics presented from the most general background during the opening session at the Library of Congress (Members’ Room) to the most specialised papers presented on the final day. The conference thus began, following brief welcome speeches by representatives of the three organisers, with a presentation by Dr Mi Chu Wiens, Head of Scholarly Services at the LoC Asian Division and Dr Yeung Man-shun, lecturer at the Department of Chinese, University of Hong Kong, on the Morrison materials at the Library of Congress. The next thematic contribution was made by Robert Frykenberg (University of Wisconsin at Madison), who in his keynote speech Contextualizing Christianity in China: Placing Morrison in a Wider Historical Perspective established important parallels between Morrison’s work in China and the cultural presence of the West in India. The first day’s only panel (China and the Greater World: Cultural Parameters, chaired by Prof. Yu Ying-Shih) dwelt upon the Qing empire as a locus of Western influence. The first paper by Dr Lars Peter Laamann (SOAS & CSCiC, Between selectivity and openness: The Qing empire (1644-1911) in a global setting) posited that despite all impressions to the contrary the Qing was a genuinely open empire. Prof. Wu Boya (Chinese Academy of Social Sciences, Cultural Policies of the Qing towards the West in Early Nineteenth Century) emphasised the utilisation of foreigners prior to 1840 for the purpose of enriching the cultural fabric of Qing society. Joseph Lee (Pace University, New York, The Protestant Century of South China: Christian Communities in Chaozhou, Guangdong Province (1860-1960) concluded the panel with a detailed study of political and security considerations which convert communities during the nineteenth century bore in mind. Denominational boundaries thus often coincided with family and clan boundaries.

The papers presented during the second day of the conference (Maryland Room, University of Maryland) formed a counterweight to the introductory presentations of the preceding day. Prof. Barton Starr (Palm Beach Atlantic University), by international consensus the coryphée of any knowledge related to Robert Morrison, presented a keynote speech (Love and Faith: The Domestic Memoir of Mrs. Morrison) which highlighted the more tender side of a missionary frequently condemned as hard-hearted. The first panel (China and Christianity), chaired by Prof. James Gao (as most of the following chair persons from the University of Maryland), was tolled in by Suzanne Barnett (University of Puget Sound), with a paper entitled The Geographical Connection: Locating Robert Morrison in Chinese Intellectual History. Once Prof. Barnett had established the basic parameters of Morrison’s influence, Dr Jean-Paul Wiest (Beijing) elaborated on the oft-neglected Catholic dimension to Morrison’s mission (Early Nineteenth-Century Catholic Missions in Macau and Guangdong). Prof. Daniel Bays (Calvin College) rounded off the panel with a summary of Morrison’s long shadow in contemporary China (The Influence of Robert Morrison on China’s Churches and Society Today).

The following panel (Morrison’s Mission), chaired by Prof. Miranda Schreurs, contained greatly detailed presentations focusing on Morrison’s apostolic role. Following Dr Martha Smalley’s introduction to the archival materials on Morrison at the Day Missions library, Dr Gary Tiedemann (CSCiC) gave a detailed overview of the distribution of Protestant missionaries before 1840 (Robert Morrison and the Protestant Missionaries of the Ultra-Ganges Missions in the Early Nineteenth-Century). The Rev. Dr Christopher Hancock (CSCiC, The evolution of Morrison's mission) as well as Christopher A. Daily (SOAS, From Matavai Bay to Canton: Opening Robert Morrison's Mission to its Historical and Ideological Contexts) introduced the spiritual dimension of Morrison’s long sojourn in the East. The panel was concluded by an analysis of the missionary’s translation of the Our Father, by Prof. Jonathan Seitz (Princeton Seminary, Morrison’s 1805 “Lord's Prayer”).

Prof. Cho-yun Hsu (University of Pittsburgh), introduced by Dr. James F. Harris (Dean, College of Arts and Humanities, University of Maryland), established a direct connection to the conference theme, i.e. Robert Morrison - A Bridge between Cultures. This was followed by a keynote paper by mission history veteran Prof. Jessie Lutz, who analysed the translation process inherent to missionary proselytisation (Western Nationalism, Chinese Assistants, and Translations of the Bible). The latter theme was subsequently fully developed by Prof. Lauren Pfister (Hong Kong Baptist University, Trumping the Myth of Ruist Secularity: The Missiological Significance of Theistic Yearnings among Chinese Literati), as part of the panel entitled Textuality and Confucianism. Chen Song-Chuan (Cambridge) expanded Pfister’s conclusions with a concrete example, derived from his ongoing PhD research ('Intellectual Artillery': Global Knowledge Exchange and the Society for the Diffusion of Useful Knowledge in China, 1834-1838). The Confucian theme was translated into a contemporary setting with the paper by Peter Ng (Chinese University of Hong Kong), entitled History of Christianity in China Revisited: The Three-self Movement and the Development of Localized Christianity in China.

The next panel (Translation and Printing) contained a panoply of contributions indicating the very concrete reasons as to why Morrison is also remembered by linguists and translators. Zhu Feng (Kyoto Notre Dame University, The Influence of Morrison’s Works on the Study of English in Early Nineteenth-Century Japan), Zhou Zhenhe (Fudan University, Robert Morrison and his Son's Research on Pidgin English), Jane Jia Si (University of Pennsylvania, The Reprinting of Robert Morrison’s Dictionary and its Influence on English Language Study in Nineteenth-Century China), Michael Lazich (Buffalo State College, The Chinese Repository and the Missionary Impetus to Know East Asia), Alan Yeh (Yale University, Robert Morrison, James Legge, and Beyond: Translating the Bible into Chinese), as well as Han Qi (Chinese Academy of Science, Printing Chinese Characters Using Divisible Types — From Ultra-Ganges to Shanghai (ca.1827-1880) presented detailed studies of Morrison’s interest in the grammatical aspects of the Chinese language.

The final panel (Missionary Influence on Culture and Religion in China Today), to which journalist and author David Aikman acted as Respondent and which was chaired by Dr Jason Kuo (Dept. of Art History and Archaeology, University of Maryland), began with Prof. Li Gang’s historical review at the fate of Christian schools and colleges during the 1930s and 40s (Nanjing Xiaozhuang University, Missionary education in China, from Morrison until 1951). The Rev. Dr Robert Carbonneau (Passionist Historical Archives, Missionaries and Diplomats: An Introduction to the Understanding of Twentieth Century Missionary Cases in National Archives II of the United States, College Park, Maryland) gave a first-class historiographic analysis of the primary sources held at the University of Maryland. Yeung Man-shun (University of Hong Kong and organiser of the exhibition at the Library of Congress) chose a topic fitting the panel topic with great perfection. In analysing Morrison’s local contacts with non-Christians and Christians alike (Buddhism, Christianity, and Robert Morrison: With Reference to Morrison's Contacts with Haizhuang Si, a Canton Buddhist Temple), Prof. Yeung highlighted an important cross-cultural space influenced by Robert Morrison.

It should be recalled that the exhibition at the Library of Congress as well as our intensive two-day conference form part of a much wider process of remembrance, which has engendered conferences in North America, Europe and China (Hong Kong). If such effort to keep the knowledge of Robert Morrison’s role as a cultural bridge between China and the West alive bears fruit, this conference would have fulfilled its purpose.

Click on these links, below:

Photographs of the conference, in random order

Photographs of speakers on Day 1, at the Library of Congress

Copy of the Catologue of materials held in the Library of Congress relating to Robert Morrison and to 19th c. missions in China (100 MB)

above: Dr James H Billington, Librarian of Congress

Below: Dr Shuan Shen Liu, Director of the Confucius Institute, University of Maryland

Above: Dr Hwa-Wei Lee, Chief, Asian Division, Library of Congress

Below: Dr Hsu Cho Yun, University of Pittsburgh

The Very Rev Dr Chris Hancock, Director of the Centre for the Study of Christianity in China