A Study On The Causes Of The Missionary Case In Tianjin Of 1870

The missionary case in Tianjin of 1870 is a very important event during late Qing Dynasty, the cause of which is also important in history field. The case in Tianjin involved various forces in social strata including Western officials in China, Western missionaries in China, Chinese officials, local forces, the general public and other sectors of society. To clarify the different causes behind it, we must stand on a suitable footholds and analysis the intests of all parties involved, and ranking the factors according to their importances.In this paper, I will explore this history in two dimensions combined with a gradual narrowing perspective. In the first section I will study the background of Missioary case, that is the conflicts between chinese and foreign cultures. If study the history of thousands of years, we can find that the cultural differences always existed and led to conflicts. In early days, when Buddhism and Islam first came to China, they also experienced the collision with the local culture, understanding, integration and even the process of assimilation. Christinaity was officially introduced to China in the early Ming Dynasty, culture conflicts also happened in that periods. But compared with the cases in the late Qing Dynasty, they had visiable differences in terms of both quantity and degree of study, some conflicts can not even count as a missionary case, but the cultural debate. Therefore, I believe that the cultural difference does not necessarily led to the occurrence of Missionary cases, while in every Missionary case we can found out the influences of the culture conflicts.In this paper I will examine the differences in two cultures as the background of the case.In the second section of the paper, I will take a closer perspective to the late Qing Daynasty. Ever since the Opium War in 1840, the western capitalist conturies began to use gunboat policy of aggression against China, which I take as the basic and most important cause of the Missionary cases, including the Missionary case in Tianjin. When study the Missionary case in Tianjin, we can see that this case was well prepared and organized, the French Catholic missionaries and nuns were their target. Therefore, in addition to the genereal aggressions of the western missionaries, I will also pay attention to the background and the missionary policy of the 19th century in France. Known as the "eldest daughter of the Catholic Church", the French has historically been an important country in the Catholic Diocase, and she made a lot of intersets during the early spread of Christinanity in China. After the French Revolution, French lost their tradional advantage in the European continent and slowed down her pace of mission. After the Opium War, Britain, the United States, Germany and other Western powers have passed into the gunboat diplomacy to China, and they seized a lot of interesets through a series of unequal treaties. France coveted their fruits and she worried that she would lose the opportunity to return to the camp of the most developed countries. However, due to a quite limited trade share in China during that period, a commercial treaty with favorable conditions meant far less to France compared to other countries such as UK and US, so the French policy strengthened the missionary part in China.In the third section, sight will be focused in Tianjin of the late Qing Dynasty. Although a plenty of religious cases during this period were implied with cultural differences, invasions by Western powers, each case is characterized with its fundamental reason and a series of social rumors concerning the catholic evolution in France has conducted the occurrence of the religious event happened in the city of Tianjin. By distinguishing these rumors, we could then obtain a deeper understanding of this religious incident.