US officials thought that American missionaries were very important for
American interests, not just for missionary interest, but overall American
interest in China. And the reason was that, for example, once American
missionaries were able to get into interior provinces of China, it opened these
provinces up to American business people, and consequently American diplomatic
officials on the scene nicely call the American missionaries the pioneers for
American trade and business, because once they opened up an area, then the
other Americans could come along behind and sell goods. The American
missionaries did something else. They essentially exemplified an American
lifestyle. They used American products. They were people who believed that
American products were the best products. And so along with their faith, they
brought in American industrial goods and farm products. And, as a result the
American missionaries became really front people for American exporters and
American businessmen. The Chinese did not miss this. When the Chinese looked
at American missionaries, or other foreign missionaries, they essentially saw
them not just as people who were crusading with a faith, but who were trying to
sell goods and to Westernize their particular society. And, as a consequence
it is not, I think, surprising that the Chinese revolutionaries, particularly
the Boxers, would target the missionaries because they saw in missionaries not
only Christians, which they had doubts about, but also they saw in the
missionaries the whole cutting edge for an American lifestyle and an American
product that they believed was essentially undermining the Chinese village, the
Chinese traditions, and Chinese control over their own territory.
On the one hand, as the American minister to China says, "They're the pioneers
for American trade and commerce." On the other, they are the moral cutting
edge of -- of the American mission in China. They are the American -- the side
of American diplomacy that is moral, that is uplifting, that wants to
Christianize China and make it a better nation. McKinley is very close to the
missionaries. He is greatly concerned about the missionaries. He's a devout
Christian himself and he believes that the missionaries have a legitimate role
in China and it goes beyond simply acting as commercial agents. It is really
to propagate the faith in China and to make the Chinese a better people by
converting them.
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