Desire, Disguise, and Distaste: Robert Morrison, the British East India Company, and Early Missionary and Merchant Negotiations in Guangzhou, China

Abstract:Prior to the first Opium War of 1839, the expansion of global capitalism in the form of imperialism and semicolonialism coincided with greater religious missionary global outreach. British East India Company encroachment in Asia inspired mission societies in Europe and mission boards in America to increase their efforts in the spread of Christianity. Both groups desired extended access to markets and souls, and yet, the assumptions that made these two endeavors seem compatible often proved untenable, and merchants and missionaries considered the other potentially disruptive to their own agenda. British missionary Robert Morrison incorporated disguise and deniability to settle and remain in Guangzhou. These efforts helped him use the otherwise distasteful merchant community to allow him to proselytize. The British East India Company, equally uneasy over missionary work, also hid their relationship to Morrison. Merchants and missionaries needed and used one another; disguise and plausible deniability facilitated their symbiosis.