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6. Missionary Anna Hartwell Discusses

"Soul Winning," 1919

.om the [missionary] conference at Shai [probably Shanghai] last winter. . . Most
i the items we agreed to,-some few we couldn't. One thing we added to the points
) be made the basis of rank in a general Standard of Excellence for our Societies at
=st is-"That some h i t in soul-winning be evident from $e works of the Society
.ach year." Some of our people preach very faithfully as far as using the time is con:erned, but when it comes to results in actual soul-winning, they seem lacking. Now
some wd. [would] object perhaps to this point on the score that striving to win souls
in order to reach a Standard of Ex. [Excellence] as a Miss'y Plissionary] Soc.
[Society] would be a poor objective; of course we do not mean that, but we do mean
that no society shd. [should] be considered to be the right sort, or shd. [should] be
considered to have reached an excellent standard wh. [which] has not, by its work,
very directly won one soul to Xt [Christianity] during the year.

7. The Boxers Lash Out at Christian

Missionaries and Converts, 1900

Attention: all people in markets and villages of all provinces in China-now, owing
to the fact that Catholics and Protestants have vilified our gods and sages, have deceived our emperors and ministers above, and oppressed the Chinese people below,
both our gods and our people are angry at them, yet we have to keep silent. This
forces us to practise the I-ho magic boxing so as to protect our country, expel the
foreign bandits and kill Christian converts, in order to save our people from miserable suffering. After this notice is issued to instruct you villagers, no matter which
village you are living in, if there are Christian converts, you ought to get rid of them
quickly. The churches which belong to them should be unreservedly burned down.
Everyone who intends to s p a n someone, or to disobey our order by concealing
Christian converts, will be punished according to the regulation when we come to his
place, and he will be burned to death to prevent his impeding our program. We especially do not want to punish anyone by death without warning him first. We cannot
bear to see you suffer innocently. Don't disobey this special notice!

In the first essay, excerpted from his book The Making o f a Special Relationship:
The United Stares and China t o 1914, Michael H. Hunt of the University of North Carolina, Chapel W, explains the role of American business people, missionaries, and diplomats-the three components of the "open door constituency"-in shaping the McKinley
administration's efforts to defend U.S. interests in China against challenges from both the

Document 6 can be found in Anna Hartwell to Canie, Notebook, 16 July 1919. Record Group #4, BOX
----a.
h i m . Day Missions Library,Yale Divinity School. New Haven, Connecticut.
- - ' '--I-inn's
Respome to the West (Cam-

...

Chinese and the impenal powa~s.U.

..- China, Hunt argues, Secretary John Hay's notes seemed a logical, 11 r n e u r ; ~ . ~ ,
of disciplining the great powers and protecting U.S.interests. Professor Arnold Xiangze
Jiang, who teaches at Zhongshan (sun yak-sen) University in Guangdong (Canton), China,
places greater emphasis than Hunt does on America's self-interested quest for the China
market and the injurious effects of the Open Door policy on China. From Jiang's Chinese
perspective, the Open Door notes counted ag imperialistic calls for expanded trade
within the existing system of spheres of influence. Washington, he claims,joined other
imperial powers in trying to preserve the Qing g o v e d n t against Chinese nationalists
like the Boxers, whom Jiang praises. Professor Jane Hunter of Lewis and Clark College
in Portland, Oregon, in the final essay, examines one component of the Open Door
constituency, missionaries, and spotlights the largest group in the mission community,
women. Hunter suggests that the mission enterprise represented a "cultural conquest"
that complementedAmerican efforts to secure economic and political influence in
China indirectly, h e of the burdens of formal empire. As they worked to win Chinese
souls, she asserts, missionaries also challenged aspects of traditional Chinese family
structure, especially the subordinate status of women. At the same time, the women
missionaries struggled to reconcile their activism with American assumptions that
denied equality between the sexes. Taken together, the three essays reveal the various
ways in which Americans penetrated China and the great extent to which Americans
participated in the destabilization and exploitation of a declining nation.

.,,-.

The Open Door Constituency's Pressure

for U.S. Activism
MICHAEL H. HUNT

In the latter part of the nineteenth century the open door constituency reached the
apogee of its influence. It exercised that influence not in China, for a handful of
Americans, however exaggerated their sense of self-importance, could have only an
imperceptible impact on the lives of a people numbering some 400 million. It was
rather in moving Washington toward a more active China policy that they made their
mark. In effecting this policy transformation Americans in China were inadvertently
assisted by Chinese hostile to the mission movement and by plotting foreign imperialists. The threat they posed led businessmen, missionaries, and diplomats--each in
their own way-to employ a rhetoric that idealized their concrete self-serving goals.
Because the activities of each group contributed (so they argued) to China's regeneration and to the realization of an American Pacific destiny, each could legitimately
make a claim on Washington's support. A flurry of economic activity in the 1890s.
viewed hopefully as the harbinger of more to come, strengthened the voice of commercial interests. But at the same time the articulate representatives of the expanding
mission enterprise and a chain of vocal ministers in the Peking legation demanded
that policy makers attend to their aspirations as well and thus by degrees diverted
policy away from its earlier, essentially commercial orientation.
For roughly two decades-from the 1860s through the 1880s-American economic enterprise in China stagnated, eroding the merchants' dominant position
Fmm The Making of a Special Relationship: The United States and China to 1914, by Michael H. Hunt,
Copyright 8 1983 Columbia University Press. Reprinted with the permission of the publisher.

in the open door constituency. United States exports to China fell from a high of
$9 million in 1864 to a low of $1 million in the mid-1870s, while the number
of American firms operating in China declined from 42 to 31 between 1872 and
1880, a time when the enterprises operated by other nationalities actually g ~ in
w
number. The most serious casualties were the great merchant houses that had dominated American economic activity before the 1860s. Augustine Heard and Company failed in 1875, Olyphant three years later. . . .
At last in the 1890s previously dim prospects gave way to China market fever.
The trade statistics, already beginning to point upward in the 1880s, climbed at a
rapid rate through the nineties. American exports, overwhelmingly cotton goods
and kerosene, began the decade at $3 million and ended it at $14 million.
Cotton goods, sent to China as far back as the 1830s, had now become a major
export as American mills gained a clear edge over the long dominant British in the
markets of Noah China and Manchuria. While the British industry with its skilled
work force and accumulated experience continued to excel in finer grades of cloth,
Americans took over in the cheap coarse goods, thanks essentially to lower wages
(particularly in the southern United States) and more advanced machinery. The
British also had to contend with the higher transport costs involved in importing
American raw cotton as well as getting finished goods to China. Finally, the presence of size (a glutinous preparation added to keep up weight) in British goods
turned Chinese buyers in favor of the sounder American product. By 1875American cotton textiles had begun cutting into British sales of coarse goods, emerged
dominant in the 1880s, and by the late 1890s accounted for anywhere from five- to
seven-tenths of the value of China's cotton goods impom as well as a substantial
portion of total U.S. cotton exports.
Kerosene, the other major component in the American export drive, had begun
to enter the China market as early as 1867 chiefly for use by foreign residents. Not
until the late 1870s did its sales begin to boom. The 5.4 million gallons (valued at
$690,000) imported in 1879 were in turn to increase to 40.4 million ($2,436,000)
by 1894. China's share of American kerosene exports climbed between those years
from 1.6 percent to 5.5 percent. Supplying oil for the lamps of China was becoming big business. The chief beneficiary was Standard Oil of New York, the export
arm of the Rockefeller petroleum trust. Initially, it had followed a passive marketing strategy (similar to that of the cotton goods industry), selling kerosene to New
York export houses and thus severing interest in its product at the water's edge. But
that strategy would not tap the enormous potential of China. (Standard itself calculated that the Chinese quarter of mankind in 1887 consumed only one-sixty-second
of all petroleum production.)
Standard took its first step toward active involvement in marketing in the mid1880s by sending William H. Libby, its diplomat-troubleshooter, to China to fight
restrictions against kerosene's use and to argue its benefits. In 1890 Standard began
handling its own shipments through a British affiliate that transported its kerosene
to Shanghai and other major Far Eastern market cities for sale through local commission merchants. Other innovations soon followed, including removing from
kerosene the volatile naphtha that made it hazardous in crowded urban areas, marketing a cheaper kerosene of lower grade to match the popular Russian product,
transporting and storing its goods in bulk, sending its own agents to Hong Kong

and Shanghai, widely advertising the virtues of the fuel, and introducing small,
cheap lamps suitable to the market.
These commercial advances were accompanied by another burst of interest i n
investment; only this time Americans would in the end have something to show for
their effort. Investments valued at $6 million in 1875 were to grow to $20 million
by 1900, thus preserving for Americans approximatelythe same share in China relative to other nationals. American money began to go into direct investments early
in the 1890s. At mid-decade the Treaty of Shimonoseki (ending the Sino-Japanese
War) encouraged the investment of still more American capital by giving foreigners the undisputed right to establish industry and especially textile mills in China.
Finally, Americans even moved into mining seriously for the fvst time. . . .
Speculators at last scored a triumph when the American China Development
Company obtained the concession for a railway to be built between Hankow and
Canton. The company, organized in 1895in anticipation of expanded postwar investment opportunities, was headed by Calvin Brice, a former Ohio senator and railway
lawyer who moved in New York financial circles. It included among its shareholders
the railway magnate E. H. Harriman; Jacob Schiff of the investment house of Kuhn,
Loeb and Company; the presidents of the National City Bank and the Chase National
Bank; the former Vice President of the United States, Levi Morton; an associate of
J. P. Morgan and Company; and the Carnegie Steel Corporation. . . .
A growing trade and a prize railway concession inspired the belief among
Americans that they would enjoy a prominent part in the broad economic development that China was sure to undergo in the decades ahead. But roseate hopes for
railway building, mining, and trade expansion contended against mounting fears
that the advancing European powers and Japan might snatch away the China market just as it was at last about to realize its potential. The pattern of imperial penetration ending in formal territorial control, already worked out in Africa and parts
of Asia, had begun to repeat itself in China. The powers were using political loans
and their diplomatic and military muscle to stake out spheres of influence. The
German seizure of Kiaochow in Shantung in November 1897 prompted the Russians in turn to take Port Arthur in Manchuria. France grabbed new concessions in
the southern provinces of Yiinnan and Kwangsi bordering on French Indochina.
Japan laid claim to a sphere of influence in Fukien. Even Britain joined in, taking a
naval base of her own on the Shantung peninsula and new lands adjoining Hong
Kong, and strengthening her position in the Yangtze Valley. China's manifest weakness, growing great power rivalry, and Britain's wavering support for the principle
of free trade and China's integrity suddenly made the carving up of the empire an
imminent possibility.
With the future of American trade and the American role in the pending drama
of Chinese economic development hanging in the balance, the commercial interests within the open door constituency appealed to Washington for support. A
look at the sponsors of that appeal reveals the changing nature of American involvement in the China market. Once dominated for all practical purposes by a few
merchant houses exclusively concerned with China, the business element in the
open door constituency had become both broader and more diffuse. . . . It now embraced import-export firms; export industries such as cotton textiles, petroleum,
and railroad equipment; and a class of speculative investors and promoters including

The open Door Polzcy U

some of the leading figures on Wall Street. This diverse group used an array of
commercial pressure groups, including the National Association of Manufacturers
(organized in 1895), regional chambers of commerce, and industry and trade associations, all as instruments for political action. . . .
The McKinley administrationwas slow to respond. The aged Secretary of State
John Sherman was unsympathetic, and the administration as a whole was distracted
by the prospk, then the complications, and finally the immediate consquenccs of
the war with Spain. The tangible evidence-the hard facts and figures-that business could use to prove to policy makers the immediate importance of the China
market simply was not there. Indeed, the available statistics showed that China was
not crucial to American prosperity and that American enterprise was far from a formidable presence in the Chinese economy. The China trade, only 2 percent of total
U.S. foreign trade at the turn of the century, was growing no faster than U.S. foreign
trade generally. The same held true of China investments, then only 3 percent of all
U.S. foreign innstments. In China itself Americans could claim only 9 percent of
total foreign trade and 2.5 percent of all foreign investments.
In 1899, with the China crisis none improved and business pressure unabated,
the McKinley administration decided to act. Except for the rebellion in the Philip
pines, the crisis of the war had passed, leaving the United States in an unprecedentedly strong territorial position in the Pacific. McKinley had taken Hawaii and Guam
as well as the Philippines, envisioned as commercial and naval stepping stones to
China. John Hay, appointed the previous autumn to succeed Sheman, had had time
to settle in at the State Department. His response to the China problem, drawn SO insistently to his attention, was measured. In February he sent, for the "serious attention" of the Peking legation, a petition from the textile manufacturers and traders
complaining of the Russian threat to their market in northern China. But it was not
until seven months later that Hay took the next step. In August [State Department
official W. W.] Rockhill, and through him Alfred Hippisley, a senior English ernployee of the Chinese Maritime Customs Service then visiting in the U U t d States,
urged Hay to take a public stand on behalf of the commercial open door. Hay accepted their advice and in September began addressing each of the major powers in
turn, asking for guarantees against specific f o m s of trade discrimination-in regard
to the treaty ports, customs duties, and railway and harbor rates. Their qualified and
evasive responses he translated publicly the following March into a "finaland debitive" acceptance, and the thing was done.
These first open door notes were a token nod to the future possibilities of the
China market and a tribute to the influence and persistence of the China trade p~
s u e p u p s . But not much more. They did not extend a mantle of protection to investments. Indeed, Hay nowhere mentioned investments in his correspondence on
this occasion except to concede that wherever in China the powers had funneled their
capital they had created special interests. Further, he would not hre the Peking legation from the old restrictions, much criticized by promoters, strictly limiting its
ability to intervene with the Chinese government on behalf of American business
proposals. And McKinley in his address to Congress in December 1898 stressed that
his administration's concern was limited to the protection of commerce from discrimination by the powers. It was not even clear how far the administration would go
even in behalf of trade, the chief concern of Hay's notes. Neither in public nor in pridid it envision forceful action against powers who might seal off their spheres of

chna

5/ 1

influence against American trade. It gave no thought to the persistent and no less serious obstructions thrown by Chinese economic nationalists in the way of exporters
such as Standard Oil and investors such as Wetmore. Nor did it folIow up the notes
with a program of trade promotion. When it cautiously proposed to Congress twice
in 1898 and again the next year that at least a survey be made of ways to increase
China trade, Congress withheld appropriations. The open door notes had not dramatically aItered China policy or transformed conditions in China, but Hay had managed
by his dramatic public gesture to inspire business confidence that Washington was
more committed than ever before to preserving American economic oppoWty.
Despite past disappointments,American missionaries soldiered on after 1860,
adding new personnel and extending their efforts beyond the safety of the treaty
ports into the interior. This policy of expansion gave rise to a shrill and often violent Chinese nativism prompting missionaries in turn to call for naval and diplomatic protection. The resulting interaction among determined missionaries,
aroused nativists, and uncertain diplomats was to define the history of the mission
movement through the balance of the century.
The mission crisis had its origins in an extension of missionary activities that
was steadier and far more aggressive than the performance of economic enterprise
and that was in global terms to make China the chief focus of American Protestant
activity abroad. By 1899 the once "feeble band" of missionaries numbered nearly
500 (roughly one-third to two-fifths of the Protestant force). American missionaries
had by then gathered about them some 1,400 Chinese "helpers," over 1,300converts,
9,000 students, and close to $5 million worth of physical plant (equal at least onequarter of business investments). Mission boards, both the long established and the
newcomers, allocated ever higher levels of funding to extend their activities, first
into many of the newly opened ports (some 32 by 1900) and then into the interior,
with the treaty ports initially serving as a base of operations. To sustain the expansion new nondenominational mission organizations such as the Student Volunteer
Movement for Foreign Missions sprang up in the late 1880s and after. . . .
Minister Anson Burlingame once predicted after watching the initial mission
advance into the interior that it would "plant the shining cross on every hill and in
every valley." The reality as the movement unfolded during the nineteenth century
was, however, closer to the sardonic observation of one old China hand less given to
enthusiasm: "poor Burlingame's 'cross' shines on the hills of China, only when the
population bum it." The threat of mob violence, sometimescondoned or even abetted
by local officials, hung almost constantly over the missionaries and their converts
scattered over the interior.
Violence sprang from multiple sources of opposition, combining in a variety
of ways to produce an "incident." To the difficulties of cultural incomprehension
between missionary and Chinese that had plagued work early in the century was
added the problem of deracination as a result of the growing incidence of successful conversions. By turning their back on some of the norms and obligations of the
local community, converts destroyed its unity and harmony and became in a measure traitors to Chinese ways. No less objectionable to their Chinese antagonists
was the missionaries' direct challenge to the local social and political order and the
prerogatives of its elite defenders. The missionary appeared on the scene in a role
coveted by the elite, that of teacher-and to make matters worse one whose irrational doctrine was sharply at odds with the prevailing Confucian ideolnov

372

Major Pmblems in AmmPncan

Foreign Relations

Confronted by threats to converts and mission property as well as to his own life
and those of his dependents, the missionary had no difficulty choosing between a
fatalistic acceptance of providential adversity (even in extremiw the martyr's crown)
and invoking the state's protection. Missionaries, Americans notably included, were
the source of ever more persistent appeals for intervention against Chinese persecution. They began by lodging at the door of consulates and the legation the problems
of securing compensation for losses, release of imprisoned conveits, punishment of
offenders, and widespread publicity for the rights of missionary and converts. As
the Chinese opposition became more violent, the problems became less tractable and
increasingly commanded the attention of the State Department. . . .
The 1890s brought a major and lasting shift in policy favorable to the mission
movement. By the end of the decade Washington had dramatically broadened its
definition of missionary rights and demonstrated its willingness to defend the exercise of those rights, even in the face of undiminished Chinese opposition. Missionaries, though not fully satisfied, could no longer complain that they were treated as
the stepchildren of the open door constituency. China policy had come to guarantee
opportunity for missions as much as for commerce. .. .
In the United States missionaries undertook a lobbying and propaganda effort,
comparable to the one China market enthusiastswere to launch only a few years later,
to win the support of policy makers. At the core of the missionary argument was the
contention that Chinese character and culture required mission uplift. To retreat in
the face of violence--so contended spokesmen for the major boards, petitions from
China,missionary journals, missionaries on home leave touring from congregation
to congregation, and the writings of prominent missionaries whose long residence in
China qualified them as experts-would be to betray decades of missionary sacrifice
and forsake the obligations of a civilized nation to turn back barbarism. Older volumes such as Social Life of the Chinese (1865) by the Foochow missionary Justus
Doolittle had laid the groundwork for the belief that China had over twenty centuries
become so sunk in "senseless and useless opinions" and beset by "strange and superstitious customs practiced among all classes of society" that only conversion could
save her. More recent works continued in the same contemptuous vein. ...
The anti-Christian movement in China from the mid-1880s through the mid1890s, though it had resulted in the loss of not a single American life and in only
one wounded, nonetheless had succeeded in altering missionary policy by undermining the essential assumption that restraint and reason might guide the encounter
between missionary and Chinese in the interior. The legation and Washington had
come to accept instead a new but no less ill-founded assumption and erected a more
interventionist policy on it. The new assumption was that the Chinese government
had the power to put a stop to violent opposition and could be induced to do so.
Peking might be moved to act by appeals to self-interest, or in Denby's words to
fear of loss of "character, credit, and standing before the world." Failing that, intimidation would have to do, and to prepare for such a case Washington increased its
naval patrol on the Yangtze from the single gunboat available in 1895. . . .
The foreign service, the last element of the open door constituency to take root
in China, came into its own after 1860. It gained a permanent legation in Peking, and
by 1899 it had extended its consular system to a total of ten points along the coast and
in the interior. It also began to consolidate its autonomy by increasingly excluding

The Open Door Poli~yandChina

373

businessmen and missionaries from its ranks. Both American and Chinese officials
recognmd that to allow a regular merchant to serve as consul was to give him access
to confidential trade information that put other American traders at a disadvantage
and clothed him with a degree of immunity in carrying out illegal business activities.
Missionaries feu from favor because they faced an even more acute conflict of interest with the rise of the explosive missionary question. S. Wells Williams and Chester
Holcombe served as charge on seven occasions between 1860 and 1882, but thereafter Washington appears to have acted on the view that it was "injurious" to have a
missionary in the legation. (The Chinese were also opposed to having as head of mission such missionaries as Holcombe, denounced by [Chinese leader] Li Hung-chang
as a cunning scoundrel with a bad reputation.) The slowing of the ministerial merrygo-round, the bane of the legation before 1860, and the emergence of a new breed of
China specialists such as Waam Pethick, W. W. Rockhill, and Charles Denby, Jr.,
further enhanced the independence of the foreign service, especially by breaking the
missionaries' near monopoly of expertise. ...
From their bully pulpits in the legation and consulates Americans maintained
an unflagging enthusiasm for the contribution American economic enterprise-the
building of railroads and telegraphs, the opening of mines, an expanding volume
of trade-would make to China's awakening as well as to increased American influence. Missionary work and education would serve the same end,though they
generally inspired less enthusiasm. Finally, the foreign service would make its own
special contribution to progress by drawing China into the family of nations. Its advocacy of a responsible foreign office, an end to Chinese pretensions of superiority
(as in its claim to suzerainty over tribute states and its insistence on the kowtow as
an inseparable part of an imperial audience with foreign diplomats), the extension
of Chinese legations abroad, and the removal of aaificial barriers to trade (such as
the internal transit tax known as likin) were all steps in this direction. . . .
Charles Denby, Sr., whose fourteen years (1885-1898) in the legation under
no fewer than seven Secretaries of State made him its longest tenured occupant,
was a transitional figure in the evolving tactics of reform. He began by essentially
espousing the more temperate position-vis
vis China--of Burliigame and [John
Russell] Young [American minister to China, 1882-18851- Like them he believed it
was possible to work with China's leaders. He also followed their methods when in
late 1894 and early 1895 he tried to mediate an end to the war with Japan in order to
minimize the damage done to China and the temptation by the powers to exploit her.
However, by 1895 the complete incapacity of China's government to deal effectively with the problems festering at the heart of Sino-foreign relations at last
drew Denby into the coercive mold favored by [J. Ross.] Browne [American minister to China, 1868-18691. Concerned particularly with the threat that the antimissionary agitation posed to "a handful of Americans surrounded by four hundred
million Asiatics," he concluded that "the fear of interfering with international
rights or offending China should not for a moment be allowed to stand in the way
of ordering immediate, and armed protection to . . . all foreigners in China." Without the backing of force, he reminded Washington in 1891, "both mission work and
commerce would languish."
The inability of Peking after 1895 to check the growing aggressiveness of the
powers completed Denby's conversion to a coercive policy. His mediation effort in

1894 had shown the Chinese as children blundering in foreign affairs from crisis to
crisis, unable to recognize their true interests or true friends. The government
seemed to Denby a hopeless patchwork of ignorance, reaction, corruption, drift,
and incompetence, and in 1897 even Li Hung-chang fell from grace when revealed
as the architect of the alliance between Peking and St. Petersburg. The powers
themselves failed to meet Denby's hopes that they would come to some accord on
how best to promote China's development. In April 1895 Japan, earlier regarded by
Denby as a "champion of civilization," made territorial demands which convinced
him that she had under false pretenses "pursued her own aggrandizement" at the
expense of the Western powers. Two years later Russia-whose railway plans
Denby had expected would be a force for progress in Manchuria--also showed her
true colors, refusing to cooperate with American railway interests, deserting her
Chinese ally in the face of Gennan demands in Shantung province, and responding
with demands of her own for new concessions in Manchuria.
In the face of the powers' unchecked "colonial ambitions" and "plans of national aggrandizement," Denby at last felt constrained to recommend that the
United States imitate them. Though he was to back away from advocating steps as
radical as making alliances or joining in China's partition, he became convinced
that the United States would have to pursue a more aggressive financial diplomacy.
Denby had long believed the legation should have wide latitude "to push American
material interests. . .and thereby to extend American influence and trade." The arrival at mid-decade of European concessionarieswho enjoyed strong official backing intensified Denby's demand for greater freedom of action to advance the cause of
American concession hunters in "this limitless field of financial and industrial
operations." Msits to the foreign office became for Denby, a self-styled "old lawyer,"
occasions for arm twisting as he reiterated the American claim to a favored role in
China's economic development. . . .
The reiterated invocation of the open door ideology by commercial groups,
missionaries, and diplomats had by the end of the 1890s transformed a once passive,
narrowly commercialChina policy. This shift in thinking on China policy is evident in
the message of a group of publicists and popularizers who stepped forward at this crucial juncture. Figures as diverse as Richard Olney. Hemy Cabot Lodge, W. W. Rockhill, Charles Denby, John Barrett, Josiah Strong, D. Z. Sheffield, Charles Conant,
Brooks Adams, and Alfred Thayer Mahan now made an important contribution to the
apotheosis of the open door ideology by carrying the message of the open door constituency to a wider audience. Their China was the scene of two related strugglesbetween the regenerating forces of the West (best represented by the United States)
and a stagnant China and between selfish and exclusive imperialism and American
aspirations for long-term, benevolent involvement in Chinese affairs. Only a China
reformed could stand off imperialism unaided. Only an immediate assertion of
American interests, especially against Russia in North China and Manchuria, would
preserve the national dream of China's eventual reformation and of access to this
"gigantic" market with its "almost boundless possibilities." In global terms they saw
China as the main or even, in Adams' estimate, the decisive scene in the struggle for
control of world civilization. The open door ideology, embodying long-established
ideas of westward expansion and moral and material uplift and pointing to a solution
for the problem of excess production raised by the depression of the 1890s. made it

I
1

m e vpen Door roscy ana cnzna

sf 3

easy for these popularizers to hold out in common the dramatic possibilities o f
China-ancient, vast, potentially rich-as a stage for national action. . . .
Washington yas . . . reluctant to play the game of alliances and spheres of influence that the [Peking] legation moved steadily toward after 1895. In March 1898,
for example, Washington turned aside overtures from London intended to get the
United States to join in opposing any commercial restrictions that the other powers
might institute in their spheres of influence and concessions in China. McKinley,
then on the brink of war over Cuba, replied to the inquiring British ambassador that
he saw no threat yet sufficiently serious to justify his breaking with the traditional
policy of nonentanglement. John Hay accepted the wisdom of that position even
after the war with Spain was out of the way. In his view Anglophobia at work i n
domestic politics ruled out alliance, though he personally thought there was much
to be said for a common Anglo-American approach to China and had earlier as ambassador in London helped stir up the British overtures.
The remaining alternative was to strike out an independent course, strengthening the American position in East Asia the better to withstand the coming scramble
for temtory. McKinley had already anticipated such a line of action by taking the
Philippines. Control of territory adjacent to China improved the American claim to a
voice in China's ultimate disposition, while a Philippines naval base put Washington in a better position to back that claim. McKinley's predecessors had put in his
hands a developing navy, successfully tested in the war with Spain, to turn those
bases to good account.
The next logical step in an independent policy might have been to stake out a
slice of Chinese territory. But McKinley publicly proclaimed in December 1898
that that was a step the United States did not have to take. Though coastal China
might fall under foreign control, he confidently predicted that somehow the "vast
commerce" and "large interests" of the United States would be preserved without
departing from traditional policy and without the United States becoming "an actor
in the scene." That disclaimer did not, however, prevent Hay and McKinley from
returning the following year repeatedly, though with characteristic caution and discretion, to the question of a land grab. In March Hay, while conceding that the public
would frown on the United States joining "the great game of spoilation now going
on," nonetheless added that the government, "with great commercial interests" to
safeguard, did "not consider [its] hands tied for future eventualities." Again, after the
Japanese in March 1899 demanded a concession at the port of Amoy, Hay watched
developments with interest--and with the expectation that, whatever grants China
made to Japan, she would be prepared to make similar ones to the United States.
Even the preparation of the open door notes in September of that year did not remove the temptation. When Hay wondered aloud whether the United States could
in truth deny in the notes any interest in Chinese temtory, McKinley responded, "I
don't know about that. May we not want a slice, if it is to be divided?' In November
rumors stirred up by the dispatch of the notes brought the Chinese minister calling.
Under examination, Hay freely admitted that the United States reserved its right to
claim "conveniences or accommodations on the coast of China," though for the moment such a demand was not in the cards.
The McKinley administration's ultimate recourse to note writing after toying
with the possibility of a more aggressive policy was for the moment an adequate

376

Major Problems in Amenencnn

Foreign Relations

The Open Door Policy and China

377

response to the China problem. Hay's

little. It satisfied the domestic demand
was offensive to no one abroad. Rather than singling out Russia
most egregious offenders against the open door to date, Hay had bl
from all the powers. Yet Hay's stand with its implied promise of
gentle prod to the other commercial powers. Whether it would
preserve China and-more to the point-the broad interests that the open door
1
constituency claimed to represent remained to be seen. . . .
The Boxer attack on Pao-ting, Tientsin, T'ai-yiian, and a s+ore of smaller
places [in 19001 were sideshows to a world looking on aghast at /he main drama
going on in Peking. A state of siege had descended on the legation quarter in midJune, trapping within a motley, status-riven, and anxious commu ity. Foreigners,
ned the outer
both regular troops and young, single, able-bodied volunteers,
defenses and suffered heavily in dead and wounded. Missionaries, ~ t the
h Americans in the lead, threw themselves into directing work on the fortidcations and organizing the life of the besieged. The dignitaries and their wives bat leisurely on
the sidelines in the safety and comfort of the British legation wherd were the inner
defenses. TWOthousand Chinese (more than twice the number of foreigners) also
waited. Some were Christians brought by the missionaries to safety4 others laborers
and servants who had fallen by chance into the trap and could not ?cape. All were
regarded with suspicion and all, except for those who worked ulder missionary
supervision or who had a foreign patron, were kept on short ratio s. Though the
troops shot b i d s and carrion dogs for them, distended bellies wer everywhere to
be seen in the carefully segregated Chinese section. Within the first month Chinese
children were already dying of starvation.
That first month of the siege was the hardest. By mid-July the court began to
waver uncertainly as foreign forces gathered off the coast, overcahe stout resistance at Tientsin, and began a forced inland march against disorgaqkzed Boxer and
imperial units. Government troops took over the lines about the lkgation quarter
from the Boxers, and rather than unlimbering their modem artillery1 instead fraternized with the enemy in a truce that was to last down to the eve of re/lief. Finally on
August 14 the international army fought its way into the capital. . .
Following the capture of Peking in late August, McKinley-tru to his wordat once began cutting back on the ten-thousand-man force assigned o China. Units
en route were recalled, and two-thirds of the 6,300 already in China turned to suppressing Filipino "rebelsl' For a time McKinley had even leaned tobard Secretary
of War Elihu Root's call for an immediate and complete withdrawal(in response to
the Russian evacuation of all their units back to Manchuria) beforereluctantly acofficials]
ceding to the arguments of Hay, Rockhill, [and other state depa*ent
that a token military presence was needed to keep the pressure on y e Chinese and
to guarantee an American voice among the powers. Still
use of force, McKinley forbade the American troops wintering over
to engage in the punitive expeditions conducted by the other pow
early end to aggressive patrolling immediately outside the city,
spring called back the remaining troops. . . .The result was, as
an exemplary record for the American occupation force that
could match and that Chinese officials singled out for praise.

statement on the open door, calling

China's preservation, both adrninistrative and territorial. This proposal invoked [Chinese official] Chang's fiction
that the powers warred against neither the thinese people nor the imperial kovernment and hence could have only limited objectives. To avoid contradiction or
evasion, Hay did not ask for a response fromthe powers since, he calculated, a unilateral assertion of the integrity principle qas as likely to build an international
consensus as a
In early August Hay

to the growing recognition in European capihls of the difficulties-the high cost,

perhaps even the physical impossibility-of girectly controlling China. . . .
Moreover, the Boxer summer enhanced p e role of coercion in the tactical armory of the open door. American policy mak rs had confirmed a belief of growing
importance since the late 1880s-that the C inese respected only force. Accordingly, Washington retained occupation forces in Peking until a settlement was near
conclusion, kept at the legation a guard of 15 men (increased to 300 in 1905), eary force of 2,000 (that could be exmarked for emergency service in China an
panded to 5,000) in the Philippines, and in k911, in the wake of the revolution,
would post an infantry battalion to Tientsin (augmented with a second battalion in
1914) to guard the communications route to Peking. The Asiatic Squadron underwent a parallel buildup. By 1902 it would nubber some forty-eight ships, including gunboats to patrol Chinese waters as welp as one battleship and two armored
cruisers that might be quickly deployed to F e China coast. Together this force
stood ready to protect "the interests of civiliz tion and trade" and deal out "severe
and lasting punishment" to any Chinese who beatened Americans. -

U.S. Economic ~ x ~ a n s i o
and
b the Defense
of Imperialism at Chjna's Expense

"U.S.Economic Expansion and the

o l d Xiangze
by permission of the University of Chicago Press.
Stares and China by h

at China's Expense," from The United

University of Chicago Press. Reprinted

378

Major Problems in American Foreign Relations

their economic penetration into South America Technologically superior, unrivaled

in wealth and power, restless and intense rivals of one another, they sought to extend
their influence throughout the globe, including China.
In the five years following the 1894-1895 SineJapanese War, the imperialist
powers scrambled to acquire leased territories in China, to establish spheres of influence, and to increase their investments. By 1899,Germany had grabbed Jiaozhou Bay
'and taken control of Shandong Province; Russia had occupied Dalian @airen) and
Liishun (Port Arthur) and regarded Northeast China (Manchuria) and Mongolia as its
sphere of influence; France had compelled the Chinese government to agree to its
special privileges in Yunnan and Guangxi provinces and had also leased Guangzhou
Bay; Great Britain had seized the port of Weihaiwei and made the Changjiang
(Yangtze) Valley its own sphere; Japan had further compelled the Chinese government to declare that it would never cede Fujian Province to any other country.
The United States had not participated in cutting up China: it sought to realize
its ambitions through other means. In the 1890s it was no less eager than the European powers for overseas expansion, and, under the guise of rescuing colonies
from Spanish misrule, it did not hestitate to wage war against Spain, from which it
gained Guam and the Philippines in the Pacific. Throughout that decade America's
interest in China grew ever greater. Though trade with China was relatively small,
only 2 percent of America's total foreign trade, it was expanding and showed
promise. In the fervor for expansion, businessmen and politicians regarded China
as a new frontier, one which would keep American commerce competitive with Europe and would relieve America's industrial glut by absorbing its surplus goods.
Interest in China constituted one of the reasons for America to retain the Philippines; and the retention of those islands in turn heightened enthusiasm for expansion in China. The Philippines would furnish a political and military base for the
ultimate domination of the "new frontier."
But, unlike the Philippines, China was not a colony of a decliningWestern power,
but a field of competition among several major powers. When the powers divided
China into spheres, America was at first occupied with the Spanish war and then,
later, with the insurrection of the Philippine people. When it did shift its attention
to China, it found that its existing interests were in danger. The spheres of influence,
especially those controlled by Russia and Germany in north China, threatened to
deny American capital opportunitiesfor profitable investment and potent channels of
trade and political influence. American business interests and diplomatic representatives thus urged their government to take a strong hand in Chinese affairs.
But America was not strong enough to oust the powers from their respective
spheres. It considered some plans to obtain a leasehold, but did not earnestly carry
them out. Disdaining to take a mere fragment of the Chinese melon, it sought instead to use its formidable economic power throughout the whole of the China
market. In the 1890s America's industrial production had already surpassed that of
Germany and Britain and assumed the leading position. In 1899 manufactured
products began to account for more than 90 percent of American exports to China.
The absolute volume of manufactured exports also experienced a sharp rise, multiplying four times between 1895 and 1899, from $3.2 million to $13.1 million. In
the expansionist psychology of the 1890s, these statistics bolstered the widespread
expectation that, given an open door to China's market, the United States could

The Open Door Policy and China

379

become economically dominant. Even the cautious John Hay, secretary of state
from 1898 to 1905, claimed in a public letter that "in the field of trade and commerce we shall be the keen competitors of the richest and greatest powers, and they
need no warning to be assured that in that struggle, we shall bring the sweat to their
brows." The best alternative to leasehold and spheres of influence, therefore, and
the most promising for America's expansion, was for all the powers to open their
spheres to the trade of every other nation. . . .
The open door policy, as reflected in may's] requests, did not mean that the
United States was opposed to aggression in China. In 1895, at the end of the SinoJapanese War, American businessmen and diplomats were as delighted with the
Treaty of Shimonosekibetween China and Japan as they had been, fifty-three years
earlier, with the Treaty of Nanjing. This newest of the unequal treaties opened
seven new Chinese ports and three new rivers, abolished some internal taxes, and,
above all, granted foreigners the right to create within China their own industrial
enterprises. By the unilateral most-hvored-nation clause, these provisions would
widen the market not only for merchandise but also for investment. An American
consul-general in Shanghai thought that the missiles of war had made "a decided
opening .. . in the opposing wall of Chinese conservatism, and that a widening
market may be e-xpected for Westwn production."
,Even before the end of the war, American capitalists swarmed over China,
preparing to invest in railroads, banking, and mining. Reporting to the State Department on these enterprises, the American minister, Charles Denby, expressed
optimism about their future prospects:
As some indication of the work done here it may be stated that first q this moment the
accomplishment of great plans, by which railroad building and mining and other matters connected therewith will, it is hoped, be carried on by Americans, is on the eve of
becoming assured. . ..I am satisfied that if the plans now awaiting the decision of the
American negotiators are consummated this almost limitless field of financial and industrial operah'ons will be occupied, dominated, and controlled by Americans.

A year later, the tone of Denby's reports had changed. A general partitioning
would, he said in a more pessimistic vein, make "prohibitive dutiesJ' a certainty
and "would tend to destroy our market." If the powers exercised greater and greater
control in their spheres, the Chinese market,widened by the Treaty of Shimonoseki,
would soon be either narrowed or closed to American businessmen. Hay's note of
September 6,1899, was an attempt to counter this tendency, not to counter aggression. On the contrary, it was an effort to preserve the fruits of aggression.
The open door policy was not a challenge to the existence of spheres of influence. In fact, it recognized and accepted such spheres--areas where the controlling
power would have commercial piivileges, superior investment rights, and a concomitant political influence. Though the policy sought to preserve equal opportunities for trade within the spheres, it did not mention equal opportunities for
investment. Hay's objective in 1899 was of a limited nature. He wanted only guarantees for a trader's equality.
The "open door" did not imply a policy opposed to that of the other powers.
Britain had all along assumed the most influential position in China. What it feared
was not free competition but restrictions which might result from detinite spheres

380

Major Problems in American Foreign Relations

of influence. As early as January 1896, it had consulted and won France over to an
agreement that both countries should have equal rights to all concessions secured
in Yunnan and Sichuan provinces. During 1898, Britain had repeatedly asked the
United States to cooperate in opposing all tendencies that would restrict freedom
of commerce in China, whether it be by imposing preferential conditions or by obtaining the cession of coastal territory. But the United States preferred independent
action to any alliance with a European power.
The open door policy itself .was drafted on the basis of a memorandum presented by the Englishman Alfred Hippisley, a longtime official in the Chinese customs. Both the United States and Britain saw Russia as the chief enemy of the open
door policy; Hay's note, in fact, was directed primarily against that nation. But
even the Russian government had, in August 1899, issued a ukase which announced that no restriction would be imposed on foreign commerce in the Russian
sphere. (Indeed, Hippisley confessed that it was after reading the Russian ukase
that he drew up his memorandum.) Earlier, Germany too had published a white paper, declaring the port of Jiaozhou a free one. After receiving Hay's note, every
power agreed to an equality of trade and navigation in their spheres, though not
without reservation. Britain added the remark that America's proposal "was in substantial conformity with the policy and spirit" of the British government. Indeed,
the open door policy was not opposite to, but in conformity with, the more or less
common stand then taken by the powers.
The basic reason why they supported such a policy was that no one of the imperialist powers was strong enough to swallow all of China. As for partitioning China
into colonies, there was much talk of it, but the powers' conflict of interests in China
was very complicated, far more so than in Africa. Moreover, for centuries China had
been a powerful and unified country; outright partition would have aroused the
fiercest opposition from the people. Each of the powers thus reasoned that it would
be most advantageous to maintain the principle "Let's all share in equal opportunities" in order that one power would not be crowded out by the others. And as for
further expansion, all would await the future, and all would wait in concert.
Equality of opportunity and influence--such was the gist of the open door policy. President William] McKinley himself had defined the policy as meaning "no
advantages in the Orient which are not common to all." An appeal to the controlling powers to open up their spheres to all, the policy was not an appeal to China,
whose doors the foreigners had already thrown open after the Opium War. "Equal
treatment to all" was now the business of the foreign powers. Neither the United
States nor the other powers deemed it necessary to sound out the attitude of the
Chinese government, even though the matter directly concerned that country.
China had become a passive object. In fact, the United States even neglected to inform China of its actions until international rumors provoked the Chinese to make
an official inquiry. In answering the inquiry, the American minister told the Zongli
Yamen (Board of Foreign Affairs) that the open door policy had insured China's
"integrity," and therefore, to reap this bounty, China should faithfully discharge its
treaty obligations. China's business was only discharging obligations; every nation
but China had an opportunity.
It is ironical that the Qing government accepted the open door as a bounty.
Since the Opium War, the Qing officials in charge of foreign affairs had, time after

The Open Door Policy and China

time, resorted to the ancient tactic of "playing the barbarians off against one another-" Their recourse to American mediation in the 1850s, however fruitless, was
still an attempt to use the Americans to counter the British. To outmaneuver one's
enemies by exploiting the contradictions among them is an astute idea, but it can
succeed only if one stands on one's own feet and takes the initiative. After China
had slipped into the mire of semicolonialism and after the Qing regime had become the vassal of imperialist powers, "playing off the barbarians" meant basing
China's survival on the unpredictable contradictions among the great powers.
The Qing officials, especially Li Hongzhang, practiced precisely these tactics.
Li had built himself up in the government by taking a major part in the suppression
of the Taiping revolution. For thirty years after 1870 he had, as governor-general
of Zhili and a minister of the Board of Foreign Affairs, directed China's foreign
policy. He had also done much to modernize China's national defense. He bought
machinery abroad to set up factories, arsenals, and shipyards, and foreign warships
and arms to build up China's naval and land forces. But all these undertakings were
based on a rotten autocracy and bureaucracy-they were modem in name but not
in reality. Li himself was well aware of his own weakness. Afraid of committing
his army and navy during the war crisis of 1894 between China and Japan, he resorted to the old tactic of wooing the major powers, imploring them, one by one, to
mediate the crisis. But in vain: the Japanese attacked, and Li's "modern" navy and
army disintegrated.
After the conclusion of the Treaty of Shimonoseki, however, which ceded the
Liaodong Peninsula to Japan, Russia, France, and Germany did intervene, forcing
Japan to return the peninsula to China. Thus for Li Hongzhang and his colleagues,
the old tactic still paid off. They regarded the three powers as "saviors." Li even
concluded a secret alliance with Russia in 1896, with a view to using Russia to
check Japan. But soon Germany, Russia, and France-the three "saviors9'--extorted
their own rewards, in terms of generous leaseholds and spheres of influence. The
other powers followed suit and demanded, on the grounds of equality of concessions and a balance of influence, their own leaseholds and spheres. The situation
had reversed itself; now, instead of China exploiting the contradictions among the
powers in order to save its territory, the powers exploited China's weakness and
used its territories to adjust their contradictions. The imperialists' scramble for
spheres revealed the bankruptcy of the strategy of "playing off the barbarians."
It was at this juncture, and to the surprise of the Qing officials, that the United
States urged the policy of an open door. If China had become the colony of a single,
powerful, ruling state, the Qing regime would have ceased to exist. But in a China
"open to all," even the Qings could remain the rulers of an "integrated" country.
They realized that if they accepted the common control of the powers, they could
also enjoy their joint protection. So the Qings prized the open door policy. . ..
While the imperialist forces and the Boxers were locked in fierce battle
in Tianjin, John Hay, on July 3, issued his second circular note to the concerned
powers.. . .
To protect "all rights" and to safeguard equal trade still remained the ends of
American policy. And the means remained the preservation of the "Chinese territorial and administrative entity." It was a practical policy, not an abstract principle,
and in 1900 its specific meaning was to preserve the rule of the Qing government

382

Major Problem in American Foreign Relations

The Open Door Policy and China

in all parts of the Chinese Empire. The Americans knew that the Qing regime was
still a tool of the imperialists. During the Boxer affair, the United States Struggled
on two fronts---on the one hand with the foreign powers and on the other hand with
the anti-imperialist movement of the Chinese people. It was frustrating to have to .
use the Qing regime to cope with these two adversaries. . . .
The open door policy, initiated by the United States, had finally become the
basic program of all the powers. Because forthright division of China would lead
to bitter upheavals, upheavals that would be very damaging to the foreign powers,
all concerned preferred the status quo. The United States, of course, as a major .
power, had exerted its weight in bringing the powers into line. But one of the basic
factors which prevented the imperialists from carving up China was the Boxer, '
movement itself. The Englishman Robert Hart, inspector general of the Chinese
customs, told [Hay's Far Eastern adviser, William W.] Rockhill that

-.I'

he looked upon the Boxer movement as a national and patriotic one for freeing China $
:
of the foreigners to whom, rightly or wrongly, it attributed all the country's misfortunes ' .
during the last half century. Though crushed at present, he feared that unless the powers
would agree to treat the question in a conciliatory spirit which would tend to establish
cordial relations with China-a state which had never existed in the past-it might :
someday come to life again when the world might have to face an armed China, not a '
rabble carrying spears and tridents.

Hart, for one, realized that the most crucial factor in the situation was the anti- -4
imperialist spirit of the Chinese people. . . .
Hay's open door policy may have had its origin in [Anson] Burlingame's pol- '.+
icy of cooperation [in the 1860~1,but Hay's policy was no mere repetition of b,'
Burlingame's. In Burlingame's era, when America followed behind the other for&.?
eign powers, the policy of cooperation was designed to prevent those powers from "4
crowding out American interests. By the open door policy, however, the United
States strove to take the lead in Asian politics and to ask the other powers to follow. 4
Moreover, for America, the young industrial giant of the twentieth century, such a . 7
policy would open the way for an American hegemony in the Far East. American
policy sought more than the protection of existing interests.

!.' '

.
I

Women Missionaries and Cultural Conquest

JANE HUNTER

To American women, more than to any others on earth, is committed the exalted privilege of
extending over the world those blessed influences, which are to renovate degraded man, and
"to clothe all climes with beauty."
-Catharine Beecher, A Treatise on Domestic Economy (1842)

Catharine Beecher's practical guide for the nineteenth-century housewife included

this tribute to the glorious possibilities of the woman's sphere. Woman's chores
might seem menial and inconsequential, but she should make no mistake: well

From The Gospel ofGenzilify: American WomenMissionaries in Turn-of-the-CennuyChina Copyright 8

1984 by Yale University h s . Reprinted by permission.

383

executed in the proper spirit, they contained enormous power. Through her improving influence on her husband and children, she might reform American society.
By +traducing her special qualities into the public arena, through schoolteaching or
church work, she might reform all peoples. Diffused beyond her home, woman's
nlnflne and refinement carried the miraculous potential to conquer and redeem the
entire world.
Even as Beecher wrote, the female voluntary societies of the Christian benevolent empire were working to fulfill her mandate. Women's "cent" and "mitep7
societies gathered housewives' extra pennies to add women's subsidies to the support of the foreign missionary movement. Female supporters thrilled to the
courage and heroism of young missionary women who accompanied their husbands to the jungles of Asia and Africa, and who suffered and perished nobly there.
After the Civil War, American women founded agencies of their own to send unmarried female missionaries to the heathen in foreign lands. By 1890, the married
women of the general missionary boards and the single women of the women's
boards together composed 60 percent of the mission force.
Simultaneous with the feminization of the mission force, the movement became important to a nation newly intrigued by the possibilities of international
expansion. Empire seemed to offer an appealing resolution to the dissonance
between growing industrial capacity and the limits of the American frontier. It
promised new markets for American goods, new challenges for the American
spirit, new moral wilderness for American civilization. The Spanish-AmericanWar
inspired a burst of fresh support for the flagging foreign mission movement. Even
after passions for territorial expansion had cooled, the mission movement would
continue to tap a rich vein of American nationalism.
Throughout the nineteenth century, women's contributions to the American missionary impulse were unique both in style and substance. In accordance with their
stations within American families, women relied particularly on "blessed influence"
rather than on direct authority to win compliance from other peoples. Their approach
was intimate and personal rather than directive. They associated their Christian mission with their domestic responsibility to instill moral character ("to renovate degraded man") and to breed refinement (to "clothe all climes with beauty"). As in their
homes, women's moral and material responsibilities were closely connected. Their
special concern with the details of domestic life made them both the most dedicated
and the most successful emissaries of an entire civilization. As one of the celebrants
of the missionary enterprise put it, "Every home they set up, every school they establish, is an object lesson in the art of living." . ..
The Protestant women who volunteered for missionary service represented an
important sector of the native-born population. Women of an appropriate background might gravitate toward mission service for any number of reasons, ranging
from a divine call to a family death, from marriage to a male missionary to accommodation to spinsterhood. Like other American women of the late Victorian period, missionary volunteers participated in a national, feminine culture reinforced
by church institutions, publishers of women's periodicals, and producers of domestic bric-a-brac. Missionary service represented a courageous decision but not
an extraordinary one, and those who made it shared many values and attitudes with
schoolteachers and ministers' wives at home. . . .

384

The Open Door Policy and China

Major P m b l m in American Foreign Relations

As China became more receptive to the lessons of the West, the American mi,
sionary force in China increased rapidly; it more than doubled between 1890 and
1905, and by 1919 had more than doubled again, to --three
hundred workers.
This rapid growth in the American force reflected a resurgent interest in missions
accompanying late-nineteenth-century American expansion, and a particular enthusiasm for the development of the "New China" rising from the ashes of the
Boxer debacle. By the early twentieth century, American missionaries seeking a
hearing from the Chinese had replaced their reliance on military force with a reliance on the broad appeals of their culture. American national leaders supported
this shift in strategy, and with missionaries, sought cultural rather than political
empire in China. .. .
The treaty accompanying the end of the Opium War granted missionaries and
Chinese converts the right to practice Christianity in five coastal cities. But missionaries were largely unsuccessful in converting the heathen of the treaty ports.
Their struggles to acquire land within the walls of such cities as Foochow excited
antipathies, and popular association of them with the sailors and merchants of the
opium trade did not enhance their stature. One Canton native described the Westerner as one who ''loved to beat people and to rob and murder" and often "could be
seen reeling drunk." Missionaries succeeded in winning their first convert in Foochow only after a decade,of proselytizing in the crowded streets. By the end of
1860, four years later, the fifty missionaries from several denominations could still
count only sixty-six converts.
The Treaty of lientsin (1858) extended rights to proselytize to the countryside,
and there missionaries discovered more fruitful territory. Using Chinese workers,
hired and trained as they went, missionaries poured more energy into opening outstations, shifting their focus from the major ports. By 1880, for example, the Congregational missionaries at Foochow had opened ninety-six new outstations in the
countryside with Chinese help, and claimed three thousand new adherents. Outstations were the scenes of some of the greatest victories; perhaps not surprisingly,
they were also the scenes of frequent antiforeign disturbances. The less sophisticated peoples of the interior were both more susceptible to the heterodox appeals
of Christian ritual and more suspicious of its magical powers.
When missionaries were threatened, they unambivalently called for protection. "Missionary incidents" of the 1860s, 1870s, and 1880s, in which outraged
Chinese attacked foreign intruders, involved far more French Catholics and British
than Americans, but property disputes and popular outbreaks occasionally sent
American missionaries to their legation demanding that their rights be defended or
avenged. At the time of the Boxer uprising in 1900, of course, voices from the field
were particularly loud. They demanded full American participation in any allied
European military solution and vigorously protested the early withdrawal of American troops. The retaliato~yraids of American board missionariesWilliamAment and
Gardner Tewksbury received immediate coverage, first by The New York Sun and
then by Mark lbain, in his famous essay. 'To the Person Sitting in Darkness." . . .
. . . Church and state found . . .common ground during the early decades of the
twentieth century. Wary political leaders and missionary supporters of the social
gospel converged in a campaign for American influence rather than empire in China.
The attendance at a 1900Conference on Missions in New York suggested what would

:=

.,

38 5

be a new compromise coalition of American leaders supporting informal empire in

China. In addition to noted imperialists Admiral George Dewey and Alfred Mahan,
many opponents of empire also attended. Former Presidypt Benjamin Harrison, the
honorary president of the conference, had refused to endorse McKinley that year
because of his expansionist policies. And Grover Cleveland, also in attendance,
like most Democrats opposed territorial aggrandizement. Supporters of American
empire considered Christian religion a necessary accompaniment to American expansionism, and in some cases the very-justification for it. (In fact, the patriotic and
militarist enthusiasms of the Spanish-American War were responsible for a needed
outpouring of conmbutions to the mission cause.) But when the costs of imperialism became apparent, American leaders withdrew their support for political expansion and used mission organizations as a partial strategy to retain the exhilaration of
empire without paying its bills or taking on its corrupting responsibilities. . . .
Missionaries remained ambivalent about commercial efforts to introduce the
products of the West into China. Women favored the importation of some goods,
such as oil and sewing machines, but like women reformers at home, they fought a
vigorous battle against efforts to disseminate Western vices. The introduction of
such products as alcohol and cigarettes discredited the moral claims of the West, as
had opium imports before, but it also threatened to draw souls already benighted
by heathendom further from the missionary grasp. Missionary women felt that
China itself was at contest in their competition with Western vice industries. Sarah
Goodrich, an early representative of the China chapter of the Women's Christian
Temperance Union, launched a concerted attack on the British American Tobacco
Company and its goal to put "a cigarette in the mouth of every man, woman and
child in China." Imported liquor never became a major problem in China except
with the foreign community, but Goodrich's participation in the WCTU suggests
that at some level and for some women, the missionary battles of China were the
same as those of women reformers in the United States. . . .
Missionary men as well as women sometimes spoke as self-appointed advocates
for China. But women were more likely than men to express sympathy for China's
powerlessness at the hands of the West. The reaction of American women in China to
the Boxer uprising presents an opportunity to contrast male and female attitudes. . . .
Luella Miner remarked that for all the Boxer atrocities there had been no incidents of Chinese rape, and Emma Martin wrote, "It is just outrageous the way the
allied powers especially the soldiers have behaved in China. If our indemnities have
to come out of the poor people I don't feel as if I want any." Sarah Conger, whose
husband was the American minister to Peking, wrote a letter of sympathy for the
Chinese position shortly after her release: "Poor China! Why cannot foreigners let
her alone with her own? China has been wronged, and in her desperation she has
striven as best she could to stop the inroads, and to blot out those already made. My
sympathy is with China. A very unpopular thing to say but it is an honest conviction, honestly uttered.". . . Sarah Conger reacted differently from her husband,
who favored decisive reprisals. The previous year Edwin Conger had proposed that
the United States seize the province of Chihli, which included the capital Peking,
as a base in China.
Women like Sarah Conger and Emma Martin responded to intrusions on Chinese sovereignty with sensibilities that they seldom used to defend their own

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autonomy as women. Lida Ashmore, for instance, who acquiesced in her husband's
domination of her daily life, criticized him sharply for a constriction of Chinese
rights. When he suggested that a Chinese missionary society consult with foreign
representatives, Lida Ashmore wrote, "they did not like it. You could see how they
would resent asking a foreigner if they could go into a field to work, where no
work is done, when they are Chinese and this is China." Lucy Mead, with other
American women not yet eligible for the vote in the United States, wrote possessively of China, "Why can't we decide what kind of government we want, no matter what our neighbor advises?" Like many other missionary women, Lucy Mead
did not comment on public affairs in the United States, nor did she protest her lack
of a voice in determining public policy. Yet Japanese threats to Chinese prerogative
inspired her instinctive, proprietary ire. Of course, American missionary women
never surren8ered their own interests to China's, but at some level they identified
the two. In defending China, they defended their own right to feel responsible,
compistent, empowered.
American women were also defending a female kind of authority when they
defended China. According to the tenets of domestic ideology, authority was best
qpplied indirectly, or, if in the relations between mistress and servant it was applied
b d y , it should be done according to rules of decorum. Luella Miner wrote that
she was particularly offended by a medal imprintedas a memento for the survivors
of the siege: "I do not at all approve of the design on one dde, Europe, America
and Japan trampling an the Dragon. . . .I object to this first because it isn't true to
fact, as the dragon c a m out on the top side, and second becauw it isn't pol it^." ...
Like the anti-imperialist Mugwumps, missionary women lacked a political
base and tended to oppose the exercise of military, imperial, or commercial power
in which they could have no part. Instead they mounted a moral crusade based on
premises of social elitism which played up to their perceptions of themselves as
guardims and founts of civilization. This women's crusade, for once in the early
twentieth century, corresponded with the interests and policies of the American
government in China. The American decision to preserve an open door and to
work to maintain Chinese sovereignty enhanced the importance of missionary influence to American purposes and also encouraged a shared posture of national
righteousness. .. .
The Protestant missionary effort was unsuccessful in achieving the wide-scale
conversions in China hoped for by the American churches. In contrast to Africa,
where entire tribes fell under Christian sway, Chinese conditions were not conducive to mass conversion. Official hostility and a strong state orthodoxy, combined with the thriving heterodox Taoist and Buddhist folk traditions, left little
room for a demanding and exclusive Christian God. The precariousness of the Chinese economy, however, presented opportunities to missionaries which Christian
ideology alone could not have done. The Taiping uprising and the colonial wars of
the mid-nineteenth century added political unrest to the ongoing problems of population expansion, and the once stable Manchu court began to lose control. Family
and clan organizations helped provide relief to those left helpless by the century's
devastations, but many destitute remained for missionaries to approach with the
possibilities they offered for employment, for schooling, and,many Chinese thought,
for legal interassion. As one woman put it, "the unspeakable conditions of physical
suffering constitute both our call and our opportunity to minister."

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387

Women in China, as in most societies, suffered disproportionately in hard

times. Considered economic liabilities, they were less valued at time of birth and
more subject to abandonment or sale in times of famine. At marriage, women were
cut off from friends and family and transferred as property to husbands and families they knew little of. Though a woman's family, particularly her brothers,
retained some responsibility for her well-being, only the most visible and wellsubstantiated abuse could free her from a disastrous match. Missionaries gained
their early converts from a disadvantaged class; the significant numbers of women
converts could be explained in part by the disadvantages of their sex.
Tales of abandoned children, daughters rescued from sale or death, and
women saved from cruel mothers-in-law and brutal husbands filled missionary letters and propaganda. In the retelling, they assumed the proportions of melodrama.
Jessie Ankeny wrote of a woman who overtook her in the road and "told me about
her daughter who was about to commit suicide because of the cruelty of the mother
in law 'Ah let me give her to you and you can do with her as you like-let her
study or be your slave'!" Emma Martin, too, wrote of a woman attempting suicide
to escape a "wretch" of a husband; she had been adopted by a Bible woman "till
she can find new courage to live." Ella Glover provided care for a sick woman
whose mother-in-law, according to mission story, had instructed her "never mind,
let her die." Although the numbers and the circumstances of needy women were
exploited and perhaps exaggerated, they were not fabricated. Women missionaries
working in China used their abilities to offer economic and institutional support to
the needy as perhaps their most powerful means of recruiting loyal converts and
Christian workers. . . .
Those who fled to missions did so because missions had first taken initiatives
in recruiting, supporting, and sometimes purchasing Chinese. When missionaries
first moved into the interior after 1860, they often could not secure students for their
schools. Missionaries aiming to demonstrate their good intentions by example would
accept unwanted children, sometimes in return for cash favors, to begin their mission schools. As late as 1922, the Methodist mission interceded to save a worker
from unwanted marriage to a non-Christian and settled a cash paym.ent of $300 on
the prospective bridegroom. "Didn't know we were in the girl buying business, did
you?" quipped Monona Cheney.
Missionaries who believed in the righteousness of their God were willing to
compete for the souls of those they desired. Usually they competed with "cruel,"
non-Christian husbands or "tyrannical" mothers-in-law, but sometimes their adversaries were rival Catholic or Buddhist religious institutions. Louise Campbell
wrote of a sixteen-year-old girl she had admitted to her school to "save her from
the nunnery:' and Martha Wdey described her daring "rescue" of a child from Buddhist priests: "I dashed out and there some Buddhist priests had bought one little
chap and were bargaining for the brother and had their money out. I grabbed that
boy and carried him into my gate and locked the gate. The Buddhist priests went
off." Missionaries condemned the stealing of children by rival religious organizations and private citizens, and certainly Martha Wiley's tactics were not those of
most missionaries. Nonetheless, mission organizations did convince Chinese villagers that they wanted bodies as well as souls, and it is perhaps no wonder that
during the xenophobic mid-nineteenth century Chinese imagined that missionaries
used the bodies they were so eager for in perverse and diabolic rituals.

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Major Problems in American Foreign Relations

Women's mission organizations commonly argued in behalf of women students reluctantly betrothed or married to non-Christian men. They supported the
domestic state for women married to Christians, but encouraged Christian women
who were fighting the certain spidtual death of marriage into a pagan home. Missionaries' stress on the importance of maintaining Christian homes also reflected
concerns that the Christian community perpetuate itself. The Swatow Baptists not
only fought marriages of church-trained girls to heathens but to Christians of other
denominations well. Generally, missionary yomen supported a woman's right
to choose a husband or to remain single altogether when marriage meant that she
would be pressured to leave the church.
This position drew women missionaries further into the Chinese struggle for
women's rights than would have been their temperamental inclination. In a letter to
Hu Shih, a prominent liberal Chinese educator, Sarah Goodrich justified her
position:
Is there anyway to force a girl to marry against her will--any law to force her. . . .Perhaps you may deem me very one-sided but when a young man marries the young
woman to whom his parents have betrothed him, even if she has not had his advantages
intellectually, I feel he is doing right. The husband has it in his power to mold the life of
his wife. He can have interests outside the home. I have seen wives wonderfully improve becoming real help [mates] under the loving patient guidance of a thoughtful
husband. But a wife if wedded to an unlettered husband is often treated as if her education was a curse, a reason for making the husband seem inferior. . . .

She concluded, "personality grows through self-sacrifice, but there is a kind of

self-sacrifice that kills every power of soul and body. It is from this we would save
Miss Chang." Goodrich's pleas for help for a teacher in a mission school demonstrated the cautiousness of the missionary argument. She did not mean to challenge
parental authority, arranged marriages, or the virtue of feminine self-sacrifice.
Only the combination of these factors, exacerbated by the proper and inevitable
subordination of wife to husband, convinced her that Christian women could not
marry heathen men. . . .
When missionary women encouraged Chinese women's independence, they
incurred responsibilities to provide them with support and protection. Missions
offered a variety of occupations to uprooted Chinese women, including training
as teachers and nurses for young women, training as Bible women to assist in
the preaching of the gospel for older women, and assorted menial jobs as cooks,
seamstresses, and amahs for women of all ages. These occupations were frequently
temporary and did not guarantee security, but they did offer short-term relief.
Christian women, as well as many Christian men, found that their religion cut them
off from old sources of support. The gradually narrowing restriction of support to
the mission community inevitably increased the personal dependence of Chinese
Christians on foreign missionaries. . . .
The women's missionary enterprise . . . never departed far in theory from the
domestic ideology which sanctioned it. Woman's extended responsibility for nurture allowed her to teach school and care for the sick, but the home remained her
central province and sentiment her central strategy of conversion. Missionary
women carried on a personal evangelism which aimed to gain access to women's
houses and their hearts. Anna Kauffman explained her belief that the "greatest

The Open Door Policy and China

389

sphere for any woman is the sphere of the home," which influenced her plan to bring
her "deepest and best vision of home and womanhood" to the homes that most
needed it. "I have found no greater opportunity than to place my life in the rising
homes of China," she wrote. Gaining access to those "rising homes" presented missionaries with major challenges. The missionary women of Peking, Luella Miner
wrote in 1893, had had no success at all in securing admission to family courtyards.
Nellie Russell of T'ungchow, however, with her more winning style, had succeeded
in gaining access to over thirty homes "and is making the work boom."
Even for those who taught Chinese girls in schools, entry to the Chinese home
remained symbolically important. Miss R. J. Miller, who ran a Presbyterian girls'
school in T'ungchow, frequently went on three-week trips through the countryside
visiting the homes of her schoolgirls. Her reason for these trips, she explained, was
that "it brings these girls nearer to me." Entry to the home represented an important
physical analogue for the entry to the heart which was the ultimate missionary goal.
Justifying their service on the basis of the uniqueness of their gifts, missionary
women emphasized the power of Christian love to stimulate individual conversion.
Of course, the evangelical tradition which spawned the mission movement had always placed a strong emphasis on the power of love and a faith founded on feeling.
Whether the large female church memberships of the nineteenth century encouraged this emotional strategy or were recvited by it is unclear. But, as Ann Douglas
has argued, as the century progressed, Protestant religion and female culture became sentimentalized in tandem. Distinctions between the evangelism of men and
women were reinforced by the ordination requirements of the majority of the
Protestant churches. Male preachers assembled congregations to hear the Word,
while women were more likely to "look love." . . .
Ideally, the missionary encounter consisted of an effusion of encouragement
and love on the part of the missionary, manifested in soulful eye contact and frequently a held hand, to be met with an outpouring of guilt and remorse, leading to
conversion, on the part of the potential convert. The intensity of the individual attention was the key. When YWCA evangelist Ruth Paxson came to China in 1918,
she emphasized that souls could be conquered only one at a time. Missionaries
customarily targeted particularly promising souls in advance. Congregationalist
Sarah Goodrich hoped to "get hold of the heart of young Mrs. Wei," and added, "I
covet her womanhood for Christ." When a Baptist woman's "special one" had become a believer, she selected another, a friend wrote. Anna Hartwell wanted every
Christian to be a "soul-winner" and seemed to advocate totting up souls as if they
were scalps, when she described a dying Chinese woman as "one of the trophies
our Tommie [Jane Thompson] will lay at the Savior's feet." . . .
The Christian conversion involved . . . a surrender of will itself. With such
high stakes missionaries ardently entered the fray. Luella Huelster described one
conversion battle:
Gwei Lan's whole body was in a tremor. Her teacher, sitting beside her, took her hands
and held them firmly in her own as she prayed that the soul-struggle, so evidently going
on, might cease. She hastily penned an informal linle pledge and placed it in Gwei
Lan's hands; but she, reading it, smiled and shook her head in negation; she was not
ready to sign it. But the Father coveted her, and less than ten minutes had passed before
the little pledge, which no other eyes were to see, was quietly signed and slipped into
the teacher's hand, and Gwei Lan was on her feet.

Gwei Lan's surrender was a victory not only for the Lord but also for his insistent
aide, who in His name had presumed an awesome intimacy. . . .
Missionaries did not find the Chinese easy to influence, and that perhaps helps
to explain their particular preoccupation with this problem. Chinese propriety demanded polite toleration of a stranger's viewpoint. Missionaries railed with frustration at the impenetrable "face" which thwarted their efforts to get in "vital
touch." They complained about problems ranging from the lack of student responsiveness in class to the formalism of the Chinese religious tradition, but their a s satisfactions stemmed from a fundamental difference in the etiquette of emotion. . ..
Although missionaries admired Confucian ethics, they agreed that' Chinese religion lacked feeling and "hasn't the life." They considered Chinese obeisance to
Taoist and Buddhist deities to be empty ritual. "Keeping up appearances before the
images seems to be the sole end of the religion, if one can judge from outward
show," Elsie Clark wrote. Monona Cheney judged that she "had more wmprehension of things spiritual at five years old" than most Chinese did at seventy-five, so
"narrow and materialist" were their backgrounds. Even when Chinese did accept
Christianity, missionaries worried that they did so in the wrong spirit. There is
much evidence for Elsie Clark's impression that many times converts simply added
Christian sacraments to Taoist and Buddhist practices. "Christian religion is made
a fetish to many of these people. Prayer and the Holy Spirit are to them tools to be
used, forces to have on one's side, magic to be evoked:' Clark wrote. With probably
less basis, Clara Foster saw Christian belief in China as a rational decision within a
Confucian tradition and thought that such belief lacked "the sorrow for sin and the
joy of knowing Christ as their Savior which are experienced in the homeland." She
went on, "They are ready to talk glibly of all b e i i great sinners and only by accepting Christ's righteousness can we be saved, but somehow it is difficult for them to
make it a personal matter."
Helping Chinese to make it "a personal matter" was at the heart of the missionary's self-appointed task in China. Professional, religious, and feminine traditions
would have directed women toward personal work in any case, but the stubbornness of Chinese cultural resistance seemed to intensify missionary efforts. Their
instructions in character became also lessons in culture. Alice Reed lamented that
the Chinese lack entirely "what we call pep," and Agnes Scott, who had taught music
at Fukien Christian College, felt that music offered an important emotional outlet
to students and gave the school "college spirit." In 1894 Luella Miner delighted
that "our Chinese associates are learning better every year how to be informal and
'folksey,' " but Frederica Mead in 1915 still lamented that "our girls have lots to
learn in being at ease in entertaining and loosing [sic]themselves in the fun of it."
When missionaries stressed the personal nature of their work, they were in part
stressing the fundamental changes they were seeking. Their lessons in Christian
"character" frequently also fostered Western personality.
Missionaries' highest triumphs came when they could participate in a moment
of personal transformation. Usually the moment involved a debate within an individual between "right" and "face." Florence Manly remembered some private talks
with a Christian "in which my view of what he ought to do meant losing face and
was at first intolerable to him, but I held firm and he finally gave in." When the potential convert had been recalcitrant, the victory was most gratifying. Lucy Mead

described the resistance of one girl in her school to the conversion efforts of a
YWCA evangelist:
She came to the first meeting and sat thru it with a straight back, arms folded, and scorn
on her face, even all thru the prayer. The next meeting was about the same attitude, an
occasional expression in the following meetings betrayed a struggle in her soul, still
she would not admit it, the girls still worked and all prayed. As she started to the last
meeting she said with pride and scorn "She can't touch me, I'm not going to be affected
b j anything she says."

When by the end of the service she had confessed her sins and surrendered her
pride, her missionary sponsors were euphoric. Clearly, delight in conquering such
a proud resister exceeded the delight in a less challenging conquest, though both
alike totted up a soul for God. . . .
The Western infatuation with Asian people has been compared to a masculine
desire for possession. [The novelist] Pearl Buck portrayed her father as emotionally impotent in his relations with his family, as a man who could only find enthusiasm among the Chinese he felt superior to. "I think he felt about souls very much
as some people feel about eggs," Buck wrote. "He wanted them brown." Only
through racial domination, Buck implied, could her father feel sexually and emotionally competent. Edward Said, too, has employed the metaphor of male sexual
possession to explain the protective condescension and benign violation which
French Orientalists expressed toward the supine East. Han Su-yin's account of the
Belgian railroad man who befriended her as a Eurasian schoolgirl in Peking presented the metaphor most dramatically:

L i so many Europeans in China, Joseph Hers began to "love" China, a fierce, dominating, anxious, all-conquering possesSiveness, characteristic of the warped, twisted,
and altogether vicious relationships miscalled "love" between the dominating and the
suppressed, the powerful and the weak, the spoiler and the cheated. Like many other
foreigners he expressed this "love" in sexual imagery; to all of them, China was the
WOMAN,
the all-enveloping, soft, weak woman, who actually welcomed rape, welcomed beiig invaded. "Don't worry, China is feminine, she has always ended by absorbing all her conquerors," was their favourite explanation, and Hers said this too
when I spoke about the Japanese. A great part of this love for China was their attraction
to Chinese women; none of them, I think, realized how much this was resented by the
Chinese. .. .

Missionary women's love for China shared some of the condescension and arrogance which Han saw in Joseph Hers; yet the sexual basis of the metaphor must,
at least temporarily, ally missionary women with Asia itself. Both felt, without
fully knowing, the threat which Western masculine authority posed to their autonomy. Both felt without articulating it their need for unconstricted life. Before arriving in China, missionary women expressed their ambition in a conventional
vocabulary of self-sacrifice and Christian service rather than in the big terms with
which they celebrated their later triumphs. Those who discovered the richness of
experience in China had been seeking more modest rewards. Docile and sometimes frail, missionary women anticipated a more useful life doing the Lord's work
in China, but they could not imagine the way in which colonial inequalities would
cancel out American sexual imbalances and help them to liberation.

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Major Problem in American Foreign Relations

Once in China, however, the balance tipped too far. The politics of fulfillment
has rarely been democratic, and the richness of life afforded one group inevitably
occurs at cost to another. Missionaries did offer economic opportunities and educational advantages to Chinese men and women, but these advantages often came at
the expense of Chinese independence and pride. Women differed from men in the
intimacy of their missionary contacts and the nature of their evangelical techniques, but they frequently shared with men a sense of the limitless reaches of their
authority. An article published in 1911, the year of the Chinese revolution, explained the exhaustive responsibility of women missionaries: "What the Chinese
learn to do, we must first d o for them. The most startling thing to be realized back
of that statement is the fact that what the Chinese live, we must first live for them."
Although there were many distinctions between men and women in turn-of-thecentury America, conservative Protestant women could share with men an appreciation for personal freedom and vocational competence and also an enthusiasm for the
possibilities of power.

@ F U R T H E R

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The Open Door Policy and China

393

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