Beyond Shanghai

Abstract

Before the 1858 Treaty of Tianjin the Chinese operations of the London Missionary Society’s Protestant missionaries were legally limited to five treaty ports. Yet Shanghai reports attest that the missionaries based there had already considerably expanded their influence over Jiangsu and Zhejiang by the mid 1850s. According to their own reports, they broke the rules established by the 1842 Treaty of Nanjing, and routinely traveled beyond the confines of Shanghai to spread the gospel and distribute bibles. They also opened outstations and staffed them with locals. The diaries of Wang Tao (1828–1897), who was an assistant during these years, provide many additional details on these undertakings, in particular with regard to the Chinese assistants. This paper consolidates the information available on the LMS missionaries’ itinerations beyond Shanghai before the Treaty of Tianjin and analyses how Wang Tao described his own involvement.