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The Chinese Repository and Western Literature on China 1800 to 1850

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  28 November 2008

Elizabeth L. Malcolm
Elizabeth L. Malcolm
Affiliation:
University of New South Wales, Sydney
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Extract

In the first decades of the nineteenth-century Western missionary activity, like the opium trade, was prohibited by the Chinese government. The Protestant missionaries, however, could not equal the independent opium traders in their evasion of the Chinese authorities. As well, they had to contend with the opposition of the British East India Company, which theoretically monopolized Anglo-Chinese commerce at Portuguese Macao.

Type
Articles
Information
Modern Asian Studies , Volume 7 , Issue 2 , March 1973 , pp. 165 - 178
Copyright
Copyright © Cambridge University Press 1973

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References

1 The terms ‘West’ and ‘Westerners’ when used in this paper refer to Europe and North America and their inhabitants.

2 For the prospectus of this magazine see Chinese Repository, Volume 5, No. 4, 08, 1836, pp. 149–50.Google Scholar

3 Ibid., Vol. 1, No. 1, May, 1832, p. 4.

4 The Repository followed nineteenth-century journalistic practice in publishing all articles anonymously. But in the small Western community the names of the contributors soon became known. When he was compiling the index S. W. Williams included the names of as many of the contributors as he knew.

5 The Repository contains some most interesting obituaries of missionaries' wives. See, for example, Chinese Repository, Vol. 12, No. 4, 04, 1843, p. 207.Google Scholar

6 Britton, Roswell S., The Chinese Periodical Press 1800–1912, Taipei, Ch'eng-wen Publishing Company, 1966, pp. 28–9.Google Scholar

7 See Cordier, Henri, ‘Notes of the Quarter II. Obituary Notices—Sir Thomas Francis Wade’, Journal of the Royal Asiatic Society of Great Britain and Ireland, 1895, pp. 911–15.Google Scholar

8 See Endacott, G. B., A Biographical Sketch-Book of Early Hong Kong, Singapore, Donald Moore, 1962, pp. 23–9.Google Scholar

9 See Ibid., pp. 36–44 and Nesbitt, George L., Benthamite Reviewing. The First Twelve Years of the Westminster Review 1824–1836, New York, Columbia University Press, 1934, pp. 29–32.Google Scholar

10 Malone, Dumas (ed.), Dictionary of American Biography, Vol. 4, New York, Charles Scribner's Sons, 1930, pp. 623–30.Google Scholar

11 Ibid., Vol. 14, pp. 234–5.

12 Peffer, Nathaniel, The Far East. A Modern History, Ann Arbor, University of Michigan Press, 1958, p. 114.Google Scholar

13 Chinese Repository, Vol. 3, No. 7, 11, 1834, pp. 294–5.Google Scholar

14 See Olmstead, Clifton E., History of Religion in the United States, Englewood Cliffs, New Jersey, Prentice-Hall Inc., 1960, pp. 271–3.Google Scholar

15 Danton, George H., The Culture Contacts of the United States and China, New York, Columbia University Press, 1931, p. 76.Google Scholar

16 Thom had an extremely interesting life. See obituary in Chinese Repository, Vol. 16, No. 5, 05, 1847, p. 242.Google Scholar

17 In the late 1820s, before large numbers of missionaries began to arrive, there were only three Westerners in China who could speak the language. See Danton, op. cit., p. 21.Google Scholar

18 To inform the merchants about China was one of the Repository's main aims and it repeatedly urged on them the necessity of learning the language, even if only to facilitate their business transactions. See Chinese Repository, Vol. 6, No. 6, 10, 1837, p. 279.Google Scholar

19 The five main contributors were the Americans E. C. Bridgman and S. W. Williams, the British father and son, Robert Morrison and J. R. Morrison, and the German, Karl Gutzlaff.

20 These expectations are borne out by a detailed study of the Repository. However, it is impossible in a short paper even to attempt to discuss the enormous amount and variety of material contained in the periodical. I would therefore refer my readers to my thesis A Study of the Chinese Repository 1832–1851, University of New South Wales, 1960, in which I have made an attempt to study some of this data.Google Scholar

21 Chinese Repository, Vol. 5, No. 4, 08, 1836, p. 160.Google Scholar Added to this list is a note announcing that subscriptions have since risen to 800.

22 W. H. Medhurst, K. Gutzlaff, E. C. Bridgman, E. Stevens, S. W. Williams, P. Parker and J. L. Shuck—all of whom worked on the Repository.Google Scholar

23 Chinese Repository, Vol. 5, No. 9, 01, 1837, p. 432.Google Scholar

24 Chinese Repository, Vol. 20, No. 8, 08, 1851, pp. 514–17.Google Scholar

25 e.g. Chinese Repository, Vol. 1, No. 8, 12, 1832, p. 335.Google Scholar

26 Chinese Repository, Vol. 4, No. 12, 04, 1836, p. 584.Google Scholar

27 e.g. Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Vol. 47, 03, 1840, p. 370.Google Scholar

28 S. W. Williams to E. C. Bridgman, 6 December 1844, Williams' Papers.Google Scholar

29 Readership was traditionally found by multiplying circulation by four or five. Thus at its peak, the Repository must have been read by some four or five thousand people.

30 Williams, F. W., The Life and Letters of Samuel Wells Williams LL.D., Missionary, Diplomatist, Sinologue, New York, Putnam, 1889, p. 678.Google Scholar

31 Chinese Repository, Vol. 5, No. 4, 08, 1836, p. 159.Google Scholar

32 In Vol. 2 the Repository announced that it was considering halving subscription rates in order to double circulation. It also claimed to have been influenced by a pamphlet of the Society for the Diffusion of Useful Knowledge urging cheaper publications. See Chinese Repository, Vol. 2, No. 7, 11, 1833, p. 329.Google Scholar Perhaps also the fact that $3 was the standard subscription rate for American periodicals played a part in the editors' decision. See Mott, Frank L., A History of American Magazines, 1741–1850, Cambridge, Massachusetts, Harvard University Press, 1957, p. 513.Google Scholar

33 Chinese Repository, editorial note to the general index, pages not numbered.

34 Mott, op. cit., p. 514 and Fetter, F., ‘Economic Controversy in the British Reviews 1802–1850’, Economica, Vol. 32, 1965, p. 425.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

35 Williams, F. W., op. cit., p. 172.Google Scholar

36 But in 1851 there were 1007 Westerners in China. See Chinese Repository, Vol. 20, No. 1, 01, 1851, p. 11.Google Scholar

37 The newspapers' expenses came to $4,700 in all, which included $2,000 for the editor's salary, $600 for office rent, $1,200 for compositors' wages, $180 for pressmen and coolies and $240 for interest on capital borrowed. The Repository's editors and contributors, however, were unpaid, as was its printer, and Olyphant supplied an office free of charge. See Chinese Repository, Vol. 5, No. 4, 08, 1836, pp. 158–9.Google Scholar

38 Williams, S. W. to Bridgman, E. C., 20 December 1850, Williams' Papers.Google Scholar

39 The famous nick-name of Blackwood's Magazine and originally an abbreviation of the word, magazine.

40 Williams, F. W., op. cit., p. 180.Google Scholar

41 Chinese Repository, editorial note to the general index, pages not numbered.

42 Danton, , op. cit., pp. 22–3.Google Scholar

43 Chinese Repository, editorial note to the general index, pages not numbered.

44 Chinese Repository, Vol. 20, No. 8, 08, 1851, pp. 514–16.Google Scholar

45 Ibid., pp. 516–19.

46 Ibid., pp. 516–19.

47 Chinese Repository, Vol. 18, No. 8, 08, 1849, pp. 402–44.Google Scholar The Repository gives the total as 402 but No. 141 has appeared twice on p. 421.

48 Ibid., pp. 657–61.

49 Widener Library Shelflist, 14, China, Japan and Korea, Cambridge, MassachusettsHarvard University Press, 1968, pp. 376–9.Google Scholar

50 The Classified Index to the London Catalogue of Books published in Great Britain 1816 to 1851, London, Thomas Hodgson, 1853, p. 148.Google Scholar

51 Sampson, Low (ed.), The British Catalogue of Books published from October 1837 to December 1852, London, Sampson Low, 1853, pp. 64, 9, 11, 11.Google Scholar

52 Peddie, R. A., and Waddington, Q., The English Catalogue of Books … issued in the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Ireland 1801–1836, Sampson Low and Marston, 1914, p. 111.Google Scholar

53 Jack, Ian, English Literature 1815–1832, Oxford, Clarendon Press, 1963, pp. 38–9.Google Scholar

54 Asiatic Researches (London), Asiatic Researches of the Asiatic Society of Bengal (Calcutta), Transactions of the Royal Asiatic Society (London), Journal Asiatique (Paris), Asiatic Journal Monthly (London).

55 Chinese Repository, Vol. 18, No. 8, 08, 1849, p. 435.Google Scholar

56 Poole, William Frederick, Poole's Index to Periodical Literature 1802–1881, Vol. 1, Part I, Revised Edition, Gloucester Massachusetts, Peter Smith, 1958, pp. 231–6.Google Scholar

57 Edinburgh Review, Vol. 88, 10, 1848, pp. 403–29.Google ScholarPubMed

58 This could partly be explained by the fact that until recently complete sets of the Repository have been difficult to obtain. 6,500 sets were destroyed in the fire that razed the foreign factories during the Second Opium War (1856). As early as 1869 the Edinburgh Review commented on the scarcity of copies of the Repository and by 1889 the cost of sets had risen from $60 to between $150 and $200 each. However, recently the Repository has been reprinted in Japan and complete sets are now easily obtainable, though still expensive.