Samuel Wells Williams’s Negative Image Of Late Qing China

The image of China in the eyes of Americans is a hot issue.Dating back to the original research about China’s image,many clues point to the group of American missionaries in China.The object of this thesis is another missionary,Samuel Wells Williams,who has lived in China for more than 40 years.As a member of the church,Williams was appointed as the printer of the Chinese Mission by the American Board of Commissioners for Foreign Mission in 1832,and arrived in Guangzhou in1833(Oliphant 125).At the same time,he participated in the editing work of the English publication The Chines Repository,which opened the historical scene of missionaries’ close contact with and observation of China.During his stay in China,Williams,as a missionary,diplomat and sinologist,was regarded as an epitome of the early Sino-US relations and cultural exchanges(Rossiter20).However,due to historical,geographical and linguistic differences,the academic community in the mainland of China has not yet made a systematic and in-depth study of Williams.The existing research mostly focuses on Williams’ achievements in Sinology.While this thesis mainly studies ‘the negative image of China in Williams’ eyes’,illustrating how Samuel Wells Williams viewed China in the late Qing Dynasty and how his views on China influenced Americans and even Westerners to treat China.The time discussed in this thesis is limited to 1833 to 1876.This thesis will discuss the image of China in Williams’ eyes from three aspects:laws,imperial examination system,and religion of China.The first chapter explores Williams’ investigation on Chinese law and government in the late Qing Dynasty.Williams examined the formulation and implementation of laws in the late Qing Dynasty,as well as the impact of laws on society.He recognized that the spirit of equality embodied in China’s legal provisions was incomparable to other countries,but in terms of the practice of laws and its claim to protect citizens’ free will,laws did not play its role.Meanwhile,laws were used as a tool to maintain feudal rule.As for the plan of the government,Williams believed that the only two advantages were its antiquity and the stable environment that Chinese people enjoyed without being disturbed by the outside world.Because of his Christian belief,Williams even believed that the government at that time was built on wrong principles.Although such a government had a stable element,it had no progressive element.This thesis argues that the existence and persistence of China’s ancient government system is precisely because the government is built on the principle of Confucianism,rather than ‘built on the wrong principles’.Thus,it is easy to find that Williams,as a foreign missionary,was inevitably affected by his identity when he looked upon China(Liu 17).The second chapter argues the imperial examination system in late Qing Dynasty in Williams’ eyes.Although Williams recognized the function of selecting officers of the imperial examination system,he also pointed out many shortcomings of the imperial examination system,such as ‘buying and selling official positions’.In his view,due to the influence of the imperial examination system,the goal of China’s education has been distorted.It didn’t aim at learning knowledge,but training people’s mind and purifying their feelings.And based on the religious standpoint,Williams believed that it was unnecessary for Christian countries to implement such examination system,because people in Christian countries learned for themselves and had the ability and willingness to become the people of insight expected by the rulers without persuasion.In terms of education,Williams praised that Chinese people had attached much importance to education,which laid emphasis on moral cultivation.However,he believed that China’s education in the late Qing Dynasty could not be compared with that of Christian countries.In his opinion,the imperial examination was accompanied by specific imperial examination teaching,which brought so much pain to children.He pointed out that Chinese education was utilitarian and its purpose was to serve the ruling class to help consolidate political power.It can be seen that although Williams affirmed China’s education and imperial examination system in the late Qing Dynasty to a certain extent,he was lost himself in the Westernism,believed that he was representing progressive modern thoughts,and could not avoid the western superiority while looking at China.The third chapter starts with the analysis of China’s religion,and discusses the religious ideas and practice,and Confucianism which is closely relayed to religion in the late Qing Dynasty.When talking about religion,Williams first clarified the‘mystery’ of Chinese religion.He believed that the religious beliefs of a pagan nation were difficult to define or describe,partly because Chinese people had no clear understanding of their own rituals,and partly because different places had different rituals,even people of the same sect would have different opinions.Activities such as‘the absence of human sacrifices’ and ‘non-deification of vice’ should have been regarded as progressive religious practices,while Williams viewed them as two negative features of Chinese religion.From nature to the emperor,he thought the idolatry followed by the Chinese people meant worshiping anything that could promise them relief or help.So Williams’ mysterious Chinese religion is not mysterious at all,but superstitious.In his eyes,all religions except Christianity are negative and backward.Therefore,different from the research on Williams by scholars at home and abroad,this thesis analyzes the image of China in the late Qing Dynasty in Williams’ eyes from three aspects: laws and government,education and imperial examination system,and religion of China,so as to show that this negative image of China spread by Williams has greatly affected westerners’ understanding of China at that time.As an influential American missionary,especially after the Opium War,Williams’ negative understanding of China was more deeply rooted in the hearts of Westerners,which also led to the emergence of unequal diplomatic relations between late Qing China and the United States.