Confucianism in the British Romantic Period

“Wonderful Nonsense”: Confucianism in the BritishRomantic PeriodChris Murray

Interdisciplinary Literary Studies, Volume 17, Number 4, 2015, pp.593-616 (Article)

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interdisciplinary literary studies, Vol. 17, No. 4, 2015Copyright © 2015 The Pennsylvania State University, University Park, PA

“Wonderful Nonsense”: Confucianism in the British Romantic Period

chris murray

abstractThe first complete English versions of Confucian texts appeared between 1809 and 1814 in separate endeavors by Joshua Marshman and Robert Morrison. In 1814, the London Quarterly Review assessed Marshman’s translations as “nonsense.” In 1816, the same journal declared that the achievements of the Anglophone missionaries who translated Chinese were “wonderful.” Modern and contemporary commentators have recognized that the translations were primitive. Nonetheless the works stimulated interest in Romantic Britain. This article argues that the missionary versions of Confucian philosophy are sig-nificant within several political contexts of British Romanticism. The trans-lations arose amid the diplomatic complications of British Asia. Marshman and Morrison produced their Confucian texts in attempts to appease local administration that suspected their religious activities might cause unrest. Yet the translations also stimulated enough interest to secure funds for the mis-sionaries’ religious efforts. In Britain, responses to Confucianism occurred in three prominent debates: the rivalry between Catholicism and Protestantism; China as an emerging site of Anglo-French rivalry; and liberal commentary on principles of leadership with allusion to Britain’s ruler, the Prince Regent. The missionary translations have been neglected as poor Confucianism but are significant within the political contexts of the Romantic period and the problematic concept of Sinology.

keywords: Joshua Marshman, Robert Morrison, Baptist Missionary Society, Confucius, Romantic Sinology

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The first complete English versions of Confucian texts appeared between 1809 and 1814 in separate endeavors by Joshua Marshman (1768–1837) and Robert Morrison (1782–1834). In 1814, the London Quarterly Review assessed Marshman’s translations as “nonsense” (337). Yet in 1816, the same journal declared that the achievements of the Anglophone mission-aries working on Chinese literature, including Marshman and Morrison, were “wonderful” (351). Why the turnaround? The articles were prob-ably the work of different journalists. Certainly, the two pieces assume different critical perspectives on Marshman and his contemporaries. In accordance with the early evaluation as “nonsense,” these renditions have been almost entirely neglected by modern scholars. Yet fidelity to Chinese sources was of secondary importance to translators, whose ideological origins lay in the radical Baptist Missionary Society. This article contends that these Confucian translations are prominent within several political debates of the British Romantic period (c. 1780–1830). First, as interpret-ers and educators the missionaries were essential to British commerce in Asia, but their religious dedication threatened the East India Company’s position in China and India. The Confucian translations arose from this tension, which illustrates the uneasy relationship between empire and religion in British Asia. Second, in debates on reform and governance, liberal commentators hinted at the contrast between the ideal prince portrayed by the Chinese sage and the unpopular Prince Regent (later George IV, 1762–1830). Third, conservative journalists championed the missionary translations for advancing Britain’s Orientalist scholarship in competition with France.

These debates exemplify what Peter Kitson stresses as “the com-plexities and multipolarity of exchange between Britain and China in an already globalized world” (16). That the Quarterly reverses its posi-tion on the missionary translations demonstrates, I argue, an emer-gent awareness of China’s importance in this globalized world. Kitson follows recent attempts to extricate Western attitudes to China from the domain of Orientalism. Ming Dong Gu is among the scholars to observe that as China was never a Western colony, it has no place within Orientalism, which Edward W. Said (1978) delineates as a colonial dis-course that purports to structure and control Asia. Gu uses the term “Sinologism” for “a theory of knowledge production about China” that is “a bilateral construction” by China and the West (2–6). Yet Gu is aware that “Sinologism” has limited application temporally, as China has not

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always been complicit in its conceptualization by the West. Hence Gu suggests a “Sinology” that predates Sinologism, an “accommodationist paradigm” in which Western engagements with China “concentrated on the compatibility of Christianity with Chinese culture” (43). Marshman’s and Morrison’s translations of Confucius should be viewed in this criti-cal setting of Sinology, although I argue for the significance of exchange between the cultures. References to Confucianism in Romantic politi-cal debates indicate that attempts to possess China commercially were intertwined with serious attention to the lessons that Chinese philoso-phy offered.

Politically shrewd, Marshman and Morrison represented the Baptist Missionary Society, whose roots lay in the radicalism of 1790s Bristol.1 Marshman’s colleague William Carey (1761–1834) founded the Society in 1795 with John Ryland Jr. (1753–1825), pastor at Broadmead Baptist Church, a supporter of the French Revolution and domestic reform. From 1794 to 1799, Marshman taught at the school affiliated with Broadmead Church. Through Ryland, Marshman would have encoun-tered the bookseller Joseph Cottle, a committee member for the Bristol Education Society, which raised funds for the Baptist Missionary Society. Timothy Whelan notes that Cottle “printed and sold at least eight works by Ryland,” and that it was most likely Cottle who introduced Ryland to Samuel Taylor Coleridge (106). Carey and William Ward (1769–1823) gained support for the Baptist Missionary Society by allegiance with the reform and antislavery movements. In turn, Whelan notes the debt of Coleridge’s 1795 lectures to the influence of dissenting Baptists (102). In addition to Coleridge, through Rydal’s acquaintance Marshman would have encountered such radicals as Robert Southey, Josiah Wade, and Joseph Hughes, whose later role as founding secretary of the British and Foreign Bible Society in 1804 had particular relevance to both Marshman’s and Morrison’s efforts to produce Chinese-language Bibles. Morrison—a Scottish laborer who became a born-again evangelist in his thirties—trained as a minister at Hackney Academy, a dissenting acad-emy in London founded by George Collison, a director of the Baptist Missionary Society. These radical environments provided ideal prepara-tion for the disputes that threatened Marshman’s and Morrison’s mis-sions in Asia. The two recognized that to translate Confucianism would both obviate disagreements over their religious activities in Asia and resonate with prominent debates in Britain.

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the baptist translations

In 1809 the Missionary Press at Serampore published Marshman’s Works of Confucius. Ostensibly, Marshman competes with the Latin versions of Confucian philosophy produced by Jesuit missionaries in the seventeenth century. Most famous of the Jesuits’ Sinological productions is Confucius Sinarum Philosophus (1687), the culmination of decades of scholarship by Jesuit visitors to China. Confucius Sinarum Philosophus includes the first four of twenty books of Analects (Lunyu), rendered as extended paraphrases. Matteo Ricci (1552–1610) and his colleagues indicate parallels with the moral essays of Cicero, and impose Aristotelian terminology on Confucian concepts. Thierry Meynard (2011) notes in particular that the Jesuits’ citation of first and final causes bestows theism on the Confucian works that is absent from the Chinese texts. By these interpretations, the Jesuits emphasize the compatibility of Chinese culture with Catholicism. The goal of Jesuit missions to China was conversion. With their published scholarship, which suggested that intellectual conditions were favorable for China to accept Christianity, the priests hoped to rally support in Europe. Marshman opposes the loqua-cious Classicism of the Jesuits with a vernacular text allied to Protestantism by its aegis of the Missionary Press. He translates Analects entirely and provides a biography of Confucius (551–479 BCE), based on demi-mythical accounts of the philosopher’s life. After the example of Prospero Intorcetta’s Sinarum Scientia Politico-Moralis (a translation of The Doctrine of the Mean, 1668–1669), Marshman includes the Chinese characters with transliterations. He claims that his readers will be able to acquire the “curious and difficult language” from this apparatus (ii). Similarly, Marshman’s translation of Great Learning (Daxue) is appended to his Elements of Chinese Grammar (1814), a 600-page volume that proceeds from a history of the language to the minutiae of written and spoken Chinese. He criticizes the “mere translation” of Jesuit predecessors, but Marshman also acknowledges their influence through the advice of a Catholic missionary (xxxviii n.).

In contrast with the ambitious didactic agenda that Marshman announces in his Confucian texts, Robert Morrison poses as an amateur and offers an anthology of diverse material. The East India Company employed Morrison as an interpreter in Canton. The anonymous Advertisement intro-duces Horæ Sinicæ (1812)— “Hours of China”—as the fruit of Morrison’s leisure time. Great Learning appears in Horæ Sinicæ alongside a choice of Chinese “popular literature” that includes a life of Buddha and a tract that advises against the consumption of beef.


While he relied on the East India Company for subsistence, Morrison maintained that his priority was to complete a Chinese translation of the Bible (v–vi). A separate attempt at a Chinese-language Bible was underway in Serampore. Hence Marshman and Morrison were rivals despite their mutual affiliation with the Baptist Missionary Society. There was friction between the two men, as Christopher Hancock observes:

The more established missionary community at Serampore saw LMS backing for Morrison as offensive and provocative; the fact that the LMS dispatched Morrison without waiting for an answer from Serampore on the progress of the Chinese Bible there fanned glowing embers of inter-denominational suspicion into flame. (60)

Morrison completed a manuscript for the Chinese Grammar and Dictionary in 1811, but relied on the press at the Serampore seminary to print the text. Marshman’s group suppressed Morrison’s work until 1815, but published Marshman’s own Elements of Chinese Grammar in 1814. When Morrison read Marshman’s text, he complained that it was “like mine with such altera-tions and emendations as a man would make use of who wanted to avoid the King’s patent” (75). The Confucian translations were likewise produced in competition rather than collaboration.

Readers in the British Romantic period knew vaguely who Confucius was, but few were familiar with his works. An anonymous English transla-tion of Confucius Sinarum Philosophus was published in 1691 and reprinted in 1724 and 1818, to no evident acclaim. The Jesuit tendency to Christianize Confucianism continued in the influential, encyclopedic scholarship of Jean-Baptiste du Halde (1674–1743). Confucian concepts reached Britain primarily by responses to the Jesuit translations among Enlightenment thinkers. In Novissima Sinica (1699), “News of China,” Gotthold Wilhelm Leibniz compares Confucian governance favorably to European methods, and advises cultural exchange. Leibniz was informed by personal cor-respondence with the Jesuit missionaries in addition to their published scholarship. Leibniz’s Discourse on the Natural Theology of the Chinese (1716) contends— anachronistically—that the law of Heaven that under-lies Confucianism is actually an early form of Christianity from which the Chinese have deviated. In fact, Confucius lived some five centuries prior to Christ. Voltaire draws on Confucianism to make a contrary argu-ment to Leibniz. In his Essay on the Manner and Spirit of Nations (1756), Voltaire posits philosophical cultivation—the foundation of the Chinese

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sage’s social vision, which he finds agreeably atheistic—as an alternative to the Christianity that shapes European government. In Britain, Oliver Goldsmith’s The Citizen of the World (1760–1761), a series of letters narrated by a Chinese philosopher in London, contrasts the Confucian politics of harmony favorably with European aggression: “Confucius observes that it is the duty of the learned to unite society more closely, and to persuade men to become citizens of the world” (1.60). Goldsmith sourced his Confucian maxims in the works of the French missionary Louis le Comte (1655–1728). Overall, Goldsmith’s portrayal of Confucianism is double-edged. As he reflects on his misfortunes, narrator Lien Chi Altangi appears wearisomely circumspect, and so passive that he is helpless:

I submit to the stroke of Heaven; I hold the volume of Confucius in my hand, and, as I read, grow humble, and patient, and wise. We should feel sorrow, says he, but not sink under its oppression: the heart of a wise man should resemble a mirror, which reflects every object, without being sullied by any. (1.22)

English readers tended to be puzzled and repelled by the fragmentary presentation of Confucian texts, and uninspired by the content. In Maria Edgeworth’s novel Belinda (1801), lady Delacour observes, “Actions we see, but their causes we seldom see—an aphorism worthy of Confucius him-self,” associating Confucianism with glibness rather than any philosophi-cal principle (2.135). Coleridge paraphrases such gnomic wisdom in his “Fragment on Time” (1802), translated from Friedrich Schiller’s Spruch des Confucius: “Do not choose the Flyer for thy Friend” (9). In an 1808 letter to Southey, Coleridge conveys enthusiasm for “my Jesuit volume,” a collection of Jesuit Sinology (3.58). Despite this enjoyment, Coleridge’s works offer little evidence of significant engagement with Confucianism. In a parodic article published on April Fool’s Day 1812, Coleridge suggests the abolition of the church so that readers might contemplate the works of Confucius and Plato rather than the gospel (2.344). He equates the Chinese thinker with the Greek in jest, but Coleridge does not wrestle with Confucianism in prose as he does with the philosophies that absorb him. Comparably, in a note from 1807 Byron concludes, “What a pity their Philosopher Confucius did not write poetry with his precepts of morality” (2). While it is disappointing that the major British Romantics failed to take significant interest in Confucianism, clearly the translators presented the material as unappetizing. In his 1828 translation of the Confucian canon—the Four


Books, which includes Analects and Great Learning—David Collie esteems the ideas “dull and common place.” He expresses hope that Chinese students of the English language might read his volume to “reflect on some of the fatal errors propagated by their most celebrated sages” (i–ii). In a more recent assessment of Confucius’ reception amongst Anglophone readers, Raymond Dawson argues credibly that the early translators solem-nify the texts excessively and so are themselves culpable for the reputation Confucian works gained as collections of dry aphorisms (xiii–xiv).

Both modern and contemporary commentators have identified the low quality of Marshman’s and Morrison’s translations. Most recently, Wang Hui and Ye Lamei (2009) have revaluated the missionary texts. Their study compares the two versions of Great Learning. Wang and Ye commend Marshman and Morrison as pioneers of Western attempts to comprehend and disseminate Chinese culture. They feel that Marshman’s translation is enriched by his interpretative commentary. By contrast, Wang and Ye credit Morrison for his attempt to translate literally on a word-for-word basis (419–21). While Marshman’s expansiveness and Morrison’s terse-ness are opposite attributes, both translators’ texts are characterized by inaccurate explanations of fundamental concepts. Crucially, the Baptists do not comprehend the Confucian principle of self-cultivation (xiushen). To fully realize one’s humanity (ren) by study and interpersonal exchange is the attested goal of life in Great Learning, a treatise of only 1,750 words in the original Chinese. Roger T. Ames glosses ren as “a consummate rela-tional virtuosity . . . with other people” (85). Philosophically, Great Learning moves from the particular to the general, hypothesizing that an individual’s efforts at self- improvement begin with the acquisition of investigative discernment (ge wu), lead in stages to collective benefit, and eventually yield good governance and peace:

When things are investigated, knowledge is extended.When knowledge is extended, the will becomes sincere.When the will is sincere, the mind is correct.When the mind is correct, the self is cultivated.When the self is cultivated, the clan is harmonized.When the clan is harmonized, the country is well governed.When the country is well governed, there will be peace throughout the land.From the king down to the common people, all must regard the culti-vation of the self as the most essential thing.

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It is impossible to have a situation wherein the essentials are in disorder, and the externals are well-managed. You simply cannot take the essential things as superficial, and the superficial things as essential. This is called, “Knowing the root.” This is called “The exten-sion of knowledge.” (I.iv–I.vi)2

In the extended conceit of Great Learning, the root of virtue originates the branches of state wealth and social harmony. Because Marshman and Morrison misunderstand this fundamental principle, their translations deviate from Confucius’ lesson at the very outset.

Morrison translates Daxue as “Great Science.” Heavily indebted to European empiricism and the Jesuits’ rationalist interpretations of Confucianism, he conceives of Confucian study as observational rather than as a holistic process that entails social interaction: “There is nothing, though now known, that may not be still more fully known, by scrutiniz-ing it to the utmost. . . . This is what is implied by the utmost bounds of things, and the perfecting of knowledge” (27–28). Comparably, Marshman misleads by his equation of Confucian self-cultivation with European conceptions of Reason: “The path or course of Learning proper for Men, consists in restoring reason to its pristine lustre; in renovating others; and in making the summit of all virtue the only point of rest” (A3). At times, the meaning of the missionaries’ texts is unclear. Both translators appear to interpret the cultivation of virtue as primarily a demonstrative exercise, a requirement of cant politics. While Marshman refers to “renovating others,” Morrison suggests, “the prince . . . must adorn with virtue his own person” (22).

Inaccuracy of translation arises not only from Marshman’s and Morrison’s primitive Chinese, but their resistance to particular ideas in Confucianism, and influence by contrary philosophies. There are traces of Jean-Jacques Rousseau’s Discourse on Inequality (1762) in the mission-aries’ implication that the goal of self-improvement is public recognition, and their ignorance of Confucius’ principle that social interaction induces betterment rather than—as Rousseau claims—corruption. Marshman also distorts the aphoristic and anecdotal work Analects by omitting its refer-ences to pagan ritual. Like the Jesuits, Marshman Christianizes the Chinese sage. For example, where Dawson’s modern translation advises of the aspir-ing gentleman, “if he commits a fault, he should not shrink from correcting it” (4), Marshman describes a penitential sinner’s reconciliation with God: “transgressing, you should not fear to return” (37).


Contemporary reviewers were under no misapprehension about the missionaries’ efforts at translation from Chinese. The 1814 Quarterly piece gives an ambivalent appraisal of Marshman that is sympathetic with his labors, yet realistic about his ability. The journalist esteems Marshman the best translator available, but regrets that this is the case:

No one can be better qualified to classify and analyze the Chinese characters than Mr. Marshman. He seems to possess the happy talent of deciphering or resolving them into their constituent parts with as much facility as a botanist will refer a plant to its proper class and order in the Linnæn system; but here we think his merit ends: like the botanist with his plants, he can classify his symbols without knowing much of their powers or virtues; and when he ceases to be the “pioneer of literature,” he ceases to be respectable. The truth is, that like most of the missionaries, Mr. Marshman has the qualities of zeal and unwea-ried diligence; but he is deficient in taste and judgment. . . . That a plain man like Mr. Marshman, in attempting to translate symbols of this description into the English language, without any knowledge of the particular tenets and habits of thinking which prevail among the Chinese, should altogether fail, and frequently write nonsense, is not in the least surprising. (336–37)

Consequently, the reviewer detects that “it is Mr. Marshman who speaks and not Confucius” (338).

Old and new commentators concur that the missionaries’ Confucian translations possess little philosophical merit. No evidence exists that a sig-nificant English readership embarked on the auto-didactic Chinese course Marshman suggests. In her Journal of a Residence in India (1812), Maria Graham exemplifies the prevalent attitude to Chinese culture among Britons:

Do not imagine that I intend to become a pupil of Mr Marshman’s, for though I admire many of the maxims of the great Chinese sage, I hardly think it would be worth while to take much pains to become more intimately acquainted with a people, whose morality consists in ceremony,—whose wisdom is finesse,—and whose arts and literature have been at a stand these thousand years. (152)

I suspect Marshman anticipated that practical use of his work would be confined to a few missionaries such as he trained in what became Serampore

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College in 1818. However, this purpose alone would not necessitate wholesale publication; Marshman’s scholarship was at least partly aimed at a public readership. Yet I think that Wang and Ye’s conclusion—that the missionaries were simply too immature in their knowledge of Chinese to produce accurate texts—misses the anterior goal of the publications (425). Marshman declares his texts are comprehensive guides to the Chinese language; Morrison’s anthology assumes the opposite position of dilettantism. Both affectations are somewhat disingenuous. Independently, the two men aimed to translate the Bible into Chinese. Marshman and Morrison perceived their transla-tions of Chinese philosophy into English as stepping-stones toward Chinese renditions of the Bible. Translations of Confucian philosophy assisted the missionaries as intellectual exercises, not solely because its medium was the language in which they required expertise, but because Confucian texts had been the crux of Mandarin bureaucracy since the Han dynasty (206 BCE–220 CE), and thus offered insight into the mindset of China’s literati, the primary targets of Protestant proselytism. More importantly the transla-tions answered practical needs. Subscriptions to the books brought money. The Works of Confucius, Horæ Sinicæ, and Elements of Chinese Grammar were therefore strategic publications by which Marshman and Morrison sought to reassure influential skeptics, and win intellectual and financial support for their work when the continuation of missions in Asia was under threat.

the politics of confucian translation in india and china

Thierry Meynard (2010) observes that any study of Confucianism inevita-bly becomes political, whether in China or in Europe (100). Subsequently I shall discuss the ways in which Marshman’s and Morrison’s Confucian texts appealed to political debates that typify British Romanticism. Additionally, the translations can be termed “political” because the missionaries turned to scholarship on Chinese culture to negotiate power struggles they faced in Asia. In Serampore and British India, officials in local government opposed Marshman’s religious work. In Canton, Morrison encountered difficulties with the East India Company that paralleled Marshman’s experiences. Translation of Confucian philosophy was an ideal project for the missionaries, as it appeased opponents of their proselytizing, yet stimu-lated the necessary interest in their overall activity at home and abroad. To investigate these circumstances also demonstrates complications in the critical conception of Sinology, as it is evident that the missionaries’


interests in Chinese culture were contingent on British affairs elsewhere in Asia, including colonial territories.

Marshman never visited China. The Quarterly’s comment that he lacked “knowledge of the particular tenets and habits of thinking which prevail among the Chinese” was not a slight but a truth that Marshman admit-ted freely in Elements of Chinese Grammar, and that hinted at the circum-stances in which The Works of Confucius was published (i). Marshman had arrived at Serampore in 1799 with his wife Hannah and the printer William Ward. They joined William Carey, whose work in particular would earn the missionaries the reputation as initiators of a Serampore renaissance.

Because Lord Wellesley, Governor General of British India, forbade the establishment of a printing press in his territory, Carey and his follow-ers settled in Danish-ruled Serampore. Hence Serampore became a base for Protestant missionary activity around India. The welcome extended to Marshman, Carey, and Ward in India depended on the religious fervor of individual officials from Britain and Denmark, who were liable to withdraw their support if missionary activity interfered with commercial interests. Generally, Britons were associated with troublesome merchants who traded with India, viewed as a nuisance both by natives and the Danish administrators. Furthermore, authorities perceived the missionaries’ work as a potential cause of disruption among the non-Christian populace. In time Marshman and his companions experienced friction both with Indians and colonial government.

The Missionary Press published religious works in various Indian dialects, but the Baptists achieved very few conversions. Alban et al. note that when the missionaries preached sermons and published tracts on issues such as “slavery, self-torture, abortion, and euthanasia,” frequently they elic-ited angry responses from their Indian audiences (94). Marshman was a pro-vocative speaker, as Vinita Hampton Wright indicates: “often he came home bloodied from bricks thrown by Indians who were irritated by both his man-ner and his message.” The risk of unrest aggravated the foreign imperialists.

When social tension culminated in an outright restriction of mission-ary activities, Marshman devised his plan to translate Confucius. Carey’s son planned a visit to British-ruled Orissa, but a member of the Council Board warned Carey not to allow the expedition. Marshman’s son (John Clark Marshman, 1794–1877) documents the episode. He cites a letter from the Orientalist Henry Thomas Colebrooke (1765–1837), a member of the Governor-General’s Council of the East India Company, who informs Carey senior that “a missionary would not be tolerated” in the area:

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That idolatrous shrine had now been adopted as one of the institutions of the British Government, and its prosperity was identified with the interests of the state. There was, therefore, no hope that any mission-ary would be allowed to engage in “public preachings at Juggernath offensive to the religious persuasion of the people,” or to circulate tracts which might give any “molestation” to the hierarchy at Pooree. (1.384–5)

The Baptists risked expulsion from India. Furthermore, they needed funds badly. In Works of Confucius, Marshman acknowledges that he was encour-aged to learn Chinese by Lord Minto (1751–1814), Governor-General of India—possibly an indication that Marshman’s energies should be directed elsewhere.

When Marshman announced his intention to translate Confucian philosophy into English in 1808, the response among his fellow expatriates was strongly positive. There was little risk that such a work would aggravate local politics. European aristocrats promised subscriptions and there was even support from British and Danish officials:

Mr. Edmonstone, the Secretary to Government, who appeared anxious to efface the remembrance of his recent hostility to their missionary undertaking, and not only encouraged the publication of the Chinese classic, but put his name down for a donation of 30l. to the translations. The subscription list of Confucius contained the name of every gentleman of influence in Calcutta. In a few days Mr. Marshman obtained subscriptions of the value of 2000l. (1.390)

The Works of Confucius was a savvy choice of project for Marshman, who thereby appeased local authorities and obtained financial support. While his missionary actions in India were limited, Marshman could reassure himself that he worked toward a Chinese Bible to advance Christianity in Asia more generally.

In China, Robert Morrison experienced similar pressures to Marshman. To remain in China, Morrison needed to satisfy his employers, the East India Company. The Company remained the most significant Western presence in China, and its quasi-governmental power included a private army. British merchants were confined to a restricted area outside Canton, yet even this was a hard-won advancement that was only achieved in 1757, when the port was opened to foreigners. Britain’s diplomatic efforts in China had failed, most recently with the Macartney Embassy in 1793.3 The East


India Company feared that disagreement with local officials would lead to utter exclusion from China. Hence Morrison, like Marshman, needed to avoid controversy in his religious activity. Unlike Marshman, who was admitted to Serampore as a missionary, Morrison was employed at the British Factory in Canton solely for his linguistic skills.

Among the merchants of Canton there was little support for Morrison’s true ambitions. Eliza Morrison recalls that in Britain the London Missionary Society doubted the likelihood of many Chinese conversions, and directors at the East India Company headquarters disapproved of religious work that might destabilize their position in China:

It was not only by the authorities in England that Mr. Morrison’s missionary pursuits were frowned upon: those of their representative in China, who, though they esteemed his character, appreciated his talents, and cherished through life a sincere friendship towards him-self, still considered, at best, his efforts to introduce Christianity into China as a visionary enterprise; while some even viewed it as inimical to the commercial interests of the Company. (1.315–16)

The danger of Morrison’s expulsion increased in 1814 with a Qing edict “by which . . . to print books on the Christian religion in Chinese [was] rendered a capital crime” (1.334). By 1815, reports had reached East India House in London that Morrison continued his missionary work in defiance of the decree. The Honourable Court of Directors sent a letter of dismissal to Morrison, via the office of the Select Committee in Canton. However, the Select Committee deemed Morrison irreplaceable as Translator and Secretary of Chinese, and suppressed the letter. Yet Morrison’s position remained precarious because of his religious mission.

Even had Morrison’s Chinese Bible manuscript been complete, he lacked ready access to a printing press. Local printers in Canton were will-ing to overlook the governmental edict and produce religious tracts in return for exorbitant fees. If he was to disseminate Christian texts in China, Morrison needed significant funds to offset his expenses. Fortunately for Morrison, Horæ Sinicæ proved a success. The British and Foreign Bible Society was sufficiently impressed to donate $500 “for promoting the trans-lation and printing of the Scriptures in China” (1.326). In 1814 William Parry, one of the East India Company who did support missionary work in China, bequeathed Morrison 1,000 Spanish Dollars “for the purpose of promulgating the Christian religion” (1.383).

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Like Marshman, Morrison perceived that a work based on his Chinese studies might raise funds and quell suspicions if it was not overtly concerned with Christianity. It is coincidental but not incredible that both men included Confucian texts in their Chinese scholarship. Confucianism was obvious subject matter for its preeminence in the Chinese canon, its centrality in a bureaucratic system that foreigners must comprehend if they were to progress in China, and the association with Christianity created by the Jesuits. Thus the Confucian works related to Christian activity in a manner that appealed to Marshman’s and Morrison’s financial supporters, but were sufficiently far-removed from overt proselytizing to allay the suspicions of administrators in Asia. Additionally, in Confucianism the radical missionaries had selected a philosophical tradition suited to contemporary debates in Britain.

confucianism and the politics of romantic britain

If missionaries contended that China was predisposed to accept Christianity, and expatriate politics in Asia motivated Marshman’s and Morrison’s translations, Confucian philosophy in turn found particular relevance in Romantic-period Britain. For very different reasons, Confucianism appealed to contemporary debates on domestic matters and foreign affairs, among both conservative thinkers and liberals. Some commentators viewed Confucianism within an imagined Orientalist arena where Britain should compete with France for scholarly supremacy. In domestic debates, Confucianism gained currency because the war-like age of Confucius bore cursory resemblance to the unrest of the Romantic period; therefore the philosopher offered answers to comparable problems. Marshman indicates this possibility in the introduction to The Works of Confucius. He opines that while Confucianism is “less splendid” than Greek philosophy, it is “superior in point of utility . . . with respect to civilization and political order,” as demonstrated by its sustained influence on Chinese government (cxxxix).

The Romantic age was shaped by the French Revolution of 1789, which toppled the ancien régime of monarchy and aristocracy in pursuit of egalitarianism. In response to the Revolution, Britain declared war on France in 1792 as a matter of principle. The two nations were in conflict almost continuously until 1815. For fear that the Revolution would be replicated in Britain, William Pitt’s Conservative government introduced repressive leg-islation. Restrictions were placed on public assembly in the 1795 Gagging Acts, the press was heavily censored, and the writ of Habeas Corpus was


suspended from 1794 to 1795, and again from 1798 to 1801, to enable the internment of suspects without trial. The Act of Union was enforced in 1801, yet Pitt’s government lost power in the prolonged debate over Catholic Emancipation. Liberals campaigned for governmental reform and univer-sal suffrage, and protested the inhumanity of Britain’s actions overseas, such as war and slavery. A gunman shot the King’s carriage in 1795, and Prime Minister Spencer Perceval was assassinated in 1812. A volatile atmosphere prevailed throughout the period. To some readers, Confucianism offered solutions.

Journalistic allusions to Confucian philosophy became more frequent following Marshman’s and Morrison’s translations, but did occur previously. References to Confucianism during the Romantic period often employ language that is politically charged and invoke a key term of radical debate, “reform.” In his History of Philosophy (1791), based on Johann Jakob Brucker’s Historia Critica Philosophiae (1742–1744), William Enfield claims that “by his sage counsels, his moral doctrine, and his exemplary conduct, [Confucius] obtained an immortal name as the reformer of his country” (2.575). In his Universal History (1802), published the year of a doomed peace treaty between Britain and France, William Fordyce Mavor intimates a wish for a Confucian figure to harmonize society:

Confucius seemed designed by heaven to reform, both by his doc-trines and example, the corruptions which at this time prevailed as well in the civil as in the religious establishments of China. . . . His chief design was to reform their hearts and lives . . . and, notwith-standing the great opposition which he met with from the influence of the mandarins and grandees, he had the satisfaction to see his excellent morality universally admired. (11.306–07)

In The Moral Instructor (1819), the American author Jesse Torrey accounts that Confucius

[s]ent six hundred of his disciples into different parts of the empire, to reform the manners of the people. . . . A few days before his last illness, he told his disciples with tears in his eyes, that he was overcome with grief at the sight of the disorders that prevailed in the empire. (51–52)

The opponent of “mandarins and grandees,” moved by civic “disorders,” Confucius is an egalitarian figure suited to radical discourse.

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Confucianism illustrated reformist ideals, but could further serve as oblique criticism on Britain’s existing regime. The Prince Regent—whose Orientalist pleasure-dome at Brighton Pavilion was under construction from 1802 to 1822—both revived the fad for chinoiserie and fell victim to the reception of Chinese culture. In his satirical verse pamphlet The Queen’s Matrimonial Ladder (1820), William Hone portrays the Prince as “an old fat MANDARIN.” George Cruikshank’s illustrations depict the Regent as a teapot—uselessly, full of holes—in reference to the ritualistic, Sinicized tea-drinking popularized by the Prince (17–19). Allusions to the virtuous leadership envisioned in Confucianism inevitably cast the Prince in unfa-vorable relief. Previously identified by liberals as a champion of reform, the Prince disappointed after his assumption of rule in 1811, and was a notori-ous drunkard and opium addict. The Prince’s unpopularity for his failure to support Catholic Emancipation culminated with an incident at a dinner on St. Patrick’s Day 1812. When the Marquis of Lansdowne toasted the Prince, other guests hissed. The Morning Chronicle published a sycophantic edito-rial to appease the Prince. The radical journalist Leigh Hunt (1784–1859) replied with an article for which he was libeled:

What person, unacquainted with the true state of the case, would imagine, in reading these astounding eulogies, that this Glory of the People was the subject of millions of shrugs and reproaches! . . . That this Maecenas of the Age patronized not a single deserving writer! That this Breather of Eloquence could not say a few decent extempore words—if we are to judge at least from what he said to his regiment on its embarkation to Portugal! That this Conquerer of Hearts was the dis-appointer of hopes! That this . . . Adonis in Loveliness, was a corpulent gentleman of fifty! In short, this delightful, blissful, wise, pleasurable, honourable, virtuous, true, and immortal PRINCE, was a violator of his word, a libertine over head and ears in debt and disgrace, a despiser of domestic ties, the companion of gamblers and demireps, a man who had just closed half a century without one single claim on the gratitude of his country or the respect of posterity! (1.221)

Charles Lamb also satirizes the gluttonous libertine in his contemporane-ous poem “The Triumph of the Whale,” yet precedents for the dissolute Prince indicate political unease: Mary Wollstonecraft notes that “rapacious prowlers” such as Louis XVI (1754–1793) bring about “vile intrigues” (96).


In contrast with the despised Prince, journalists celebrated the exemplary life of Confucius and his power as a political symbol. This is the mythical Confucius deified in Chinese folk religion, the sum total of the Confucian principles and maxims, whose hagiography Marshman includes in his Works of Confucius. Often commentators overlook Confucian philosophy per se in favor of its paradigm in the demi-mythical Confucius himself. The first issue of Analectic Magazine (1813), edited by Washington Irving, repro-duces Marshman’s life of Confucius verbatim; Irving sourced the material in the Monthly Magazine. Marshman depicts the idealized Confucius, who devoted himself to philosophy from the age of fifteen, declined government employment, travelled China in search of worthy society, and “felt no incli-nation to engage in public affairs” because he would rather edit the Chinese classics (ix). “An undue quantity he did not eat,” Marshman translates from Analects (692). Exiled for his outspoken politics, Confucius found closer Romantic counterparts in Thomas Paine—libeled in absentia—and Hunt than the apostate Prince.

In 1813, the Literary Panorama dismisses Confucianism as a system that encourages a “dull passive morality,” but eulogizes Confucius himself for his tireless efforts at self-edification, “that image of perfection, which he set before his imagination, and to which he endeavoured to conform his behavior”:

An orderly, self-governed, social and benevolent person. Not an ascetic; Confucius did not fly mankind, nor resort to a desert, to shun the converse of his fellows. . . . The perfection he sought was that of quietude, his eminence was that of letters, his superiority was that of teaching, his glory was his readiness in distinguishing right from wrong, and communicating the distinction to others, as they were competent to receive it. (1233)

Furthermore, the author praises Confucius’ depiction of “the character of a legislator, or a leading man.” This alludes to passages in the Analects that portray an inadequate ruler as, in Marshman’s words, a “man light and contemptible in his outward deportment,” who develops “no respectability of character;” he is “evil” and “silly” (34). While the Panorama notes the Chinese sage’s social conduct and austere diet, the “silly” ruler with “no respectabil-ity of character” evokes Hunt’s “corpulent” Prince Regent. The Confucian tenet of filial piety reflects poorly on the Prince Regent’s infamous treatment

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of his mentally ill father. Marshman explains the concept concisely: “To serve parents while living, to inter them with due solemnity, and afterward to worship or reverence them” (90). Great Learning discusses a princely paradigm of filial piety in Wen (1152–1056 BCE), successor to King Wu in ancient Chinese history, as Morrison translates: “His venerable appearance commanded respect; his determined conduct [commanded] an attention to justice and propriety—such was the learned Prince” (25). Thus at a time when the qualities of effective leadership were under scrutiny, Confucianism gained particular potency. Commentators also related the philosophy to a separate debate on the international prominence of British scholarship.

To introduce his Works of Confucius, Marshman situates his text within the extant corpus of European Sinology:

It has been observed by the late Sir W. Jones of illustrious memory, that it is to our French neighbours, we have been hitherto indebted for almost every effort to elucidate the language and literature of China. The interests of the English nation however, no less than its literary honor, seem to demand that we also should use our utmost exertions in cultivating this department of literature. (ii–iii)

Marshman’s and Morrison’s Confucian translations became associated with Britain’s rivalries with France in empire and scholarship, and the intel-lectual achievements of Protestantism in competition with Catholicism. Depictions of Confucianism in Britain in the early Romantic period remained dominated by Jesuit accounts, which distort Confucian prac-tice to suggest similarities with Catholicism. Hence in Bell’s New Pantheon (1790)—an encyclopedic survey of world religions—a sacrifice to Confucius is portrayed as a Catholic mass:

They uncover the flesh of the sacrifice, and the master of the ceremo-nies says, “May the soul of Confucius descend upon it!”

The sacrificing priest then takes up a chalice filled with wine, and pours it on the image of a man made of straw. . . . When the priest has repeated [a] short prayer, the people fall down on their knees, but in a few minutes rise up. When the priest washes his hands, and wipes them with a towel, or napkin, one of the inferior priests supplies him with a bason, a towel, and a chalice full of wine, the master of ceremo-nies chanting aloud, “Let the priests go near the throne of Confucius.” Upon which the sacrificing priest kneels down, and presents a piece


of silk and a cup of wine to Confucius. . . . Then the officer puts into the hand of the priest a piece of the flesh, and the master of ceremo-nies chants aloud, “Partake of the flesh of the sacrifice.” This being over, the priest says, “When we offer this sacrifice, we live in expecta-tion of receiving thereby all the comforts of this life.” The remainder of the flesh is distributed among all the people present; and, consist-ent with the ancient and general notion of sacrifices, all those who taste it believe, that Confucius will be gracious to them. (1.190–91)4

The decisive blessing, in which Confucius’ spirit is summoned to enter the sacrificial meat, resembles the believed transubstantiation of the Eucharist and wine into Christ’s body and blood. Thus in Romantic Britain, Confucianism carried the taint of association with Catholics, who would remain subject to Penal Laws in Britain until 1829. By extension, Catholicism evoked xenophobia toward Continental Europe. In effect Confucianism was Catholic and therefore, loosely, French.

Journalists with little palpable interest in Chinese culture champi-oned the efforts of Marshman and Morrison as national and religious victories. Hence the Quarterly writer who evaluates Marshman’s Chinese texts as “nonsense” also celebrates the recent missionary translations for their Britishness: “in England we have reason to believe the Chinese lan-guage and literature have already made much greater progress than on the continent” (334). The Protestant translations could retrieve Chinese cul-ture from its associations with Catholicism. The Quarterly attacks French scholars— predominantly Jesuit priests—as incompetent, superficial, and even dishonest:

To few, if any of them, can be assigned the merit of having directed their philological studies to any one point of practical utility. . . . Indeed the authenticity of many of their communications has often been called into question—less perhaps from the matter of them than from an apparently studied concealment of the means that might ena-ble the learned and studious of Europe to examine the originals. . . . In short, they have given us a profusion of the garnish of Chinese literature, but totally omitted the substantial and wholesome part of it. (332)

No French version of Great Learning would appear until 1837. The journalist gloats that the modest achievements of Marshman and Morrison nonetheless

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represent “greater progress” than their rivals have made. Quality of scholar-ship is evidently a lesser concern than being a step ahead of France.

In 1816 the Quarterly acknowledges that Marshman’s translation has been attacked for its poor quality, but argues that this is made unimportant by the humanitarian significance of the missionaries’ efforts in Asia. The Serampore Baptists display bravery and persistence:

We envy not the feelings of those who find amusement in holding up to ridicule the labours of the Baptist Missionaries; ours, we con-fess, have received a very different impression, which tells us that we shall not err greatly in placing the names of Marshman, Carey, Ward, and the rest of the Serampore missionaries, among the benefactors of the human race. . . . Their progress in the various oriental languages is really wonderful; but so are their exertions, and their contempt of bodily suffering and personal danger. (350–51)

The journalist praises Marshman as an innovator, who inspired the inven-tion of the first movable, metal printing press for Chinese characters:

This discovery will prove of infinite importance to the Chinese, if their pride will only suffer them to adopt it; for we believe there is no nation on earth, not even our own, in which printing is carried out to so great an extent as in China. (354)

In fact such a press had been invented in China some centuries earlier; national pride displaces journalistic accuracy. Similarly, the author forgets the publication’s earlier misgivings about the work of Marshman and Morrison to celebrate them as having “completely torn away the veil that has so long enveloped the symbolic writing of China” (361). While in 1814 the Quarterly complains that Marshman’s text “is not in the least calculated” to convey an idea of Chinese literature or assist a reader in learning the language (397), the writer of 1816 declares that, due to Marshman’s work, “almost every European, who has made the least progress in the knowledge of the written character, has become enraptured with its beauties” (361). The journalist envisions not only a British readership, but a European one, in which the missionary texts occupy a space left by the inadequacy of French scholarship. As in the factual error concerning Marshman’s printing press, this contradiction of the opinion expressed previously in the Quarterly is necessary to rhetoric that exaggerates British achievement in Asia while subtly deriding France’s recent lack of progress in the region.


conclusion

The Quarterly journalism of 1816 illustrates a political environment that paradoxically both encouraged and thwarted British scholarship in Chinese culture. The Baptists’ translations arose as viable projects amid the diplo-matic complexities of British Asia and were welcomed domestically as a sign of superiority over France. Yet the celebration of publication as an achieve-ment in itself encouraged scholarship that was hurried or, as Wang and Ye term it, “immature.” In the course of the nineteenth century, imperial pres-ence in China would become a primary expression of Anglo-French rivalry. The grounds on which the Baptist translations were celebrated anticipate a pattern that emerged in the following decades: the rush to possess China in various ways resulted in failure to understand China. Wang and Ye observe the further irony that bungled scholarship made Confucian philosophy appear the infantile product of a low culture to Europeans. This suited imperialist rhetoric, by which British incursions into China often assumed the guise of educative assistance (422–24). Gu moderates such a diametric view of European imperialism and Chinese victimhood with a perceptive argument that China became complicit in modern Sinologism because of its unconscious fetishization of the West, which arose in response to the insistence of Occidental cultures on their own preeminence (39).

The Baptist scholarship on Confucianism is classifiable as Sinology, but Sinology is not the bilateral exchange between China and Europe that Gu suggests, which neglects the role of other Asian countries. In modern discourse “Orientalism” is a term that generalizes across formerly colonial Asia and is perhaps inaccurate in reference to Britain’s relations with China. Yet while China never became a British colony, Britain’s engagements with the country later in the nineteenth century were undoubtedly of imperial intent. It is probable too that Marshman and Morrison viewed themselves as Orientalists. To argue the need for his Chinese scholarship, Marshman cites the celebrated William “Orientalist” Jones (1746–1794), a specialist on Sanskrit who was based in India. Furthermore, Britain’s relations with China were inexorably linked to its affairs elsewhere in Asia, not solely in the case of Marshman, who translated Chinese from his base in Serampore, but Morrison, who likewise needed to satisfy the East India Company. The Quarterly journalist of 1814 is correct to encourage Marshman and Morrison as pioneers who introduced Confucian texts to an Anglophone readership, although the article damns with faint praise. The greater achievement of the Baptist translators is that they comprehended and overcame the com-plexities of British Asia. Marshman and Morrison appealed to diverse and

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disparate political issues to produce texts that placed Confucianism in dialogue with contemporary debate and ensured the continuation of their missions.

chris murray is a Junior Research Fellow in English Studies at Durham University. His first book, Tragic Coleridge (2013), explores Samuel Taylor Coleridge’s philosophy of sacrifice as influenced by Greek drama, Shakespeare, and German Romanticism. His second book, Classical Cathay: Imagining China, 1793–1860, will be published by Oxford University Press.

notes

1. Known as the London Missionary Society from 1818.2. For accuracy here I have used A. Charles Muller’s recent translation (2013).3. In 1816, Morrison was employed in Britain’s second embassy to China, likewise

unsuccessful.4. William Hurd reproduces this passage verbatim in A New Universal History of

the Religious Rites, Ceremonies and Customs, of the Whole World (1814).

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Documents

Confucianism in the British Romantic Period