Protestant Missionaries in China: Robert Morrison and Early Sinology , by Jonathan A. Seitz

Studies of the earliest generation of missionaries often focus on biography or institutional history, as seen in hagiographies or anniversary volumes celebrating missionary “founders.” Jonathan A. Seitz’s Protestant Missionaries in China: Robert Morrison and Early Sinology takes a different approach; it examines how early missionaries studied China and the influence of the works they produced. Focusing on Robert Morrison (1782–1834), the London Missionary Society’s (LMS) first missionary to China, and his collaborator William Milne (1785–1822), Seitz argues that missionaries were not only evangelists but also authors whose texts shaped both Chinese Christianity and Western views of China.The book unfolds in eight chapters. Chapter 1 introduces Morrison, his close collaborators, and the LMS. It also defines what Seitz means by “sinology” in the early missionary movement and establishes the time frame of the study. Chapters 2 to 6 trace Morrison and Milne’s training and their joint efforts in translating and publishing diverse literature for Chinese and English audiences. Chapter 7 shifts to diplomacy, examining Morrison’s involvement with the East India Company and British missions to the Chinese imperial court. Chapter 8 concludes by characterizing Morrison and his contemporaries’ work as “amateur, missionary, and orientalist” (166), three adjectives that capture the hybrid nature of their scholarship on China.What distinguishes Seitz’s work, despite the many books already written on early Protestant missionaries, is the way he situates their activity in what he calls the “gap period in sinology” (1). This was the decades after the height of Catholic missions but before the Opium Wars, when Protestant missions remained at the margins of the Qing Empire, and when China and the West still appeared to stand in parity. In this context, Seitz argues, missionaries like Morrison and Milne became unusual public experts on China for Western readers. By foregrounding this critical period, Seitz also engages with colonial critiques often directed at later missionary generations, focusing instead on how these pioneers first encountered China, attempted to describe and interpret Chinese culture, and produced writings that both reflected orientalist assumptions and yet drew on, challenged, and refined European stereotypes of China.A major strength of the book lies in Seitz’s impressive command of archival materials. What began as two chapters of his dissertation on the first generation of Chinese Protestants grew into a larger project as he gathered sources on the earliest Protestant missionaries to China. Over fifteen years of research, Seitz worked with tracts, catechisms, vernacular novels, missionary journals, sermons, and diplomatic records. He also introduces underexplored texts, such as China: A Dialogue, written by Morrison for English children, and the Indo-Chinese Gleaner, an English-language missionary periodical. These examples reveal the breadth of missionary knowledge production beyond Bible translation. Especially remarkable is his analysis of the pseudonyms missionaries adopted. Seitz not only reveals their identities but also interprets this practice of assuming new names as a form of “cultural conversion” (108), showing missionaries’ complex engagement with Chinese culture as they defended their own religious views.Seitz’s long-standing interest in the first generation of Chinese Protestants, such as Liang Fa, also shapes this book. Although the emphasis is on early Protestant missionaries, Seitz continually foregrounds Chinese voices. He shows that many missionary texts were coproduced with Chinese assistants and investigates how missionaries learned from Chinese diaspora communities in Southeast Asia and Europe. A compelling case is Yong Sam Tak, a Chinese teacher in London who guided Morrison in language learning and translation. Through their interaction, Morrison encountered Confucian moral thought and Chinese conceptions of the divine. Yong never became Christian, and Morrison often resented his refusal. Yet their uneasy collaboration illustrates how immigrant movement could catalyze missions and how cooperation with Chinese partners was essential from the start. Seitz also explores how Chinese readers received early missionary literature and notes the absence of Chinese coworkers in diplomatic records. By centering Chinese perspectives, Seitz counters Eurocentric views of sinology and contributes to debates on indigenization in global history of Christianity.The book does have weaknesses in presentation. The title somewhat misleads, since the subtitle emphasizes Morrison at the expense of Milne and the Chinese collaborators who appear throughout—a choice likely made by the press rather than the author. More significantly, the narrative sometimes suffers from densely documented prose and lengthy quotations. Seitz’s ongoing dialogue with other scholars demonstrates deep familiarity with the field but can make the main argument difficult for nonspecialists to follow. Occasionally, the book reads more like detailed scholarly notes than a continuous narrative, leaving readers wishing for a more fluid account of early missionaries’ lives and legacies.Despite these shortcomings, Seitz’s contribution is significant. His careful archival work and attention to underexplored genres of missionary writing open fresh pathways for exploring the intellectual and cultural dimensions of Protestant missions in China. Students and scholars of World Christianity will find in it a model for treating missions as sites of cross-cultural knowledge production, while specialists in Chinese history and sinology will appreciate its exhaustive engagement with textual sources. This book is a demanding but rewarding read that brings overdue attention to the Protestant missions in China during a formative era before the age of unequal treaties.