The politics of Bible production in late Qing China

Abstract

Protestant missionaries in early 19th-century China emphasized the need for a Chinese Bible translation. This emphasis was in keeping with the Protestant mission ethos, designed to reach the Chinese countryside at a time when missionaries were forbidden entry into the interior. This paper tracks the course of Protestant translation efforts from 1804 – 1850, examining the impact of politics on those efforts. By tracing the arguments, controversies, and discusssions surrounding the issues of Bible production, it attempts to demonstrate effect of internal politics between missionaries on broader Bible production, including printing. The thesis will also examine those arguments more broadly, in the context of late Qing China’s conflict with the West. This thesis relies primarily on secondary sources, drawing from two prior PhD dissertations, while also looking at primary source material, in particular selected works of W.H Medhurst and the twenty volumes of the Chinese Repository. The paper demonstrates that external political constraints and internal political bickering both shaped Protestant Chinese Bible production efforts, forcing missionaries to relocate, funding to shift, and printing techniques to change to suit the social and political constraints of the missional world of late Qing China.