Robert Morrison: Man on a Mission

Today, we’ll talk about Robert Morrison, a 19th-century Protestant missionary who is credited as the initial translator of the Bible into Chinese and compiled the first Chinese-English dictionary – and that was just the beginning.

On June 10th, a launch ceremony for the Chinese-English bibliographic abstracts of the Library of Chinese Classics was held in the city of Changsha in Hunan Province.

There are 104 books and 213 volumes in the Chinese-English Library of Chinese Classics, covering the fields of philosophy, literature, history, science and technology, and military strategy. It is the largest series of English translations of ancient Chinese classics ever published.

The abstracts are the first panoramic interpretation of the Chinese-English translation of the Library of Chinese Classics, which has involved many famed translators and translations of important ancient Chinese classic books over the past 30 years.

However, when talking about the promotion of traditional Chinese culture to the Western world, it is impossible not to mention a 19th-century Protestant missionary who published more than 20 books about Chinese language and culture.

Born into a humble farming family in a small northern England town on January 5, 1782, Robert Morrison developed a keen interest in missionary work at the age of 17. He pursued an education in various disciplines, including languages, medicine, astronomy, mathematics, and theology. In May 1804, he joined the London Missionary Society with the aim of becoming a Protestant missionary.

The emergence of the mass missionary movement among Protestants coincided with the advent of industrial civilization in Europe. China, with its vast territory, dense population, and distinctive Oriental civilization, held a profound allure for the Western Church.

In 1805, Morrison received an appointment from the London Missionary Society to establish a new mission in China, despite being aware that the Qing Dynasty, China’s last imperial dynasty lasting from 1644 to 1911, did not permit missionary activities at that time.

Morrison embarked on his journey, recommended by James Madison, the then US Secretary of State, aboard the US Trident. After a nearly four-month voyage, he arrived in Guangzhou, located in southern China’s Guangdong Province, on the evening of September 4, 1807.

Morrison soon faced the harsh reality of missionary work in China. The European Consul and British merchants who greeted him constantly reminded him of the difficulties of living in China and finding a Chinese teacher to learn the local language.

During the early 19th century, the Qing Dynasty maintained a closed-door policy, strictly prohibiting Western missionary activities. Just before Morrison’s arrival, ruling emperor Jiaqing reiterated the ban on missionary work in Guangdong Province, forbidding foreigners, except merchants, from staying in Macau. Back then, Guangzhou was the only open port for trade with foreign countries allowed by the Qing government. Chinese individuals caught assisting foreigners would face severe punishment.

In a letter to his father dated October 18, 1807, Morrison indicated that he was in a state of great anxiety. He wrote, “How to look, and speak, and act, so as to excite no suspicion in their minds as to my intention, is very difficult to know.”

To conceal his true missionary intentions, Morrison adopted Chinese customs, such as eating with chopsticks, wearing Chinese attire, allowing his hair to grow long and wearing it in the traditional queue – he even kept his fingernails long, although some of these practices were considered unhygienic by Western standards.

Studying Chinese was a perilous endeavor, as the Qing court strictly prohibited Chinese individuals from teaching the language to foreigners, an act which could carry the penalty of death. Despite this, Morrison managed to secure a Chinese teacher, who carried poison with him at all times and was prepared to consume it if discovered by the local authorities. Morrison studied Chinese at night, ensuring that the lights in his room were extinguished to protect his teacher.

Morrison also came to realize that his hopes of teaching English to the Chinese populace were overly optimistic. During that era, few Chinese individuals expressed interest in learning English, with only a small number of merchants studying some English terms for trade purposes.

In 1809, Morrison married Mary Morton, the daughter of an East-India Company clerk involved in the opium trade with China. Shortly afterwards, Morrison became an interpreter for the East-India Company, legally securing to the right to remain in China.

Morrison was vehemently opposed to the opium smuggling conducted by the East-India Company, considering it a huge disgrace to Britain and the moral character of a Christian nation. While his job at the East-India Company consumed much of his time, Morrison dedicated his spare moments to translating the Bible and preaching to those around him.

In 1813, Morrison completed the translation of the entire New Testament, which was published in Guangzhou. The translation of the Old Testament was finalized and published in Malacca in 1819. By 1823, the combined Old and New Testaments were available to the public. Morrison devoted 12 years and three months to this monumental task, producing the first Chinese version of the Bible. Today, a copy of Morrison’s Chinese translation of the Bible is housed at the Museum of the Bible Society in New York. Although British missionary Walter Medhurst unveiled his own Chinese translation of the Bible in 1843, Morrison’s edition remained the most widely used.

Additionally, Morrison became the first Westerner to systematically translate Chinese cultural classics into English. Recognizing that China’s ancient civilization and cultural heritage surpasses that of any European country, he believed that translating these classics would enhance Western understanding of China. 

Throughout his time in China, Morrison published a total of 21 books in English, 14 of which focused on Chinese language, culture, and history. The Chinese literary classics he translated include the Three-Character Classic, Great Science, and Source of the Three Teachings, which were first published in London in 1812.

While working on his translation of the Bible, Morrison compiled a Chinese-English dictionary titled A Dictionary of the Chinese Language, in Three Parts. This comprehensive six-volume dictionary became a landmark work in Chinese history, enabling missionaries with knowledge of English to learn Chinese and work as translators. Morrison’s dictionary incorporated two key concepts: promoting Chinese culture through comparisons with English culture, while also attracting more people to study the Chinese language. These innovative principles were ahead of their time and continue to hold relevance today.

Morrison sometimes grew weary of the monotony of toiling over both the Dictionary and the Bible. In his memoirs, which were published posthumously by his widow, he confesses, “Writing the Dictionary is such very dry work – and translating is not much better. One’s mind is kept so much applied to mere words. The deprivation, however, is all in a good cause.” Fortunately, all that hard work paid off.

The Chinese-English dictionary gained recognition from senior Chinese officials interested in understanding the Western world. During senior official Lin Zexu’s journey to Guangzhou in 1839, where he compelled British merchants to surrender their opium stocks for destruction, he specifically requested a copy of the dictionary from American missionary Elijah Coleman Bridgman, the founder of the English newspaper Chinese Repository.

As the atmosphere in Guangzhou grew increasingly hostile toward foreigners from the 1810s onwards, Morrison, along with his assistant William Milne, another missionary from the London Missionary Society, and their Chinese assistant Liang Fa, turned their attention to Dutch Malacca in the southern region of the Malay Peninsula. 

They established a missionary base in Malacca, strategically positioned between India and China, with excellent transportation connections to various parts of China and neighboring islands. They also founded the Anglo Chinese College in Malacca and published educational materials to train local Chinese residents to serve as missionaries with the aim of sending these idividuals back to China when its doors opened.

To promote Christian concepts and Western science and technology more effectively, Morrison decided to establish a Chinese-language periodical. On August 5, 1815, the Chinese Monthly Magazine was published in Malacca. It was written and edited by Morrison, William Milne, and their printer Liang Fa. This groundbreaking Chinese language publication became the world’s first modern news periodical targeting Chinese readers. Its content encompassed religious, journalistic, and scientific articles. Notably, the monthly journal’s scientific articles focused primarily on astronomy, and in its second issue, it even featured the first news brief about a lunar eclipse in the history of Chinese journalism.

Each issue consisted of five to seven pages, containing around 2,000 words. Initially, 500 copies were printed, but the distribution later increased to 1,000 copies, which were offered free of charge to overseas Chinese readers. The publication ran from 1815 to 1822, issuing a total of 77 editions across eight volumes before the passing of William Milne.

Milne, who was the periodical’s managing editor, employed a China-friendly propaganda strategy, and strove to incorporate traditional Chinese forms in order to appeal to the Chinese mindset and promote his religious beliefs. Extensive use of quotes from revered Chinese figures like Confucius and Mencius were employed to attract Chinese readers.

In addition to his notable contributions to translation, lexicography and news publication, Morrison’s impact on education was profound. In 1818, he established the Anglo-Chinese College in Macau. This ambitious institution, resembling a university in scale, aimed to educate Chinese youth and stood as the first missionary school in China. It also represented the first church school administered by modern missionaries to train Chinese pastoral personnel. The curriculum was taught in both English and Chinese, covering theology, mathematics, history, and geography. Morrison himself assumed the role of pastor at the college, and in 1825, the school began admitting female students. This pioneering cross-cultural educational enterprise laid a crucial foundation for future Christian universities in China.

The Anglo-Chinese College produced numerous distinguished graduates, including Rong Hong, Huang Kuan, and Huang Sheng. Remarkably, they became the first Chinese students to study in the United States in 1847. Among them, Rong Hong was particularly successful, establishing himself as a renowned educator, diplomat, and social activist in modern China. Notably, he holds the distinction of being the first Chinese student to graduate from Yale University.

Additionally, Morrison played a pivotal role in introducing Western medicine to Chinese society by opening clinics in Macao and Guangzhou.

Throughout his career in China, Morrison only returned to England once in 1824 to report for duty, where he presented his Chinese Bible to King George IV, and was received by all classes with great respect. In May 1826, Morrison returned to China, where he remained until his death in 1834. 

Morrison is buried in the Old Protestant Cemetery in Macau, where his epitaph reads:

Sacred to the memory of Robert Morrison Doctor of Divinity,
The first protestant missionary to China,
Where after a service of twenty-seven years,
cheerfully spent in extending the kingdom of the blessed Redeemer
during which period he compiled and published
a dictionary of the Chinese language,
founded the Anglo Chinese College at Malacca
and for several years labored alone on a Chinese version of
The Holy Scriptures,
which he was spared to see complete and widely circulated
among those for whom it was destined,
he sweetly slept in Jesus.

Well, that’s the end of our podcast. Our theme music is by the famous film score composer Roc Chen. We want to thank our writer Du Guodong, and copy editor James McCarthy. And thank you for listening. We hope you enjoyed it, and if you did, please tell a friend so they, too, can understand The Context.